The following is a summary of the interview
She and her team went deep into the Asian elephant habitat,
Document the migration story of the elephant family up close
△ Director of the documentary "Walking with Elephants" Chen Yizhi
Dialogue Chen Yizhi
2019 was the driest year on record in Xishuangbanna. Highly dependent on water, Asian elephants, faced with climate change, have to look far away and explore new habitats.
△ Documentary "Walking with Elephants"
Cipg's International Communication Development Center interprets the China Studio
Tencent Sustainable Social Value Division
Co-produced
Colorful nature team production
World premiere on August 12
August 27 Phoenix SATELLITE TV will be launched soon
Dialogue Chen Yizhi
The short-nosed family that Chen Yizhi followed is one of the several elephant families in Xishuangbanna who chose to go north to explore. From March 2020, they left the habitat of Wild Elephant Valley and traveled north, west and south for a 17-month adventure that created a global elephant chasing boom. This is also the longest migration of wild Asian elephants in China since recorded.
Tagawa: Where was the first time you got up close and personal with elephants?
Chen Yizhi: It should be last August, when we received this task and we could officially shoot. At the mouth of the gale, because the fire brigade lost the elephant herd, the monitors and pilots did not know where the specific location of the elephant was, so we took the firefighter's car and went up the mountain with them to find the elephant. In fact, it is quite scary, when you go to the top of the mountain, you feel very panicked, surrounded by fog, and the visibility is less than thirty or fifty meters. There was forest on both sides, and it was not clear to see and how deep the forest was. Along the way, when we reached a place all the cars stopped, saying that it was like it was in the forest in front of us, and we sat in the car and waited.
Tagawa: How do you know that the elephant is in the forest in front of you?
Chen Yizhi: There are experts in the team who used to monitor the elephant herd in Xishuangbanna, and they are very experienced, and they can judge how far the elephants are from here by the temperature and freshness of the elephant droppings, whether they have just arrived or have been away for a while.
At that time, our driver saw the elephant first, and he said did he see it? I sat in the back row with the cameraman, and I asked where? Suddenly two female elephants came out of the fog, very tall, and they were still sandwiched between two baby elephants. I said that these were not the two new elephants that had just been born on the way to migration, and how I had seen them at the first sight. But for safety, the professionals in the team shouted, and the elephant reacted quickly, and the two female elephants ran back into the fog with a sharp turn between the baby elephants.
△ Behind the scenes of the documentary "Walking with Elephants"
Chen Yizhi: That picture shocked me, I think that if such a tall elephant really rushed over, it might have stomped on the car with one foot.
Tagawa: How tall are elephants?
Chen Yizhi: Because it is an adult female elephant, I think it should be three meters, and then they escort the two most expensive baby elephants in the family.
Dialogue Chen Yizhi
Danger and waiting are the norm for photographing wildlife. But more importantly, it has expertise in working with wildlife and surviving in the wild. Before setting off for shooting, Chen Yizhi and his team needed to spend a lot of time to understand the behavior logic of Asian elephants from scientists, and design a variety of shooting schemes so that they could efficiently and safely capture the whereabouts of the short-nosed family.
△ Documentary "Walking with Elephants"
Tagawa: In the process of following the elephant herd, how far away are you from the herd? In what way to record it?
Chen Yizhi: Most of the time we follow the on-site staff, especially the on-site drone monitoring team, where they are, we will go. The monitoring team will generally be separated from the elephant herd by a hill, maintain a safe distance of one to two kilometers, and ensure that the drone accurately locates them. Depending on where the elephant arrives, we'll find high points where we can set up ground positions and shoot closer shots with telephoto, but that's random.
Once we photographed elephants on the rooftop into a barbecue city. We were on the balcony, and the naked eye could see the herds of elephants on the hillside walking there. But this is a rare occurrence, and can only be seen if the elephant runs very close to the village. Anyway, the whole headquarters was following this group of elephants, they moved to the ground, they walked a long way, and all of us went back to the hotel to pack our things and drive to the next point. Whether to end up staying in one place for three or four days or a week depends entirely on how long the elephants are going to stay here.
Dialogue Chen Yizhi
Using Asian elephants as subjects is definitely a challenge to deal with the unknown. The Asian elephant is the largest extant land animal in Asia, and adult Asian elephants are about 3 meters tall, 5 to 6 meters long, and weigh up to 3 to 5 tons. Such a behemoth, how to make the audience feel its hugeness; How to set up a miniature camera so that it will not be trampled by an elephant; There is also how to photograph the elephant at close range and retain a safe and safe space for escape, as well as sudden problems such as trapped cars and flat tires, which Chen Yizhi must always decide on the shooting scene.
