I was lucky enough to begin my wildlife film making career working on what was to become one of the favourite family films of all time, TARKA THE OTTER. In 1972 the renowned wildlife filmmakers, Ron and Rosemary Eastman, had given me my first experience of filming natural history for television by taking me with them on a three month shoot in Oregon, USA. Four years later they contacted me again to ask if I’d be interested in “helping out with the otters” for a few weeks on a film they were making for the cinema. The few weeks turned in to nearly two years, and as well as helping the film’s senior animal handler, Peter Talbot, with the otters and other creatures that appear in TARKA, I was also given the role of production photographer. My pictures appeared in magazines and newspapers, and in several new illustrated editions of Henry Williamson’s book that were published to coincide with the film’s release.
Now, 35 years on since we began filming TARKA THE OTTER in the actual locations that Henry Williamson described so beautifully in his novel, Peter Talbot has published a book telling the story of how the film was brought to the screen. In particular, Peter’s book tells of the two years he spent with the very special little otter who plays the part of Tarka in the film.
About a year ago I was looking for a pocketable HD camcorder for shooting personal records of locations I worked at and of animals I filmed for tv productions. Something that wouldn’t take up much room in a jacket pocket or camera bag, had a decent build quality and could shoot in 1080p. After some deliberation and reading of numerous camcorder reviews online I decided to get a Samsung HMX-R10, an unusual looking beast with its lens slanted at an angle, that shoots HD1080i, 1080p, 720p, and SD576, and costs under £300. Apart from having a superb build quality and a brushed aluminium body, the camera has two features which were the deal clinchers for me – a Super Macro mode which allows me to shoot insects that are almost touching the toughened glass lens protector, and a time-lapse facility ( which also works in the macro mode ). In time-lapse mode the camera can shoot HD 1080p frames at intervals of 1, 3, 5, 10, 15, or 30 seconds, for an unlimited period of time ( or until the battery runs out ). The MP4 video quality is very good ( although at 17 Mbs not up to broadcast standard ) and I’ve used the R10 as a second camera on some web commercial shoots. The Samsung has a 1/2.33 inch CMOS sensor, large for a camcorder of this size, of 9 megapixels. Just over 5MP is used for video, the full resolution is used for still images.
There is a high speed / slow motion mode in the R10, which is fun to use but not of any real use as the image quality is too low. The camera can shoot in SD at 250 or 500 frames per second ( PAL version ), a 10 second burst which can’t be cancelled once you’ve pressed the record button , but the recorded videos are only 416 x 240 and 192 x 108 pixels in size. A great pity Samsung didn’t limit the frame rates to 50 and 100, which I would certainly have found more useful.
After a year using the camera my only major criticism is with the autofocus – it’s far too sensitive and the slightest movement within the image area starts the lens hunting for focus. I filmed a heathland fire a few days after getting the camera and before I realised the problem, and hardly any of the video is useable – the camera is constantly trying to focus on the smoke and flames. This can be countered by setting the camera to Touch Focus. This allows you to touch the image on the LCD screen at the point you want in focus and the lens will lock on this point. Unfortunately, Touch Focus does not work in Super Macro mode.
During the early 1990′s when deep-focus probe lenses ( like the Bosherscope and Optex straightscope ) were very much in vogue and used in pretty much every natural history film made, I experimented with making my own unit using optics I had lying around my studio. Over the years, the system has been tweaked and adjusted to fit my AATON super 16mm cameras, Canon XL1S, Sony Z1, and JVC HD110. A few weeks ago I thought I’d trial it on the Samsung R10 and shot some video of insects in my garden. Here’s a picture of the camera set up, followed by a video compilation of footage shot using the R10 in Super Macro Mode alone, with the probe lens unit fitted, and with the R10 + a reversed 90mm prime macro lens.
In 1995 I was asked to film the macro sequences for a programme in the PBS television series THE LIVING EDENS. Denali – Alaska’s Great Wilderness is a celebration of a year in the life of this magnificent region.
