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and Runaway should be ready for release by Christmas.” 47 (Having spent many years
establishing Pacific Films as an independent company, John O’Shea would have been
irked by the reference to the “Film Unit” which most readers would have associated
with the National Film Unit.) The story explained that the crew “have been working
mainly on the Franz Joseph Glacier whenever weather permitted, at a site 9000ft up
the face. The 12 members of the unit are developing into hardened climbers,
scrambling over crevasses with 30lb loads.” 48 The article further informed its readers
that “the four girls [are] as tough as the men,” 49 and mentioned another difficulty of
working on the face of the glacier: “One can hardly imagine anything more
exasperating than continuity work day after day on a glacier which is imperceptibly
moving and changing all the time.” 50 Interestingly enough, O’Shea recalled that
shooting the scenes on the ice was not as difficult as might be imagined, and not
“quite as onerous as the scenes at the lake. Because we went there at the normal time
we were not so dependent upon the sky and the weather.” 51
Plate 22: Tony Williams in front of the plane shooting the walls of ice