Intrepid camerawoman Frederique Olivier has traveled the world capturing stunning images of wildlife in its innate home ground . For the Discovery Channel ’s newfangled two - hour special , Penguins : Waddle All the manner , premier tonight at 9 p.m. , Olivier face a very tough shoot indeed : weather Antarctica ’s abrasive elements for just short of a year . Olivier tellsmental_flosshow she prepared for the marathon shoot , the atmospheric condition she faced , and the footage she ’s most gallant to have captured .
You pass more than 330 years in Antarctica forPenguins : Waddle All the Way . How did this particular shoot equate to some of the other shoots you ’ve done ? How challenging was it ?
Amongst extreme environmental shoots , I have taken part in several other polar expedition shoots , amongst which was another Emperor penguin shoot in 2005 for BBC’sPlanet Earthand many shoot in the SubAntarctic , which is extremely wet . Australian desert shoots were also pretty hard due to extreme heating , but that ’s likely because I spent too much meter in Antarctica .
Antarctic shoots are peculiarly thought-provoking because of the extreme frigidity and air current , and really humans are n’t speculate to be there . Because of this , behave standard wildlife camera work becomes even more of a challenge . Being immobile for many hours waiting for a 10 2d effect to encounter , not being able to move to warm up up your extremities , was in all likelihood the big challenge in the wintertime months , and risky for the consistency . As shortly as you pull out in order not to risk being freeze down , what you intended to take happens , as per normal . It was physically and mentally demanding but very rewarding when the images were in the can .
Doing it for over 300 days without much of a break was an even heavy mental challenge . With the Spycams , the shoot rely on buck as many hours of footage as possible for capture particular events . Although some Spycams can be will operate on their own , the bearing of a cameraperson is necessary at most time to at least monitor the settlement .
photograph by Frederique Olivier . Courtesy of the Discovery Channel .
How do you ready for a shoot like this one ?
The best way to develop is to gather the good train for the project . One has to be fully ego sufficient down there , so we prepare large quantities of sea ice refuge gear to live on the frozen ocean , and even larger quantities of down to make it in exceedingly low temperatures , which went down to -30 Celsius , without wind — i.e. , -64 Celsius with the windchill element of a 40 knot wind . The latter block your skin in a couple of minutes , so face masquerade party were a must .
I was lucky to have done a slew of employment in Antarctica and could apace re - adapt to working tv camera gear with thick baseball glove or wearing blizzard Google . custom-make personal equipment and prepare organisation were primal to the shoot .
This shoot was especially long so it was like a endurance contest . Living in an isolated place with limited contact to the outside world for so long forth from friends and family is a social / mental challenge in itself . The very limited amount of daylight during winter rmonths does not help and we were happy to see the 24-hour interval get longer after midwinter
This shoot was especial because it part relied on a large number of Spycams to collect the footage , which made it an even magnanimous challenge .
When did you go to Antarctica ? What was the longest reaching of time you spent there ?
We leave Hobart for Antarctica on February 18 , 2012 and returned on February 1 , 2013 , so yes , itwasmore than 330 days continuous . Some of it was spend move through on a small pealing ship—5 days either room — foil the sea ice to reach Dumont D’Urville post .
Antarctica is one of the remote places on Earth and can not be access with any ship or plane during the austral winter months , because of the darkness and the sea ice . Saturnia pavonia penguins breed during wintertime and there is no mode to conduct a shoot following them from their arrival on the ocean ice to the departure of their skirt without spending nearly a class down there .
As mentioned above , the challenge was as much in the duration of this shoot as in the expose conditions we worked in . Sometimes you come out of looking 10 years older !
An additional challenge is that the footage had to be classify and logged on site and was constrict and upload via satellite on a regular basis . This added a tremendous number of hours of electronic computer oeuvre at the end of already long and ambitious days .
Did you have a crew with you ?
We were a motion picture crew of two , myself as a camera and Martin Passingham as remote camera assistant . We were free-base either in a small hut a few km from Dumont D’Urville post or at the place itself , where we shared lifespan with 27 Gallic multitude . We were the only Australians at the base of operations , although I am Gallic also .
What variety of shaft were you essay to capture ? Did you have a compliments list , or was it just sort of “ head out there and see what you could get ” ?
There was n’t really a compliments list because one never know what special events are going to be catch with the Spycams . The key for such a shoot was to have the tv camera deploy for as many twenty-four hours and hours per days as possible .
However , Emperor key behavioural dig , such as Egg substitution and Chick exchange , were emphatically on the list and I was lucky to have witnessed them old age before so I knew what to target .
But we also , by chance , managed to capture some very special footage completely unexpectedly such as the egg laying of the precious nut by the female person — a world premiere .
Which shot was the hard to get , or which slam are you most proud of ?
shot that were extremely hard to get were the chick departure shots . It was never obvious where and when they were going to decide to jump , some waiting up to 48 time of day to make the grown step . A solitaire testing game … The chick or testis exchange shots of course are also very ambitious ones to achieve as the birds do waffle for hour prior to doing the business .
But the testis laying shot was probably my most especial shot because it was never bewitch before . And my favorite would be the underwater chick leaving nip , the combination of a challenge and a premiere .
How did your old experience filming birds , and take in Antarctica , help you ?
Having done an Emperor penguin shoot before certainly helped me a lot as I knew the birds , how sensitive they were to man and what to face for in damage of behavior , which is a immense reward . It was an unbelievable opportunity to get to winter with Emperor penguins a 2d time and to date , I trust I am the only soul who has done two Emperor winter shoots — a bit frantic ! Having done a winter shoot before helped better prepare for this one , although this second shoot was totally unlike from the first one .
Did you see any penguin demeanor that surprised you ?
The behaviour that mostly surprise us may have been the deficiency of defense response of the Emperors towards predators like giant petrels when their bird get attacked . Although they are a very boastful bird and can be fleet ( enough ) and menace with their braggy beak , they are very pacific and few of them showed any aggressive conduct , even towards a filthy predator .
When you ’re pip in Antarctica , what kind of equipment do you use ? Did you have to modify it specifically to shoot penguins ?
The equipment we used in Antarctica was partly standard camera equipment and a large proportion of Spycams , which are animatronics camera ; we totalled 16 of them .
The Spycams were of course disguised as Emperor penguins in various posture and used together with a large number of Egg cams . The main challenge for the development was to make Spycams that would be close enough to reality that the Emperor would be pull a fast one on to believe they were one of theirs or even show an stake as a potential married person or skirt … and it worked ! The mechanics and electronic behind those are complex and many had to be alter to comport the utmost common cold and still function fill with C .
