Discovery Channel treks to ends of the Earth
Discovery Channel's captivating new seven-part series "Frozen Planet" - narrated by Alec Baldwin and airing Sundays beginning March 18 - is another coproduction with the BBC, from the same filmmakers who brought us the astounding "Planet Earth" a few years back.
This time, they focus their lenses on Earth's polar regions, perhaps the most extreme environments in the world. And again, those lenses have been incredibly patient - producers and filmmakers spent 2,356 days in the field, 1½ years at sea, more than six months on the sea ice and 134 hours beneath that ice during the four years it took to put this project together. Working at both poles, they experienced winds up to 148 miles per hour and more than 400 days of temperatures below zero, with the lowest they recorded being minus 58. That's a lot of exposure for even the hardiest nature photographer.
"I'm an Australian," jokes "Frozen Planet" director and cinematographer Chadden Hunter at a recent press conference, "so the personal challenge of going to film and living these conditions is really extreme. I mean ... there's a bit of adrenaline there. It is the best job in the world, making something like (this). But you know, I tell you what - to come back and get a decent cappuccino and a hot shower is something that never loses its attraction."
"But after a few weeks," adds producer Vanessa Berlowitz, "you do start finding yourself thinking, 'I want to get back and see these incredible wildernesses.' And we're very, very lucky, because we get to go to places that most people can only dream of."
Many of the places and events Hunter, Berlowitz and their team have captured on film do indeed seem like something out of a dream: massive icebergs larger than the island of Manhattan; hauntingly colorful sunsets and auroras sweeping over frozen desert landscapes; terrain filled with beautiful ice formations sculpted by brutal winds; unique undersea worlds beneath the Antarctic ice - the last place one might expect anything to live, but where fragile-looking creatures thrive.
Obviously, food is at a premium at the poles, and many vignettes in the series deal with animals on the hunt for their next meal. Included among these (in the premiere episode, "To the Ends of the Earth") is never-before-filmed footage of killer whales in Antarctica working as a pack to create giant waves that sweep seals off ice floes into their waiting jaws.
"I think one of the joyous things for us in filming this is that you do go out into the field and come across stories which not only have you not gone out planning to film, but you never even heard of," Hunter says. "And so a few of the real special stories for us, like the orcas wave-washing the seals off, was something that scientists had talked about, but often you're going on scientist anecdotes. And, you know, actually getting the footage of those stories is the real challenge."
Berlowitz also points out unique footage (seen in the "Winter'' episode on April 1) of something called a brinicle - which they refer to as "the icy finger of death."
"It's an ice stalactite that grows down from the room of sea ice down to the seabed and kills everything in its path," she explains. "And the scientists that were working in American Antarctica had never really sort of seen how this formed, and so we were able to bring back these shots that we just obtained from under the ice and show it to these scientists who had been working there for 20, 30 years, some of them, and they were absolutely blown away."
Touching back on the dreamlike nature of some of these scenarios, Berlowitz recalls first seeing the footage of the brinicle and not even believing it herself. "The cameraman came and showed this to me, and I said, 'This is a joke. Come on, guys.' It's like something from Narnia or Harry Potter. And I said, 'You fiddled with this. Someone's done this in Photoshop. I don't believe it's real.' And we just stood there in absolute awe. ... We're constantly amazed at the material that the natural world gives to us."