Filming the Alaskan Wilds - Behind the Scenes | Life Below Zero
We are here to document the lives of people living in Alaska. The harsh reality is the environment we're up against; it makes it tough to do our job. They're working on Life Below Zero, and it can be very dangerous—guns here, cameras here—you never know what to expect. You see that? It's gonna be tough, but we're gonna get the shot. Every scenario we got to prepare for this. We're still smiling, we're having fun, still making Life Below Zero. Yeah, bring it on!
We are wrapping up our episode with Jesse, and he's just gonna be clearing out some trees. I think to make it interesting, we are gonna have a quick GoPro time-lapse set up. We are just trying to figure out the best way to cover because once you cover one or two trees, we want to show maybe a nice little time-lapse of Jesse cutting trees, which we've seen a lot on Life Below Zero. A lot of tree cuttings, so it's kind of unique to try to figure out maybe just how to do it a little different each time.
The idea of the time-lapse is not to interrupt the flow; it's a great way to tell a story of someone clearing a space. I filmed probably five years of people cutting down trees on Life Below Zero. We're always trying to think of just something different. At some point, I'll put the drone up, and we'll cut the trees; we'll put a GoPro on the saw. We'll do all that, so this is just a different way to capture a different look to it.
We're working outside all the time, and we covered a lot, but variety is important. You kind of give it, make it more dynamic, you know? You can see someone chainsaw three million times, but the more we can do with different angles, different camera placement, it's getting creative and doing our best to make it look different each episode. So, he's gonna be able to reach up to hear those branches. Maybe even if he cuts a little bit of this branch, but what has that look there? Yeah, there you go, nice! That's good!
Oh man, that's gonna look cool sped up. So now we'll have like two different time lapses of two sections of Boris because we have a master shot, and this will just be a nice cutaway when it's sped up—watching it cleared out and be able to cut to this magnificent view. What I did is we just got a high and wide, attached the GoPro onto a branch up here that we anticipate Jesse is going to cut down a couple other branches to clean off. So, we'll get like a little reveal with these branches.
The beauty of this is that we have another GoPro in the back. We have two time lapses that the editors can choose and pick from. It's gonna be tough, but we're gonna get the shot. Little extra effort goes a long way. It definitely takes a certain breed to film up here. Half the battle is the ingenuity and being innovative and creative.
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Filming with Jesse Holmes out here on his new piece of land, just trying to do a simple little move with the drone. I'm trying to fly it back in here and then do a nice move in through the trees, but this alder-y stuff got in my way. The typical thing of trying to fly a drone in the trees and looking at the screen and not knowing exactly where your drone might be. Yeah, one broken prop; the most valuable thing in this whole drone is the gimbal. The gimbal, it's very fragile, but that's fine. There we go!
Big integral part of our show right there. It gives a whole different element to the shot, to the angle showing Jesse walk around. It's one thing; we're showing an aerial shot or shoveling snow in a cool location. You're trying to showcase Alaska and how beautiful it is, and this is a key part to showing all that. So fixing is no big deal; the drone itself is going to be completely operable, and it's like today—no big deal, we're good to go.
You never know what to expect out here—from changing weather to equipment failure; we have to be ready for anything. So, we're gonna go out and find a game cam that I've set up a couple days ago. We're shooting a ratty, daring story with Jesse, but it is really important. It gives us a look into the life of the animal that we're about to catch because, you know, usually when we're shooting, we don't see these animals; we see it once we've caught it.
To see it in this natural environment is one of the most intimate ways you can interact with an animal and get the shot at the same time. It gives us another layer in any hunting story—whether it's caribou, moose, bear, whatever. To get these shots gives us that and another look into that animal's life.
Just by snowmobiling up here, you can tell there's a lot of fresh snow, a lot of new snow from last night—about three inches. All right, so we've made it to one of the first spots. The new snow is definitely gonna make it a little more of a challenge to find the skin cam. I'm a little worried that the lens is covered, so I'm just gonna have to start searching and see.
So when I set the game cam up originally, it was uncovered but kind of hidden at the same time, so animals can look. There's been a lot of recent wind loading, which means the wind has been pushing the snow into new areas, and on top of that, it snowed about three and a half inches the other night. So, I'm kind of thinking the camera's gonna be buried. We have to do some digging.
Unfortunately, all the former rabbit tracks are covered up—nothing's going through here. So that kind of makes me think we might not see something or that the whole camera's covered up. The wind would have triggered the center of the camera, so we could have a lot of shots of just snow falling and no rabbits. So, I'm hoping that the lens is uncovered and that we have at least a couple shots with some rabbit. I might have just a little bit; it's in this area. I'm gonna start looking because if we can't see it already... Oh yeah! That can all cover that is too. Maybe next time market—glad we found this! I get to keep my job now; it's pretty lucky.
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