How high-tech cold-weather gear revolutionized a nature documentary.

by Tyghe Trimble

Frozen Planet, the follow-up to BBC/Discovery’s 2006 television series Planet Earth, is one of the most ambitious nature documentaries ever made. The producers set out on a six-and-a-half-year journey to gather a portrait of Earth’s polar regions, says producer Mark Linfield. The result is a slew of filming firsts: one of the largest calving glaciers ever spotted; the first recording of a minke whale caught by a pod of killer whales; and five months embedded in an Adélie penguin colony, the longest such stay ever. To get the footage, the crew needed 22 boats (plus two icebreakers), 28 helicopters, 33 snowmobiles, and plenty of high-tech camera gear.

The biggest challenge was the weather — which included 35 days of blizzards, 148 mph winds, and 15 months of air temps below 5 degrees. Producers had customized camera cases built and tested in a walk-in freezer alongside frozen meat carcasses. They also used tiny cameras outfitted with HD-quality sensors, which go where cameramen cannot — like beneath a 10-foot-thick ice floe to record killer whales on a coordinated seal hunt, the first time this was captured on film.

New equipment was also created to film multiseason time lapses, like the transformation of an Arctic caterpillar, which takes 14 years to mature, or a frozen river’s violent springtime thaw. “In the old days we would sink a pole into the ground, shoot, come back, and blend the shots,” says Linfield. Now, a unique tripod computerized system lines everything up, allowing cameras to move while capturing the lapse. Still, the biggest challenge is ­going back to the same place, he says. “We’ll be 10 meters deep in snow one season, and the next there’s a river because the ice has melted, and the equipment’s been swept away.”