Filming Cliff-Jumping Geese: On Location | Hostile Planet

The animals who are filmed for "Hostile Planet" have to survive in incredibly tough conditions. But they're adapted to it. The crew, on the other hand, that's a whole different ball game.

RENEE GODFREY: Making a series like "Hostile Planet" wasn't simple. We filmed on every continent on Earth with over 270 people on our cruise. And it took us over three years to make.

OK, might be worth turning your cameras on, gentlemen.

[animals screech]

TOM HUGH-JONES: Inevitably, if you're going to follow the animals that are having to survive in the most extreme corners of the planet, you have to go there too. And you get a slight taste of what their lives are like, and it's brutal.

MATEO WILLIS: Mountains are a unique environment. There are other places which are hotter, like deserts. And there are places which are colder, like the Arctic. Surprisingly, the greatest challenge in mountains is gravity. Because everything is an effort against gravity. Everything is trying to push you down.

All right, let's do this before any rocks fall.

Probably the thing that shocked and surprised me most were these little barnacle geese chicks in Greenland. They would walk to the edge of a cliff, and then they would throw themselves off, plummeting to the bottom. And then they would hit the bottom and stand up and walk away. And you just think, how does life survive something so extreme as falling hundreds of feet? I would be just shattered into pieces. And yet this tiny little gosling, you know, no bigger than a couple of inches, doesn't.

[birds chirping]

Another day in the office.

MATEO WILLIS: Filming the barnacle geese on those cliffs was probably the single trickiest thing to accomplish. We needed to get a shot where I wanted the camera over the top of that nest. We needed to see what those chicks were seeing. We needed to know what it felt to look over that edge for the first time. And the only way to do that was to get an 8 meter crane with a camera on the end swung out over that nest.

But of course, there was no area to put the crane. You were on this tiny ledge that was, say, no bigger than a couple of doormats. And so you had to balance the entire crane and all the weights on top of it, so you probably had 250 pounds of weights and an $80,000 camera on the other end of the crane.

And then you had to somehow swing it over and get it out there without everything giving way and collapsing around you. More speed and pan to the left. And that was probably the only time I've ever stopped and thought, is this really worth it for the shot? If it all goes wrong, is it worth it for one shot? And it was.

[birds whooping]

[music playing]