Alastair Fothergill Frozen Planet

Alastair Fothergill was the executive producer of BBC's documentary Frozen Planet last year, aswell as Blue Planet in 2001, and Planet Earth in 2006. The viewers and I included, were taken on a magical journey through the North and South Pole narrated by Sir David Attenborough. I was so inspired by the jaw dropping series i've had to go research on the creation of the program and how it was filmed.

I've researched part of this interview with Alastair by Daisy Cropper, Issue 123, October 2011.

It took Fothergill and his team 4 years dating back to 2007 to make Frozen Planet, which has happened to be released exactly 100 years after Scott and Amundsen, the first humans to reach the South Pole.

"When we started there were lots of reports about how the Polar regions were changing and we saw that. There is no doubt that, I’m not saying this is the last chance to see them, but I don’t think anyone will raise the funds that we have raised to work in the Polar regions at this high quality again for a very, very long time. And when they do, the Arctic in particular, will have changed."

There are so many things to consider when working on a large scale project that we as humans no very little about, especially safety. In todays world it's all about capturing the best images and showing off the best quality possible. The world of media demands the best of the best and it takes a vast amount of experience, and skill to produce this which makes a young beginning film maker and producer so intimidated. 

"It takes about a year of really good research, which involves talking to every scientist on the planet, trying to find really new stories. In the polar regions, where the scenery is amazing and the animal spectacles extraordinary, the variety of species in the polar regions is effectively limited, so when we say 'let’s find new behaviour, let’s show people new things,' you really are pushing the boundaries further than people have ever done before and you really do a lot of work just to be sure about that.

Also, we work on lots of technical developments. To give you an example, when we made Planet Earth, we developed a special camera that could shoot film from a helicopter and still stabilise a very powerful lens. This was significant because it allowed us, for the very first time, to film complete behavioural experiences from the air.

Previously, you couldn’t do that – to fly low enough to get a close up you’d frighten the animals.

One of the big technological breakthroughs with Frozen Planet was to take this idea and mount it onto a boat. This was relevant because we knew that a lot of the seas in the southern oceans and in the Arctic are very rough and to film some of the behaviour and use a long lens we had to find a way to stabilise that lens on a ship rather than on a helicopter. So a good year of preparation is needed."

"Another thing is, I always go for an absolute minimum of two years (and ideally three years), of filming. That’s because you need to experience each season twice – two Arctic summers, two Antarctic summers. Often we’ll try a sequence and we’ll get half of it and then we’ll go back. The reason for that is we want to get every angle – to get the whole story.

It very quickly ends up as being five years in total."

To become successful boundaries and risks are taken, as well as getting the best out of your team by demanding the extreme yet also being patient. A project of this scale can't be done over night.

"We asked ourselves the question: why was it so popular? I think it was a number of things: it felt epic. It felt as though you were sitting and being taken on a journey that you could never pay for in your life.

The programme showed you the best and most spectacular places on the planet that you wouldn't necessarily see on your own and we’ve definitely done this again in Frozen Planet. To be honest, that’s one of the reasons I wanted to make Frozen Planet – most people will never go to the Polar regions. Of course, there is tourism to the Polar regions now but it’s still a very, very small percentage of the public and these programmes will show them things they wouldn't have seen otherwise.

The second thing that worked for Planet Earth was the cinematic  storytelling; using music, using storyboards. We had numerous stories where people got very emotionally engaged in the character. A classic example of this in Planet Earth was the story of the baby elephant who got lost in a sand storm in the desert.

In Frozen Planet there is another extraordinary sequence where killer whales cooperate to wash seals off an ice flow. That was an eight-week shoot, with two cameramen working around the clock, they actually filmed 27 encounters and it was edited down to just that one encounter. If you were to storyboard it like a director every single shot and angle you’ve got would be there.

The other thing was just not compromising. Remaining intelligent – having a really good story and not being frightened to tell hard stories. And cutting shots slowly – if you took the average 50 minute wildlife film now there would probably be over 500 cuts, maybe as many as 800 cuts. Planet Earth only had 300-350 – Frozen Planet is similar. We're saying that if the images are really beautiful have the confidence to run them long. Now, so much television is bam, bam, bam; we’re just saying no: this is really beautiful so just look at it and enjoy it. I think that we stand out as a different cinematic experience and I think people are desperate for different experiences."

Fothergill made his first feature film during his time he was at university, for a BBC competition,  shortly after he joined the BBC Natural History Unit. This just goes to show when you put the effort into something your very passionate about, the possibilities are endless and there are great results out there. I highly recommend anyone who hasn't seen Frozen Planet to go and see it.