“Tree-m Work” GeoBeeps (South Africa)

──What inspired you to create this film for GIFF 2025?

I never would have thought that one day I'd have my own work featured one day!

In 2019, I became friends with a woman in Cape Town, South Africa (I live in Pietermaritzburg, on the opposite side of the country) on an international Facebook group for speech therapists. We decided to meet in person, and I flew to Cape Town to make it happen. I introduced her to geocaching and she was as hooked as I was. Since then, we have either visited each other for geocaching outings in our local areas, or we have met up in a city neither of us live in to get some caches there.

In April 2021, just after lockdown restrictions eased, we met up in Johannesburg to spend the week geocaching. We had a lot of fun, and found some excellent caches, but one stood out in our memories - the one we lovingly labelled Eighty Rand and a Rope.

We got to the location and spotted the cache - a red bison tube high up in the tree. Completely out of reach. My car was too small to hire a ladder. And all we had on us was Eighty Rand, a brand new length of rope, and no ideas. While driving around, I spotted a tree feller truck parked on the side of the road, with a very long ladder on the back. We stopped and chatted to the guy, and we offered him the rope and the eighty rand in cash that we had on us to come to GZ and get the cache down for us. The team of 3 men were very confused when we asked them to unscrew the bison tube, hand it to us to sign the paper, then replace it as found.

The story just stuck with us, and one night, just after GIFF 2025 was announced, I had the idea of using this story for a film. I can't draw, and I don't have the skill or equipment for something requiring acting, but both of us have been cross-stitchers for years and so I figured we could use the one medium we were comfortable with.

──How many people worked on your film, and how long did the production take?
There were 2 of us who did most of the work. We had some people help us with stitching some of the trees and 2 of my colleagues at work helped me with recording some of the sound effects.

We started working on it on 9 April, and managed to finish the stitching around 19 July, and then I needed to take the photos and do the video compilation. In total, it took about 4 months.

──What was the most memorable or challenging part of making your film?
Cross stitching is a notoriously slow hobby. I also had zero animation experience, so I wasn't sure whether all the work would result in something that looked like the movements it was meant to portray.

We had to start working with very little planning because of the tight deadline, so we had to adapt quite a lot as we went along.

By far the most challenging part was getting it all done on time - we were both stitching in every free moment. My frames went with me on road trips, and I stitched while waiting for food at restaurants, and during my lunch break at work. I was so sick of stitching trees by the end!

──Is there a moment in your film that you hope geocachers around the world will notice or appreciate?
This was such an ambitious project! We didn't know what we were doing, and now that we've finished, there is a lot I would do differently to get a smoother, more consistent end result. So it's not perfect, but there is so much love and determination in this film. The final product consisted of 255 individually stitched frames!

I also added in the hadedas (the birds at the beginning) as a nod to anyone familiar with South Africa. They flew over while I was recording door closing sounds, and I decided to add them in because they are such an iconic sound for South Africans!

──Please share a message for geocachers in Japan.
It's amazing to see how far this hobby has spread across the world. I hope that one day I'll get to add a smiley or two to Japan on my geocaching map. Thanks for the community!

出演：GeoBeeps、tonitta2199、Jin Kakino