FROZEN PLANET II BIG PICTURE


PRODUCTION


A DECADE HAS PASSED SINCE THE ORIGINAL FROZEN PLANET AIRED AND, IN THE SECOND SERIES, CLIMATE CHANGE HAS A STARRING ROLE. JON CREAMER REPORTS


DETAILS


Broadcaster: BBC One Produced by: Frozen Planet II is made by BBC Studios’ Natural History Unit, co- produced by BBC America, the Open University, Migu Video, ZDF and France Televisions. Series Producer: Elizabeth White, Executive Producer: Mark Brownlow Producers: Alex Lanchester, Rachel Scott, Orla Doherty, Jane Atkins, James Reed Commissioning Editor: Jack Bootle, Head of Commissioning, Specialist Factual at the BBC


then, not least the pace of climate change and also viewers’ willingness to engage with it. As Executive Producer, Mark Brownlow, says:


B


“Frozen Planet was a hugely popular series which followed a seasonal story of life in the polar regions. More than 10 years on, we wanted to revisit these regions of the planet – in part because they are the regions changing most quickly due to climate change. It felt that there would be new stories to tell and a chance to do a more contemporary portrait of frozen life in all its glory.” The series this time was designed to be “bigger


and broader” says Series Producer, Elizabeth White, exploring life in all of Earth’s cold ecosystems – not just the Arctic and the Antarctic, but also the high-altitude mountain peaks and plateaus. “This means there’s a greater variety of landscape and animal characters in this series, and we’re also able to dive deeper into the individual habitats themselves,” says White. Perhaps a bigger change


for contemporary natural history series is a greater focus on climate change, an issue that becomes particularly stark when showing habitats locked in ice. “These regions are changing fast, and in every episode, we tell a contemporary story, where climate change is as much a threat as starvation or predation,” says Brownlow. “In our final show we meet the scientists and local people studying what the changes in our Frozen Planet mean, not just for the wildlife and people who live here, but for the whole planet.” A decade’s worth of technological change has


BC Studios Natural History Unit’s original Frozen Planet series first aired back in 2011, but a lot has changed since


or logistically impossible such as filming killer whales in Antarctica or filming rare blue whales in the midst of the vast Southern Ocean,” says White. White also picks out the use of “a fleet of


drones that enabled the team to rapidly gain an aerial perspective of ice calving from Store glacier in Greenland. Watching the glacier continually, 24-hours a day for more than four weeks, the drones were kept ready to launch within minutes of activity starting, but each flight may mean first flying 1.5km across the ocean to reach the vast glacier in the first place. This is the first time drones have been used in such a way to capture a full calving sequence for television – previously this would have been done by helicopter, with greater risk and carbon footprint.” But alongside capturing crucial moment,


“WE WERE FORTUNATE TO


HAVE BEEN IN PRODUCTION FOR TWO YEARS AND DONE AROUND THREE QUARTERS


OF OUR FILMING BEFORE THE PANDEMIC HIT”


drones were also employed to track changes in the seasons. “GPS-programmed drones were used to fly very specific, repeated routes multiple times across seasons and even years to capture changes in the landscape over time such as permafrost slumping and reveal the changes between winter and summer on the sea ice,” says Brownlow. New angles were


also captured with


drones with High speed FPV (first person view) ‘racer’ drones “deployed in order to fly down mountains alongside avalanches for the very first time,” says Brownlow. 4K remote cameras were also used in ways


also happened since the original Frozen Planet, with the filming teams now able to deploy a range of advanced or completely new kit to capture behaviours and angles not possible before. “Drones were a crucial piece of filming


equipment for the team,” says White, “allowing filming both of landscape and an aerial view of animal behaviour in incredibly remote places.” Light-weight drones were used to give an aerial


perspective on animal behaviour in situations where other aerial filming, for example from helicopters, “would have been disturbing to wildlife


that weren’t possible with series one, particularly when capturing behaviour of notoriously private animals. “We’ve taken remote 4K camera work to new levels,” says White “telling stories of the rarest cats – Amur Leopards and Siberian tigers living secretive lives in the winter forests of Far East Russia. In the high peaks of China, the Frozen Peaks team used remote 4K camera traps to film wild Giant pandas as they roam the snow-covered forest, scent marking trees as they search for food and potential mates.” Timelapse cameras were also used across the


four years of production on glaciers throughout the world so that the team could document changes in ice. Locations included Svalbard, Antarctica and Greenland but, says White, “perhaps the most challenging were the cameras


Autumn 2022 televisual.com 31


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