Rockhopper Penguins, Up Close: On Location | Hostile Planet
Ever wondered how wildlife crews managed to capture the perfect shot right in the heart of the action? Check out the behind the scenes to see the great lengths that the crew went to to film "Hostile Planet."
MATT RICHARDS: Rock copper penguins live in cold, quiet, often brutal conditions. It's a pretty tough location to get to. It's very remote. It's quite near Antarctica. We left about a month, so it was a long trip. And so we really got to spend a lot of time with those penguins.
ANTHONY PYPER: The best thing for us is to be noticed by the species we're filming and get them completely used to us being there so we're just part of the furniture.
MATT RICHARDS: We were filming where the penguins were coming onto shore; essentially it was a sort of boulder field. It's covered in a thin film of guano, which is fine when it's dry, but the second you get any moisture, it essentially becomes like walking on ice.
PETE CAYLISS: It's sunset here on New Islands in the Falklands, and I've just been waiting for penguins to return from the sea. The bit I'm actually trying to film at the moment is where they explode from the water onto the dry land. And to do this, I'm using a high-speed filming rig. I want to time it exactly right. And you get barely any warning at all. [chirping]
MATT RICHARDS: What's on the agenda today? Today we are taking the giant homemade crane right down to the penguins. It's just what we call a pole cam, but a sort of enormous version of that. Really, the whole point of the crane is to have a camera at the end and us as far as possible. So here's the business end of the crane. So far it looks good, so we'll give it a go. [music playing]
Ultimately, we were trying to capture how difficult it was for a penguin to feed its chicks. We wanted to see how they coped in really hostile conditions. And we got lucky because we got the biggest storm in the Falklands that they'd had for 30 years. It was pretty scary, actually. So the storm has kicked in, and the penguins are still coming in. Those 80 mile an hour winds, the waves were getting bigger.
Bit too windy for the drone? It's a bit windy. We didn't know how far these waves were going to come up the shore. We were playing this fine gambling game where you definitely wanted to be safe, but you wanted to try and get that immersive feel of what it's like to be a penguin coming in a storm. The thing that really stands out is how well these animals can cope with some of the most hostile conditions you can imagine. Every time you come back from a shift, you have fresh admiration for these amazing animals. [music playing]