We're Lizzie and Kalyani, students at Imperial College London studying Science Media Production. As a part of our course, we're required to make films and we chose to do ours on the oldest extreme sport in the world: freediving.
We're making a film demonstrating the resilience of humans and our inner desire to explore and push our bodies to the limits. How can the mind be powerful enough to override our most basic instinct to breathe?
Filmed in Malta, we will be spending time with instructors and students to find out what it takes to become a freediver and how and why people do it. We're using our filming and scuba skills to make a film that explores freediving as much underwater as above. It'll be a unique insight into the minds and bodies of the people who are almost aquatic super-humans. It'll be an exploration into discipline, hardwork, determination and the unknown.
We both have a few years of scuba experience - Lizzie being a fully qualified divemaster and Kalyani an experienced photogapher (www.kalyanilodhia.com). Both of us have scientific backgrounds in biology related fields, and this along with our creativity will prove to be a great match for the film. Between us, we have created several films during our course but this will be our most ambitious yet!
The idea started when Lizzie watched a video of a freediver breaking a world record on YouTube and wondered about what type of person it takes to complete that feat. It inspired us to want to journey to one of the best freediving locations in the world to find out. We're hoping to take the film to film festivals and competitions and exhibit the freediving world and culture.
The money will go towards flights, accommodation, food and scuba gear hire. As students, we're very low on money and the budget from university doesn't cover the costs. It would be amazing if we could get the opportunity to make this film and show the world of freediving.
We'd love to thank all of our backers on Twitter. For backers who pledge £10, we'll send a DVD copy of the film. Backers who pledge £20 will also recieve credits in the film. For backers who pledge £30 will recieve all of that and a print of their choice from www.kalyanilodhia.com or a piece of artwork from Lizzie Riach.
Thank you all so much!