On my list of subjects to film was the Wood Frog (Rana sylvatica), Alaska’s only amphibian and a creature with a remarkable ability. These frogs vanish during winter and reappear during the spring, but where they went to in between nobody knew.
In 1972 Michael Kirton of the University of Alaska in Fairbanks tagged 27 wood frogs with radioactive material and tracked them with a geiger counter. With the onset of winter they stopped moving. Some frog species hibernate in the mud at the bottom of frozen ponds during winter but Kirton’s geiger counter found his study animals still on land, but an inch or two beneath the surface, in a depression made of leaf litter and covered in snow. Remarkably, the frogs were frozen solid, bright blue in colour ( they’re normally green ) and showed no signs of breathing or of a heartbeat.
It’s since been discovered that the wood frog has a natural form of antifreeze in its body ( a glucose ) which prevents the insides of its cells from freezing and causing tissue damage. It also has the ability to move the water in its body to areas where it will cause least damage when frozen, such as beneath its skin. When the temperature rises in spring the frog thaws out and resumes normal activity.
We were keen to film this amazing behaviour, but it was already spring in Denali and the frogs were awake. I knew scientists had been successful in freezing and thawing out these frogs in controlled laboratory conditions, but could we do the same thing on a location shoot in a wilderness area with limited resources? And would the frogs still have the anti freeze in their bodies?
First I needed a freezer. Our crew cabin was very basic and didn’t have such luxuries but there was an interpretive centre just inside the entrance to Denali National Park, and a ranger station. There I met Shari Quinn, an extremely knowledgeable and helpful seasonal ranger ( who later assisted me on KING COBRA in India for National Geographic, and two WILDLIFE ON ONE films for the BBC ). Shari offered me the use of her cabin and a fridge/freezer for the filming. Next job was to take the dimensions of the freezer compartment and to build a set that looked like a wood frog hideaway under the ground. Oh, and to catch a frog or two.
Filming day came and myself, frogs, and the camera kit ( an AATON LTR54 16mm film camera, with a variety of Nikon Macro Nikkor lenses ) arrived at Shari’s cabin. The underground chamber set fitted nicely into the freezer compartment, with room around the edges for me to later light the area using flexible fibre-optic light guides. The set and its leaf litter floor was sprayed with water, and left to freeze for a couple of hours.
Next step was to cool down a frog and place it in the set. The temperature of a domestic freezer, while close to that of the average January day at Denali ( -17 degrees C ) is far colder than would be found in the frog’s natural hibernation chamber. The salts in a wood frogs body start to freeze at -0.6 degrees C, so the tempertature needed to be below that, but not cold enough to kill it. A black bin liner gaffer taped around the freezer compartment opening proved to be the solution. With the door of the fridge/freezer left open, the bin liner allowed the freezing to take place, but at a much slower rate. Over a period of hours the frog slowly cooled, then turned blue, until it was so solidly frozen that it would have shattered if dropped to the floor.
I had a time lapse facilty on the AATON camera, so as well as filming the frog in real-time at various stages of the freezing and thawing process, I could also speed up the process in camera, compressing several hours into a few seconds.
The sequence was filmed successfully, with no frogs being harmed and all were eventually returned to their pond. It’s one of the most referred to sequences in the film and in 1997 I was awarded a News and Documentary Cinematography EMMY for individual achievement.
Here’s the sequence of the Wood Frog thawing out ….
I was lucky enough to begin my wildlife film making career working on what was to become one of the favourite family films of all time, TARKA THE OTTER. In 1972 the renowned wildlife filmmakers, Ron and Rosemary Eastman, had given me my first experience of filming natural history for television by taking me with them on a three month shoot in Oregon, USA. Four years later they contacted me again to ask if I’d be interested in “helping out with the otters” for a few weeks on a film they were making for the cinema. The few weeks turned in to nearly two years, and as well as helping the film’s senior animal handler, Peter Talbot, with the otters and other creatures that appear in TARKA, I was also given the role of production photographer. My pictures appeared in magazines and newspapers, and in several new illustrated editions of Henry Williamson’s book that were published to coincide with the film’s release.
