How are wild and sometimes dangerous animals in documentaries filmed so close and at so many different angles without noticing the camera operator?
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they use really giant ass cameras for distance
[https://static.boredpanda.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/cute-animal-photography-edwin-kats-14.jpg](https://static.boredpanda.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/cute-animal-photography-edwin-kats-14.jpg)
I would suspect that these days a lot of the cameras are set up close to the critter’s location and remotely operated.
lots of different ways of doing.
1. So really long lenses is one reason – the photographers are not near the animals and can zoom in close. They can also utilise hides (Like camouflaged huts) or ghilli suits or whatever.
2. Camera traps are another method – just hide cameras everywhere and only have them activate when there’s movement, don’t need a camera man stakes out for days then.
3. Oddly enough, befriending the animals is also an option. Planet Earth II had the film crew integrate into a troop of monkeys.
4. Shooting animals in captivity is also an option – portions of Blue Planet were shot in a aquarium.
5. This is perhaps the most surprising one – it’s not real! All the different shots of animals at different angles telling a vivid story of fight and flight – is very very often the animal on different days edited in such a way to tell a good story (not even always the same animal) and capture all of the behaviours that need to be showcased. So if there’s a lot of cuts in a wildlife sequence theres a pretty good chance it’s not all shot at the same time.
The photographers use really long telephoto lenses. If you ever see photos of the photographers they have lenses that are a foot long. So they really aren’t that close to the animals. They get the angles by just quietly moving around or working in teams.
I used to think all the sound effects were real and it absolutely amazed me that they could get such awesome sound from things like ants and spiders. Little did I know basically all sound in movies besides the dialog is fake and made in a studio by people called Foley artists. Theres a great documentary about it that shows the Foley artist working on “A Quiet Place”, these people are so damn creative and such amazing artists.
Did someone watch that Netflix documentary about night animals?
An insanely long zoom lens on camera. a 200-600mm f4.5-6.3 or 600mm f4 more specifically with possibly an APSC camera body which amplifies that range by 1.5x. Combined possibly with a 2x extender giving a possible zoom range of 600-1800mm.
I assume they just edit out the parts where water drips or snow fall on the lenses.
The crews who film this are amazing. Any behind the scenes clips are fascinating when they show them.
[like this](https://imgur.com/gallery/vNPOQ) and [this](https://www.google.com/search?q=how+national+geographic+photographers&oq=how+national+ge&aqs=chrome.3.69i57j0l3.9497j0j7&client=ms-android-tmus-us-revc&sourceid=chrome-mobile&ie=UTF-8#imgrc=tsWVaXwqOrhkPM:)
People keep saying “long lenses” but that is not always the case.
A lot of times photographers takes weeks to take a shot that you see in a documentary for 20 seconds.
How they do it to animals that afraid of people, is make them get familiar with the camera person.
Meaning that person will just be around their habitat, basically doing nothing, not trying to interact with them, not trying to get close to their home.
Over time they get used to the fact that the person is there, he or she are harmless, and over time will start moving close to them, be more curious, and that will give them more chance to take photos.
And as the animals get familiar and more comfortable, they will ignore the person even if they run along side the animal.
That is how you get those photos.
Shooting a white fox for planet earth, the camera man was just around the fox’s habitat for over a couple of months until the fox allowed him to move closer, and the fox was curious about the person.
The couple of minutes of segment they did, took months to make and they almost gave up.
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