Photograph by CynthiaOne thousand and five hundred miles of driving in the Gobi Desert, hundreds of miles of walking, 35 days of searching and one fight – the Planet Earth film crew was still not able to get a single minute of footage it had planned.
This was the crew’s field production trip to film the wild Bactrian camels, a critically endangered animal with a population of less than 1,000 on the earth, according to the recent assessment by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources. However, these film characters were so uncooperative that they made the crew constantly experience two unpleasant words: difficulty and frustration.
The first word was never told by any of the crew members verbally in the documentary’s video dairy – it was shown.
Without either voiceover or on-camera commentary, long shots of the endless Gobi Desert, the crew members wondering around the wild land by car and foot and one cameraman suddenly falling over when he got his trapped car out of snow, not only set the scene, but told all to the audiences in front of television at their cozy homes.
Small logistics that seemed too unimportant to be noticed, such as a can of sardine and a hard loaf of bread, now became strong pieces of evidence to illustrate what “difficulty” really meant, when the crew members competed with each other to see who could warm up their breakfast first on a bonfire on a minus 20 C-day.
Frustration was another word that not only linked the various details of the video dairy but also gradually intensified the drama, as the crew’s search produced no result.
First, it came with a strange and awkward fight, as described by the crew’s researcher Tom Clarke, in a low and hesitating voice. This unrest next turned to a strong sense of uncertainty when the producer Huw Cordey asked the cameraman Henry Mix if he could do his best with the latter answering: “I don’t know.” The reality then became rather upsetting after another cameraman had walked hundreds of miles, carrying heavy equipment in his back.
His line “I didn’t get any footage in the past a few days” followed by a deep sigh pushed the story to a climax. Meanwhile, the seemingly simple subtitles describing time lapses – day 15, day 32 and day 35 – silently but powerfully stimulated the tension.
But suddenly, on day 36, a favorable turn occurred that the crew was able to get closer to their subjects. The extremely clear and closed images and sounds they got of the camels performing mating rituals and eating snow formed a sharp contrast to the faraway and blurred shots of the camels running away the crew got earlier. This also showcased the staff’s hard work finally paid off and the story resolved with a satisfactory ending.
This was the crew’s field production trip to film the wild Bactrian camels, a critically endangered animal with a population of less than 1,000 on the earth, according to the recent assessment by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources. However, these film characters were so uncooperative that they made the crew constantly experience two unpleasant words: difficulty and frustration.
The first word was never told by any of the crew members verbally in the documentary’s video dairy – it was shown.
Without either voiceover or on-camera commentary, long shots of the endless Gobi Desert, the crew members wondering around the wild land by car and foot and one cameraman suddenly falling over when he got his trapped car out of snow, not only set the scene, but told all to the audiences in front of television at their cozy homes.
Small logistics that seemed too unimportant to be noticed, such as a can of sardine and a hard loaf of bread, now became strong pieces of evidence to illustrate what “difficulty” really meant, when the crew members competed with each other to see who could warm up their breakfast first on a bonfire on a minus 20 C-day.
Frustration was another word that not only linked the various details of the video dairy but also gradually intensified the drama, as the crew’s search produced no result.
First, it came with a strange and awkward fight, as described by the crew’s researcher Tom Clarke, in a low and hesitating voice. This unrest next turned to a strong sense of uncertainty when the producer Huw Cordey asked the cameraman Henry Mix if he could do his best with the latter answering: “I don’t know.” The reality then became rather upsetting after another cameraman had walked hundreds of miles, carrying heavy equipment in his back.
His line “I didn’t get any footage in the past a few days” followed by a deep sigh pushed the story to a climax. Meanwhile, the seemingly simple subtitles describing time lapses – day 15, day 32 and day 35 – silently but powerfully stimulated the tension.
But suddenly, on day 36, a favorable turn occurred that the crew was able to get closer to their subjects. The extremely clear and closed images and sounds they got of the camels performing mating rituals and eating snow formed a sharp contrast to the faraway and blurred shots of the camels running away the crew got earlier. This also showcased the staff’s hard work finally paid off and the story resolved with a satisfactory ending.
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