Guido Wan Der Werve, Nummer Acht

In 2007, Dutch artist Guido van der Werve took a small crew to the frozen Gulf of Bothnia, off the coast of Finland, to film him trudging slowly across the ice in front of the Sampo, a 3,500 tonne icebreaker. Upon seeing the video, Nummer Acht: Everything is going to be alright, many have assumed it was green screen trickery, a digital manipulation. But as ABC Arts blogger Eve Sullivan discovered van der Werve goes to great lengths to create honest, sublime artwork.

SOURCE: http://www.abc.net.au/arts/blog/arts-desk/Guido-van-der-Werve-on-thin-ice-120814/default.htm

Guido van der Werve: A lot of people think I used some sort of telephoto effect. What we did actually is that we put the camera on top of a snow scooter on a steady device. The snow shooter moved at the same pace as me and the icebreaker.

Because we used a steady cam, we couldn't use a telephoto lens (shakes too much) so we used a lens which is equal to the eye. I was walking as close as the Captain [of the Sampo] would allow me to walk in front of the icebreaker (which was about 10 meters). If I got too close I got a signal that I should walk a bit faster.