Meet the filmmaker, Marius Anderson Director of 40 BELOW: THE TOUGHEST RACE IN THE WORLD.
Filmmaker Bio:
Emmy nominated filmmaker Marius Anderson was born in Germany, met his wife in Sweden and moved to her hometown of Duluth, MN. His work as a cinematographer, producer and editor has been featured on Amazon Originals, PBS, CNN, The Athletic, DW-TV (German TV), SRF (Swiss TV), ARTE (France/Germany). Marius was recently the co-director and cinematographer for the PBS North (WDSE) documentary Iron Opera. His debut independent documentary feature is 40 Below: The Toughest Race in the World.
DIRECTOR’S Q&A – MARIUS ANDERSON
Why did you make this film [40 Below]?
One of things that appealed to me was the quirkiness of this race. Unlike the big Iron Man races, there are no big sponsors, but there are trumpets (you’ll see in the film). There are lots of local volunteers who don’t mind the temps and like coming out to help. Of course, the temperature was going to be a challenge, but I also wanted to see if I could handle it as well as the athletes (hint: it was easier for me, but it was still hard).
How long did it take to make the film? From concept to finish.
I started filming in 2019 and we just finished post-production in 2023.
What were some of the challenges in making this film?
Frostbite: Frostbite is an underlying concern for the race participants, and it was the same for me! It got so cold filming the race during the Polar Vortex that I ended up with frostbite in an exposed area of skin under my right eye. There were times that my fingers were slowly feeling
numb from the cold and I wondered if they, too, were at risk for getting frostbitten. As a filmmaker and cameraman, there are often moments during filming when you realize “this could be a magic moment for the documentary,” but even with good professional gloves it was not possible to operate my camera as quickly as I am used to when I am not filming in -40 degree temperatures. But I knew all of these moments only happen once, so I just kept going. At times I felt “in the zone” and would just take my gloves of without thinking about it to get the perfect shots. Possibly the adrenaline rush kept me from momentarily feeling the actual cold temperatures. Only after I stopped recording would I realize how freezing cold my fully exposed fingers and hands had gotten. I remember several instances where I ran back to the car, which we had to always keep running for safety purposes, (you don’t want a dead car battery at -40 temps), and I would jump into the car, turn the heat and the fan to full blast and hold my fingers very close to the air vents for about 10 minutes. During those minutes I would sometimes ask myself “why exactly am I doing this? Nobody asked you to do this!” Similar to the racers of the Arrowhead 135, when I set out a goal and start doing something, I don’t quit until I am done!
CARS GETTING STUCK: Another story. Early in the race, the car of our 2nd unit got stuck in snow in the middle of nowhere. They called me and my driver took our car to go try pull them out and also got stuck. Because of that I was “stuck” at Gateway (Checkpoint 1) which actually worked for the best for filming the story. It worked for the best that I didn’t have a car for several hours and was able to film so much at Gateway. Luckily some friendly locals pulled both our cars out and we could all continue.
SLEEP: We did not sleep much both nights, maybe a few hours total. I do remember sleeping in a rental cabin on Elephant Lake (halfway point) for one night for a few short hours when my friend and driver John woke me up after what felt like a brief rest and he said “I checked online, it seems like Leah is about to finish, we have to leave right now.” So, I grabbed my camera, sped to the finish line and arrived there just before Leah finished early in the morning.
What were the successes that you had in making this film?
I think the success of making this film is that I survived the filming without hallucinating.
Was there something special technically that you utilized in making this film?
The cameras we used were considered “weather sealed.” Compared to a normal shoot, we could not constantly swap lenses or change other parts of our gear. Once the camera rig was set ready to shoot all we changed was the batteries and SD cards. At times I wondered if this is what filming on Mount Everest would be like! We also had to keep batteries in inner chest pockets close to our body heat to prevent them from draining too quickly.
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