Earth Press Conference - Writer/Directors Mark Linfield and Alastair Fothergill
What was the most dangerous situation that you got into during filming, that had the biggest pay-off for you?Alastair Fothergill: “The dangerous one was the lions and elephants with the sequence of the pride of 30 lions bringing down the elephant. You immediately might think that the lions are the dangerous bit and, yes, if you got outside your vehicle, they would have definitely eaten you. But, that was okay. You just sit in the vehicle. But, what was really dangerous was that that sequence was filmed in infrared, in complete darkness, because if you use white light, you would have disturbed the animals. We had about 20 people there with lights and cameras, and the only person who could see anything was the camera woman. Basically, we were in there and there were a lot of these elephants, and these mother elephants were really worried. A 15-20 ton mother elephant, looking after her calf, will run straight through your Land Rover without even thinking about it. That was something where the safety issues were slightly high on our concern levels.”
Mark Linfield: “There were some other surprising ones as well. The great white sharks you would think are not dangerous because we’re in a boat and the great white sharks are leaping away. But, they’re actually leaping quite close to the boat and, at that particular location, it has been known for a shark to leap out of the water, rather innocently chasing a seal, and actually land in the boat, which is not recommended.”
Alastair Fothergill: “The other one that was particularly memorable was the sailfish, that are these wonderful big fish that are 2-3 meters long with these great big javelin things on their noses. We had about 70 of them together. It was an extraordinarily lucky occurrence to have so many. And they were feeding on little bait fish, which are small fish. These little fish are very clever and they saw the cameraman as the best thing to hide behind. The cameraman came out of the water and said, ‘This is just unbelievable. I’m in there and these javelins are shooting past my ear. I can literally hear the roar of this fish.’ They swim at 70 mph. It is a fast fish.”
Mark Linfield: “Anything to do with polar bears is another thing. Polar bears are very unusual animals in that most animals maybe present a risk if they’re wounded or they’re starving and hungry. Polar bears just see you as a nice, tasty mammal, wrapped up in a bit of plastic wrapper. You are fair game for a polar bear. If you think about where they live, out in the Arctic waste, there isn’t much to eat. When they come across something nice that’s the size of a fat seal, they’re going to have a go, if you’re not very careful.”
