Partially I’m wondering the physical aspect of how they fit in these places or get close enough to dangerous situations to film them; and partially I’m wondering how they seem to be in the right place at the right time to catch things like a dead whale sinking down into the ocean?
What are the odds they’d be there to capture that and how much time do they spend waiting for these types of things?
In: Technology
some of the series at the end do a brief section about how they go about capturing the footage that they showed. They make their own custom rigs with various types of cameras to help them get shots. They leave camera ‘traps’ in places and hope to get lucky with them. They wander around following research or local guides to help increase their chances of being in the right place at the right time. So a lot of it is somewhat down to luck. They will know from research roughly where to go for certain things, but being able to capture specific things is down to luck on whether they get any usable footage in the days they allocated at a site. Depending on what they are looking to film at any given site, the time they allocate will differ.
An incredible amount of time and effort goes into programmes like Planet Earth. Research will begin over a year before filming dates are even considered. Researchers and producers on the film team will reach out and find leading scientific researchers who have likely been observing and researching a specific species and/or behaviour for years.
The researchers they find can then suggest the best places and times to film the species and behaviour they want to see.
The crew then spend months or even years on location filming long hours, every single day.
Often when you see a sequence on a wildlife TV show (let’s say a cheetah chasing a gazelle), it’s not just one chase. It will be shots of multiple chases that took place over days, weeks or months and may not even be the same cheetah. There are exceptions to this, but usually, it’s just physically impossible to film a sequence like that from multiple angles in the ways that produce the compelling sequences we are used to seeing on these shows. This is becoming less common as time goes on though, as technology is making it more and more possible to cover natural events more completely.
The odds of capturing the events that they do are fairly high as they film for so long, in the best places in the world at the best times as recommended by the worlds leading experts on the species. Some of it does just come down to luck, but honestly, it’s a hell of a lot of hard work from a lot of people.
As for the technical how, there’s a lot of technological innovation that the wildlife film-making industry produces trying to work out new and interesting ways to film in unusual environments. There are camera gimbals costing half a million, based on missile technology that are so accurate that you can have the camera mounted on a vehicle travelling 60mph over rough ground hundreds of feet away from an animal running full speed the other direction and tracks it perfectly in shot, filling the frame, completely vibration free. There are lens modifications that allow cameras to film macro scenes (very small, like ant sequences) without looking like they are just zoomed in on, and very realistic animations with cameras in the eyes for getting closer to wildlife without disturbing them.
Source: I’m a documentary camera and drone operator who has worked on shows for the BBC, BBC NHU, Discovery, PBS, NatGeo, C4, etc.
**Tl;Dr:** Lots of hard work, for a long time, cooperating with world leading experts in the species they are filming, using groundbreaking innovative camera technology specifically designed for their unique purposes.
Not an ELI5 answer but you might be interested in reading this [ama](https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/aqityx/i_am_lindsay_mccrae_a_cameraman_who_spent_11/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app).
By a guy that lived in Antarctica filming emperor penguins for 11 months for a BBC show.
I want to see the setup that caught all of the “iguana running through the snake pit” scene
Many shots are completely fabricated on sets with recreated environments and creatures raised in captivity, or transplanted from the wild.
This is especially true with the scenes with things like ants.
The BBC has a documentary called Life In The Undergrowth that shows the life of insects if we were viewing it at their level. I think they show how it’s done. A must see
A lot of the insect footage is filmed on “sets” indoors. Set up a terrarium, drop in the bugs, and there you go. It’s a bit more difficult to get correct lighting for small scale stuff.
Underground stuff (ant hills, dens, etc …) are artificially made with a glass barrier. It can be constructed in a way to get the best possible shots.
They also use high end expensive cameras with long battery lives so they can leave them in the field for weeks at a time
The recent series “our planet” had an extra hour long episode in which they explained how they got footage of a very rare tiger. Members of the team had to take turns living in a small hut near where they had found evidence of tigers being in that area (paw prints, poo etc)
They stayed in that hut all by themselves for a week or more, not leaving at all and waited for the Tigers to pass by.
The most amazing shots though were captured with trap cams. Any movement would turn on the camera and start filming.
When they were filming Orangutan, they had to treck through the forest following them. 1 team member carried the huge camera, another carried the huge tripod, then when they stopped they had to assemble it all and try and film the orangutans before they moved again. Which they did, alot.
Eventually after much perseverance they managed to film the amazing moment an orangutan broke open a dead tree containing an ants nest and then used a stick to poke inside to get to the ants.
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