YouTube-clip soldiers drafted in for C4 cyber-attack drama 'Blackout'

Andrew Gibbo, left, and David 'Dodge' Pentek, right

Two British soldiers who filmed themselves stuck in a lift and posted the clip on YouTube have become the unlikely stars of a television disaster movie filmed by a Bafta-winning director.

David “Dodge” Pentek, a Lance-Bombardier in the Royal Horse Artillery, and Andrew “Gibbo” Gibson, a Sergeant in the Queen’s Royal Hussars, documented their escape from an elevator, which jammed three stories up in a holiday complex in Hungary six years ago.

The clip, shot on Gibson’s small digital camera, was discovered on YouTube earlier this year by researchers from a television production company and has led to the pair being given parts in Blackout, a Channel 4 drama-documentary to be shown on Monday night about the effects of a cyber-attack on the national power grid.

The feature-length film, directed by Ben Chanan, combines “found footage” of real power-cut situations with pictures shot by actors using mobile phones.

Chanan told The Independent that he had decided to make greater use of the sequence after it made his son laugh when he was viewing clips. The film is Chanan’s first experience of “found footage directing”. He believes the genre has great potential for adding realism to storytelling.