The 2010 Catlin Arctic Survey launched today (25/2/10) by project director and polar explorer Pen Hadow. This year’s survey sets out once again to the Arctic, whereby a small team of explorers and scientists hope to gather much needed information on the changing Arctic Ocean.

We created the Catlin Arctic Survey’s launch film, which appears on the home page of their website. The film is being used to promote the expedition not only online but through the press.

We had a great day filming one of the UK’s best female climbers, Hazel Findlay, yesterday (27/01/10) in Bristol’s Avon gorge. Despite the intense cold, Hazel cruised up a couple of tough routes whilst we filmed her from the side and above. We also had Bristol-based photographer and climber Rob Lisney with us who was there to capture some stills of the action. We’re using the material for one of our clients, Podsacs, who we’re putting together a web viral film for.

Last week saw most parts of the UK gripped by snow, ice and freezing conditions. We managed to brave the roads out of Bristol (that’s another story!) and head up to Snowdonia where we were tasked with filming an ice climbing sequence for our new client, Equip. Luckily the freezing conditions lasted long enough for us to set up on a frozen waterfall in the Ogwen valley and film before the ice melted and the rain returned, which it did! We’re now putting together a series of interviews and an online advert.

We braved the snow yesterday (07/01/2010) to do some filming at the head office of Rab in Derbyshire. We filmed a great interview with Mat, one of their sleeping bag designers about an exciting new range they’re bringing out in a few months. We were supposed to be heading over to a crag in the Peaks to film rock climber Pete Robins, but the snow put a stop to that! We’re keeping our fingers crossed that we’ll be able to head up north again next week to film some ice climbing action.

What an exciting year we’ve had here, we were lucky enough to start it off in January with a shoot for Cotswold Outdoor in Snowdonia for the next chapter of three films for their ever successful Knowledge videos. Shortly after we found ourselves involved in putting together a number of short films, promos and interviews for the Catlin Arctic Survey one of which was used as a promotional piece to help launch the expedition in the presence of HRH Prince Charles.

Polar travel suddenly became a hot topic for us as we were asked to film an expedition off to the South Pole in early March in Norway’s fabulous Hardangervidda, which was a great experience for us but probably not for our equipment. We literally stepped off the plane from Norway and drove up to the Lakes to film an event for our new client Rohan, which saw us hanging off a wet crag filming a group on a via Ferrata, as well as a series of evening lectures and interviews. After a few months of furious editing, sandwiched between moving into new offices, we embarked on making a couple of films for The Yacht Department on board their beautiful Swan 44 - Questar, some minor sea-sickness and a new camera lens led us up to a few weeks filming a number of pieces in the French Pyrenees. A bit of client work and a pitch for a couple of documentaries centred around a promotional film for a mountain chalet.

Our return from France took us down the road to Dunster Castle, filming another hugely successful event for Rohan before we shut down shop and headed out to India for September. Autumn was a slow start but suddenly got busy with a big production for Cotswold Outdoor, which just about brings us up to date! We’re in the process of finishing the films for Cotswold after almost two months of filming and editing and are looking forward to putting our feet up for a few days over Christmas! We’d like to take this opportunity to wish you all a very Merry Christmas and all the best for 2010, from the Snowline team.