What it was like to be behind the camera on Planet Earth You won’t find many wildlife cameramen, or in fact many people, tougher than Doug Allan. He specialises in filming in […]

You won’t find many wildlife cameramen, or in fact many people, tougher than Doug Allan.

He specialises in filming in high up, cold, and extremely remote locations, and he is the man behind some of the world’s most famous, rare and revolutionary wildlife footage.

BBC landmark nature shows i's TV newsletter: what you should watch next Email address is invalid Email address is invalid Thank you for subscribing! Sorry, there was a problem with your subscription. 2001: The Blue Planet

2006: Planet Earth

2009: Nature’s Great Events

2009: Life

2011: Human Planet

2011: Frozen Planet

2013: Africa

2014: Life Story

2016: Planet Earth 2

If you’ve ever been amazed by jaw-dropping shots of penguins or polar bears, there’s a good chance they were filmed by Allan.

His work has been featured in The Blue Planet, Frozen Planet, Life and the first edition of the BBC’s recently reinvented Planet Earth series.

“For Planet Earth One,” he says, casting his mind back. “I did quite a big shoot in Tonga, for some underwater stuff with humpback whales.

“Then I did the polar bears coming out of the den in Kong Karls Land [a small group of islands in the Arctic ocean]. And I also did Eider Ducks diving underneath the ice up in Hudson’s Bay.

“The polar bears coming out of the den in Kong Karls Land was, for me, a highlight. And to be honest it’s one of the highlights of my filming career.”

‘We had bears coming very close’

As Kong Karls Land is a protected area, Allan and one other cameraman were the first film crew ever permitted to go there. Due to no-disturbance laws, they had to do the entire shoot on foot, without the aid of a snow machine.

“That was quite a big responsibility,” he says. “If you have a snow machine then you can always drive away from a problem bear, or you can use the snow machine to chase the bear away.

“We ended up in situations where most other people would have shot the bear. We had bears coming very close, and they were obviously quite dangerous. But we kept our cool. We knew how to chase them away with a combination of bear spray and crackle shells, and I think even once or twice, rubber bullets.”

Kong Karls Land was what Allan describes as a “wonderfully simple” shoot. The only filming equipment they had was what they could carry on their backs. But much of the rest of the series represented a major shift in wildlife filming technology.

“Planet Earth was the beginning of giving these series what they call a cinematic feel.

The Hollywood influence

“The big push on Planet Earth, the big new thing, was Cineflex – that highly stabilised aerial mount that you put on a helicopter. And that gave a different view of bits of behaviour – you could see the big picture, and you could also get pictures that just looked different from anything else.”

“The Planet Earth marketing team recognised that that was what the public wanted: for these wildlife series to be big, epic and to have a cinematic feel to them.”

“Wanting series like that has changed the technology of how we film. There’s now a lot more of what you call ‘grip’ equipment […] dollies, tracks, cranes, all the sort of camera mounting points.”

It’s part of what Allan sees as a “long-term trend” of bringing elements of Hollywood into television.

He explains that while the constant motion of high-tech shots can achieve a sense of dynamism and immediacy, “sometimes, if you put too much technology into the situation you can actually create a distance between you and the animal, which somehow is just reflected in the mood of the shot.”

“I don’t want to sound like I’m biting the hand that feeds me, but sometimes these very big wildlife series, they’re so polished that they almost lose reality. But on the other hand, they are supreme examples of the craft.”

‘The holy grail is capturing behaviour no-one has seen before’

Planet Earth 2 is no exception. Viewers are brought closer to wildlife than ever before in a highly sophisticated, stylised fashion. What have the big advances been for the second series?

“One of the big improvements I’ve noticed is that they now have phenomenal low-light cameras – things that you can use in the dark that pick up light from phosphorescence, for example, underwater.

“There are also even higher slow-motion cameras, so you can really freeze the moment if you want.”

“Then there’s obviously new animal behaviours that come up. I’ll be interested to see how many really big, never seen before behaviours are captured in detail. Because that’s the holy grail of a big series – a new sequence that nobody has seen before.”

“Those are getting harder and harder to get. Just because the big ones are rare and the easy ones have all been done, so what you’re left with is something that’s unique and difficult to capture.”

But Allan has no doubt whatsoever about the new series’ ability to deliver:

“Planet Earth is the apotheosis of wildlife filming – there’s a huge amount of skill, expertise, and knowledge throughout the whole team. Everyone working on Planet Earth is at the top of their game. You won’t see anything else like it on screen.”

Planet Earth II continues on Sunday night at 8pm on BBC One – catch up online.