It was filmed one afternoon at my place of work, Kinross Curling Rink, while two of my colleagues played in the Grand Final of our little one-day tournament (following a long pre-Christmas maintenance week).
The full video required about 2 weeks for all the voice recording, graphic designing, editing etc, which is a lot more time than I originally planned to spend on it, but I think the end result was well worth it.
If you don't follow the sport of curling, you will likely have no idea what is going on! So here's a little guide to help:
- There are two players, who will both use a cue (stick thing) to propel heavy rocks down a sheet of ice towards a target at the far end of the ice (similar to shuffleboard, or vaguely like golf).
- Alternating after every stone, both players will throw a total of 8 stones each, before any points are scored.
- Points can only be scored by having stones in the round target (AKA: the House) at the far end of the ice.
- Only one player can score at a time, and they will get one point for each of their stones that sit closer to the centre of the House than their opponent's stones (therefore a player could potentially score anything between 0-8 at a time).
- In this competition, the Grand Final is being played to a distance of 2 Ends, meaning that they will throw all the stones down the ice once and count the score from that End; then they will throw all the stones back up to a House at the side of ice they started from, and count the score again for that second End: Whichever player has scored the most points will win the overall game.
- In the case of a tie, both players will do a Draw Shot Challenge to decide the winner, whereby each player will throw only 1 stone (down the ice to the far House), while aiming for it stop as close to the centre of the House as possible. The smallest distance from the centre wins.
This guide is specific for our tournament only - regular curling is played for about 2 hours (about 8 ends of play), and the cue/stick is only used as an aid for players with knee or back problems... For an idea of what regular/professional curling looks like, watch this short video clip (don't let the amazing shot fool you into thinking it's an easy game!):
