The 5 Biggest Challenges of Filming Discovery Channel's Frozen Planet

The crew of Frozen Planet knew that shooting with regular equipment probably wouldn't cut it at the extreme temperatures at the poles, and they couldn't risk malfunction because of the remote filming locations. "If you call and say, 'This piece of kit's broken, can you send me another?' " says producer Mark Linfield, "it'll be 'No,' or, 'Yeah, just hang around for three weeks.' " So the crew tested all of its equipment in a house-size freezer. "We were surrounded by frozen baguettes and bits of meat," Linfield says. "We discovered that lots of our cables for attaching monitors to cameras would go stiff and snap, and the LCD screens would go pale?you just couldn't see anything. And things with oil-based lubricants would stiffen so much you couldn't pan the tripod head." Armed with that information, the filmmakers sought out equipment that could withstand the temperatures: "We replaced the cables with what's called Arctic cabling, which remains flexible at low temperatures, and we sourced monitors that we knew wouldn't let us down in the field."

Source: http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/digital/fact-vs-fiction/the-5-biggest-challenges-of-filming-discovery-channels-frozen-planet?src=rss

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