The application and what
happened next.
The original idea to apply came from my
girlfriend one Sunday evening mid 2003, after I had been telling the
television where everyone was going wrong. Nadia had suggested "If you think it's so
easy why don't you have a go?". I mentioned the idea to David who was
also a keen scrapheap fan, over a coffee in CERN restaurant 1, and he was all
over the idea. David looked for
the website, but found there was no applications, so he then spent the next 5
months religiously checking the site for the application forms. David and I knew
our strengths and weaknesses, and both of us are pretty useless where motors are
concerned, so we approached Jimmy who claims to know nothing about anything, but
is in fact a bit of a daemon where cars and motors are concerned. Jimmy was also
up for it. The application forms appeared on the Scrapheap Challenge website
early November 2003, and we had three weeks to fill in the forms and make the
application video.
We then sat down over coffee (again) to work out what we were going to be doing. The application video had to be two minutes explaining who we were and then three minutes where we had to build something. We discussed at length what we were going to build, we first thought about building a coke can cannon. Get a tube big enough to put a coke can part way down, gaffer tape a spark plug to one end, fill it with gas, and set it off. You can get a good 100 meters if you use enough gas and tubing. We then rejected this idea, as we thought a lot of peoples videos were going to be "Wow look how mad I am, look what we can do". We needed an idea, that was way off the main stream and would be a laugh. That was when Jimmy came up with the perpetual motion machine video, from an e-mail he'd received, about strapping toast to a cat and all that (see the video). We then had to come up with a team name, and we wanted something to increase our interest to the media company, about where we worked, etc and I then came up with the Up 'n Atoms team name, having discussed things to do with particle accelerators etc.
The video was filmed, burnt on to DVD, copied to video as well, and then sent away before the beginning of December deadline. David then saw on the website the closing date changed to mid January, at which point we thought maybe they hadn't received enough satisfactory videos. We heard nothing until mid February and then Jimmy got a very brief e-mail from one Naomi Carter, saying we'd been short listed. A week or so later she rang me up saying we were down to the last 15 on the strength of just our video, and that she wanted to come out to Geneva to meet us. She flew out in the morning, where we showed her the sights of CERN, the tunnels, and experimental areas, had a chat over coffee, in guess where, Rezzy 1 again, and she flew back lunch time. We then didn't hear anything for a week or so, and she then rang to say I would be getting a phone call from Hadrian, the technical guy, to see if we actually knew what we were talking about. The phone call lasted about 5 minutes and then 15 minutes later as I was clearing snow off my drive way, Naomi rang to say we were on.
She then organised for the director,
Dominic, and a cameraman to come out with her to film our intro shots, on 1st of
April. As it happened the whole day turned out to be an April Fool.
I came down with a severe chest infection, which laid me out for a couple of
weeks so I couldn't film my intro piece. It was eventually filmed the day
before the build day, hence you might spot some continuity errors, as Jimmy
and David were filmed in Geneva and the shots of the three of us were done in a
park near the scrap yard. The evening of the intro shoot, everyone else went out
for a meal, and a few drinks. After the meal they wandered down towards Lake
Geneva (Lac Léman) and somehow Dominic managed to walk in front of a car and
broke his foot. Of course all sort of aspersions have been made to the fact he
was drunk and looking the wrong way, but this he has flatly denied placing the
blame solely on the driver (who didn't stop).
For those of you who are reading this who
want to apply, just a couple of points. Make the video interesting. If it's just
you and your mates just sitting in front of a camera, "Hi my names Bob and we
should be on cos we are great" might not work, find an interesting angle, you
are trying to sell yourselves. Come up with something interesting for the video,
you've seen ours, but one team's video was "How to make an omelette with power
tools". Next point is you do need to know how to weld, have at least one
welder, but more the better. There were quite a few times where all four of us
we were welding or using the gas axe. Don't lie on the application form, it'll
show when you get in the yard. You might bullsh*t your way through, but when it
comes to build time and someone hands you a plasma cutter, make sure you know
what the hell your talking about. I heard of a team from a previous year, who
actually went on welding courses, and it did them a lot of good, they got to the
final.
Lastly don't be negative, apply if your interested, we applied, got on and when
we thought we had no chance.