I remember watching this. Turns out BBC Natural History documentaries are more theater than just documentaries. If you watch the "making of" clips at the end of some of the series, you do get the sense that they may not be just captured natural footage as much as highly-scripted activities with the actions of the cameramen, crew, etc. edited out. Still fun to watch, but isn't being manipulated as a viewer disingenuous for a studio that calls itself "Natural" History? Maybe a better name would be BBC Studios Artificial History Unit.

At this point I can't really enjoy documentaries like that anymore. I keep thinking "they brought a steadicam down there?" or "where is all that light coming from?" The fourth wall is thoroughly broken.

Thanks, I'd rather watch a poorly lit Youtube video with a guy talking to his Gopro. I wonder what the equivalent of that would be for animal documentaries.

The sentiment resonates, but on the other hand I took a lot of video in those caves and it's all unwatchable, so I have enormous appreciation for what the BBC did. It's an incredibly hard environment to film in and I was absolutely amazed by the final product. Gavin Thurston rigged up cables from ice screws in the cave walls and set up a travelling robot camera thing he designed on it. There was a huge amount of equipment and hard work; for example for the crater shots I helped them carry up an enormous crane system to the crater rim which didn't even produce any useful footage. Also, the BBC guys were so charismatic that they could talk their way around rules and into places. For example, the helicopter pilots flying in the crater did things that aren't normally allowed. So in a way it's fake, but actually when it comes to the cave visuals, their work captures the feeling of being there, which otherwise I would never really be able to share with anyone. It really is an unbelivably spectacular place and almost impossible to film.

I like the old Jacques Cousteau films where there’s no fourth wall to break, the people making it are also a subject.

I don’t like the nature documentary that tries really hard to pretend the makers don’t exist. I especially don’t like how almost all of the sound is faked.

Go ahead, bring a steadycam and a key light, just don’t stage shit like a fake reality show. Id like to see what’s actually out there. Also maybe don’t take every opportunity to say how everything you’re filming is doomed.

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6J1OzLHamQ8TdX5j2w3L253m...

That short clip is absolutely breathtaking. Thank you for sharing.

(Heh, a taste of fooBBQ.) Thank you for sharing. While we're here and discussing the documentaries: care to share a highlight anecdote of your time there?

Oh ok one more story. There is a road connecting McMurdo (US) and Scott Base (New Zealand). I think it's only a few miles.

So I'm sitting in the McMurdo driving training you have to take before you're allowed to take a truck out. Get to the end of the lecture. Instructor: "Any questions?" I ask, "yeah... so, New Zealanders drive on the left, and we drive on the right, right? Which side do we drive on if we go to Scott Base?"

Instructor, looking totally bored and serious: "Drive in the middle."

To this day I don't know if he was kidding.

So where did you drive? I suppose encountering another vehicle was extremely unlikely.

I'm surprised they had a training for this. Is it more of a legal thing?

Ps thanks for the insightful stories!

Some of it was legal ass-covering but also rules about vehicle heaters, wheel chocks, radios, fueling, checking out and in etc. I only walked to Scott, never ended up driving. Drove to building 71 a lot to install and service radios taking to my equipment on Erebus, and to and from the helipad.

Oh yeah and some of the trucks have treads instead of wheels (matttracks) so those take some learning.

Oh man, so many stories. Well, here's a fun one. There's unfortunately a big divide between the contractor-employed support staff and the "beakers" (scientists like me) and I would try and break through the barrier sometimes. Had a brief romance with someone working in waste management (a "wastie"), so maybe that's how it started. But anyway, one day I was sitting in the McMurdo cafeteria at a table with people from Fuels ("fuelies") and people from Communications ("commies" ... yeah) someone asked me what I do and I said "I work up on Erebus." A fuelie looks daggers at me and goes "Oh yeah!? Well I work on the FUCKING MOON!" and storms off.

There were a lot of people at McMurdo for whom Antarctica wasn't quite the adventure they'd hoped it would be.