Some people may have an abandoned winter in New Brunswick fear, but a Fredericton filmmaker used the frozen landscape as inspiration for his latest publication.
“My grandparents live in the Baie des chalors in Bathurst, and so I visited them every year when we were there in winter when we were there in winter, I looked that the bay was frozen,” said filmmaker Alex Vietinghoff.
“And it would look that way, I think, as far as the eye desert or desert of ice and snow can see.”
This icy wasteland made the perfect short film from Vietinghoff perfect TundraThis is on CBC -Delstein.
The 16-minute film takes place in 2053 and follows Sarah, played by Frederictons Annick Blizzard, who lives in a post-apocalyptic world in which the earth is frozen. Her mother, whom she raised in this world, has recently died and Sarah has to survive the conditions alone.
The film with Fredericton actors Blizzard and John Ball was nominated for the International Film Festival Circuit and received several awards.
Vietinghoff, whose career includes work in marketing and journalism, including a stay at CBC News, wrote, staged, turned and edited.
He said there were many hats to wear, but a supportive crew was the key to success.
The process of creating Tundra started a few years ago. Vietinghoff wrote a rough design of a script and put it on his Google Drive for a few years.
When a scholarship opted through the New Brunswick Film Co-OP, he thought it was a way to get the ball rolling.
With a completely new line -up and crew in New Brunswick, the film was also shot in several places in the province.
“Fortunately for me there are many abandoned buildings and structures in New Brunswick, and I always thought that it looked really cool,” said Vietinghoff.
For example, the Red Head Battery in Saint John serves as the outsider of Sarah's bunker.
And the old Schlumpfstein mill in Bathurst can be seen in many shots of the film. Vietinghoff said he was glad that he recorded the old silos of the mill, which are now being demolished because his film can now serve as a recording of their existence.
After Vietinghoff grew up and had a lot of imagination and science fiction, he always thought that the structures looked impressive but at the same time interesting.
“The fact that there have been graffiti for years and the weather broke away … it is like a character,” he said.
“It just helps with the world education aspect.”