By Jonathan Morales

2023年3月2日

Flying to a remote outpost 400 miles from the South Pole, camping on the ice, and making a documentary on the most inhospitable continent on Earth isn’t exactly most filmmakers’ idea of ideal conditions.

But most filmmakers aren’t Kathy Kasic.

“It's funny, because I actually loved every bit of that,” said Kasic, an associate professor of Communication Studies at 囊状态. “Some people would be like, ‘That's my worst nightmare.’ It was like a dream come true.”

The documentary, 世界底部的湖, was released Feb. 28 on several major streaming platforms including Amazon Prime, Google Play, iTunes, and Vudu. 它描绘了2018年至2019年的一次研究探险，目的是探索南极3600英尺冰层下的一个湖泊。

Kasic – who spent six weeks in Antarctica capturing footage, including three weeks at the remote research site – said the goal always has been for the film to reach as many people as possible.

“We really want people to see how science can be done, and to be able to understand the process of science, especially in terms of a large-scale research project like this,” she said. “As a film professor and former biologist, I also hope that it helps inspire students to explore science as a field, or science filmmaking.”

在美国国家科学基金会的资助下，冰下南极湖泊科学通道项目（SALSA）派出了一个由50名科学家、钻探人员和支持人员组成的团队，前往一个偏远的野外营地，钻穿数千英尺的冰，从默瑟冰下湖收集样本。

这项研究对了解地球上的生命是如何发展的，它如何可能在其他行星的极端环境中存在，以及气候变化的影响具有深远的意义。

Kasic set out to not just explore and explain scientific concepts, but to tell “a story that really dives into the characters of the scientists and shows the poetry of the landscape, as well as hitting some really hardcore science.”

“The film itself shows a kind of co-creation between me and the scientists, that we did this together. The film wouldn't exist without them.” -- Kathy Kasic, associate professor of Communication Studies at 囊状态

She describes her style of filmmaking as “sensory verité,” a mashup of three other storytelling styles: sensory ethnography, sensory biophilia, and cinema verité. The first two use sensory experiences – sight and sound, for example – to embed the audience within a group of people or an ecosystem. 第三种强调日常生活中的人，有真实的对话和行动。

“The film itself shows a kind of co-creation between me and the scientists, that we did this together,” Kasic said. “The film wouldn't exist without them.”

Throughout 世界底部的湖, Kasic blends the grand, the gritty, and the intimate. In the film’s opening moments, wind whips as a drone-mounted camera pans over a desolate and icy landscape. 当一辆巨大的雪橇拖着沉重的科学设备穿过车架时，它发出叮当声。 收音机里播放着音乐，司机（特写镜头）向营地走去。

Alongside expository interviews with the scientists or the camera’s claustrophobic descent into the ice, the film also includes smaller, intimate moments, such as a surprise birthday party and a Christmas carol sung, via radio, to everyone else stationed on the continent on Dec. 25.

结果是一节启发性的科学课，与科学家建立了情感联系，同时给观众一种他们也在冰上的感觉。

“When you want people to be excited through film about science, if you only focus on the intellectual curiosity, then you lose people's emotional engagement,” Kasic said, “unless they're already emotionally engaged in it, and that means they're already a scientist.

“If you likewise only focus on people's emotion and the drama of things, then you never really get to a deeper level of understanding.”

卡西奇一从南极洲回来，就开始了用数百小时的镜头制作引人入胜的故事的工作。 她邀请了当时萨克州立电影学院的学生帕特里克·麦吉尔和莫利·费根分别协助电影剪辑和宣传。

2018年春季，麦吉尔在萨克州立大学的最后一个学期花了120个小时，观察卡西奇和她的团队在探险期间捕捉到的一切，并对它们进行分类：谁在镜头里？ 使用了什么类型的设备？ 在坦率或幽默的时刻有什么价值吗？

这次经历让麦吉尔觉得他好像认识这些研究人员，尽管他从未见过他们。 这对他的职业生涯也很有帮助。

“Every time I landed a new job in media, thankfully this documentary on my resume really stood out,” he said.

费根在2021年5月毕业后不久就被带到了这个项目中。 She helped build the film’s website, create movie posters, and arrange festival screenings. 这是她毕业后的第一份电影工作，她认为这开启了她自己的纪录片制作生涯。

“I worked with all of these people through Zoom, because it was during COVID, and we all lived in different locations,” Fagan said. “But that was also a really cool experience, getting to meet these different people that worked on different parts of the project.

“I worked really closely with the director, the editor, and the producer of the film, and so it was cool to get to see how my role fit in or partnered with their specific roles.”

That spirit of camaraderie is what Kasic – who, not having had her fill of sub-freezing temperatures, spent last summer camping on ice in Greenland for a film about algae – ultimately hopes viewers take away from 世界底部的湖.

“Just to get a few answers, it can take a lot of effort and a lot of collaboration,” she said. “It’s not really about the individual anymore. It really is about all of us coming together to try and figure out how we’re going to move into the future.”

观看预告片 世界底部的湖.