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
It takes a lot of luck and patience. It can take years to capture one scene. In Blue Planet II, the film crew traveled to French Polynesia to film groupers spawning. That event happens for less than an hour every year. They completely missed the spawning the first year, despite all the planning and preparation they did. They had to leave and come back the next year to film it.
It takes hundreds, if not thousands, of hours of filming to successfully capture an event: “The team then clocked up several thousand hours diving with the grouper, including round the clock sessions the following year when they were due to spawn, to film the event.”
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.mirror.co.uk/tv/tv-news/blue-planet-film-crew-were-11483428.amp
There is a podcast about wildlife called “The Wild” [https://www.kuow.org/podcasts/thewild](https://www.kuow.org/podcasts/thewild) and the most recent one was about a videographer who was trying to film siberian tigers in the wild for the first time ever. 7 months in a hole in the ground, eating peanuts, rice, vitamins, salt and water. Twice per week exiting the hole to take a #2… in a bag that is sealed and hauled out later. Oh and it is -30C. He is literally in a hole in the ground for months!
The photographers are hard core to get that footage!!! Have a listen. That guy is both cool as hell and a bit insane. He and his resupply guy wouldn’t make eye contact so that it wouldn’t remind him how lonely it was out there alone.
The recent Attenborough series has a bonus episode where they take you behind the scenes of some of the shots. I believe it was called “our planet”.
It may help answer some of your questions, for example it took 2 people living in a shed for the winter 3 years to capture just 25 secs of footage of this super rare tiger.
Custom rigs, years of filming for a few hours of footage and the fact that the BBC has been doing this for decades
Not an answer but [you might find this docu series by Vox](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qAOKOJhzYXk) interesting! They’re a few YouTube mini episodes on how they film that stuff!
I always think of [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T20vkGZxULo) video. In regards to the part of your question about how they film the sharks eating the whale carcass; they drug the carcass out to sea after it washed up on a beach and a photographer actually climbed on top of it and filmed while the sharks feasted on it.
Can someone answer OPs question about they film inside ant hills?? Thats question ive wondered forever just never asked
A lot of the shots are also shot with specific lenses on extremely expensive cameras, they might be 500 feet away from something and just zoom in to make it seem like it’s right in front of them, they even attach them to drones to get the magic shots
The snow leopard scene in Planet Earth was THREE years of trying to film it. After only getting about an hours worth of filming the animal asleep, and just as they decided to give up, they captured the hunt scene that made in the show.
Videos like these they compiled from thousands of hour of footage over a long time. Planet Earth took 5 years to make.
A camera person could be set up in a location recording several days worth of footage of nothing but trees before finally getting the 10 second clip of a moose walking by. Then they’ll typically follow the animal several days.
Theres not much of a difference in skill/dedication between a scout sniper and a wildlife photographer, other than one shoots with a gun the other shoots with a camera.
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