Chen Yizhi: The uncertainty of shooting wild elephants is too high, and we can't go to the front line to set up a camera position. Like when we set up the infrared camera before, when the elephant comes to see your camera, it may dismantle the camera to play, throw it, or even step on it. That's how many of our infrared cameras died, and the memory cards were stepped on to the point where they couldn't be recovered.
Photographing wild Asian elephants is actually a dangerous process, and their senses are very sharp. The fins of elephants can sense distant information transmitted from the ground, and the nose is also sensitive to detect all kinds of things that are beyond the scope of human perception. So they're easily startled by what they think is unfamiliar. We also hope to try not to disturb their lives in the shooting, but also to have the opportunity to let the audience see how they live up close.
△ The infrared camera was trampled by an elephant
To be in awe of nature, people and animals need to keep their distance
Dialogue Chen Yizhi
Before becoming an independent documentary filmmaker, Chen Yizhi was the editor-in-chief of the TV station. In 2016, she resigned to set up a documentary studio, specializing in wildlife shooting. After seeing the news about the Asian elephants going north, Chen Yizhi and his team went to Yunnan and successively crossed four prefectures and cities in Yunnan Province to track and shoot The Asian elephants.
Tagawa: Before filming this documentary, what message did you want to convey to the audience?
Chen Yizhi: I have seen a lot of news reports before that only elephants are cute, and I am very anxious. I am afraid that after everyone sees this information point, if you meet wild elephants in Yunnan next time, you will feel like friends and rush up, which is something I don't want to happen. How to make the public willing to protect and care for a species, I think the first thing is to let everyone understand their personality, understand their lives and emotions. Then you will build an emotional resonance with it and want to care about how it is today or tomorrow. So I feel like I actually have a little bit of a sense of mission, whether I'm shooting or someone else is shooting, there needs to be such a film for the public to understand from a deeper perspective how this creature is, how we should get along with them.
△ Documentary "Walking with Elephants"
Dialogue Chen Yizhi
When Asian elephants become adults, they eat hundreds of pounds of food every day. Their energy is surprisingly good, they only need to sleep two or three hours a day on average, and they especially like to walk at night. This also forces firefighters, who are responsible for monitoring Asian elephants, to keep track of them 24 hours a day.
In this year of finding a new home on the road, the short-nosed family inevitably has to get closer to human life. In May 2021, they came to Asan County, Yuxi City, where the Short-nosed Family crossed the human city for the first time.
△ Documentary "Walking with Elephants"
Chen Yizhi: The part where they pass through Asan, the film does not unfold too much, because we did not get so much image material. But we learned through the on-site staff that the elephants sent three waves of reconnaissance elephants to explore how to pass through asan County. Sent the first wave of past, went back, did not go, still stopped in place, then sent two more heads over, and finally sent three heads over. When the last three heads returned, the elephants set out together. They actually walked the shortest distance between the two mountains in asan County. They believe that this is the route that can pass through the county town most quickly. So elephants are actually very organized, very strategic species.
Dialogue Chen Yizhi
The visit of the elephant tour group led to a field exercise on the topic of "human-elephant coexistence".
Tagawa: Several elephants all fell into puddles and struggled and tumbled for a long time, how did that picture get captured?
Chen Yizhi: The picture was actually taken by the forest fire brigade in Yunnan. There were four elephants in the water at night, and it was not known who would go down first. Because the adult elephant is relatively tall, it can stay in deep water, but the baby elephant may not be able to climb out when it goes down. Finally the four elephants had been tossing and turning in the pond all night.
Tagawa: It felt like I was really panicked, rolling in the pond, and the baby elephant seemed to be dying, so why not choose to intervene artificially?
Chen Yizhi: At four or five o'clock in the middle of the night, the fire brigade and the forestry and grass department heard that a baby elephant had fallen into the water, and everyone went to the scene. In fact, at that time, the excavators were already arranged around, and everyone saw if they could save themselves. If not, manual intervention may be needed to help them dig out the channel. But as a collective, especially in the event of danger, they are highly tense, and man cannot easily intervene. It will see you as a threat, even to attack you.
So until that morning, after the mother elephant had brought the baby elephant out, it was the baby elephant who ran to the mountain to inform her companions and took the other elephants to the pond. Finally, the two male elephants descended into the pond and opened a gap in the top of the pond so that the female elephant behind could climb out. So this process is the collective cooperation of the elephants, the will to survive for their self-escape.
△ Fragment of the documentary "Walking with elephants"
Dialogue Chen Yizhi
Crossing the mountains and following the short-nosed family, for Chen Yizhi and the team, it costs people, cars, and cameras. The infrared cameras they have arranged many times have been broken by elephants. In order to capture the picture up close and prevent the camera from being trampled by the elephants, they specially designed a protective iron cage.
The short-nosed family crossed the Yuanjiang Bridge, and Chen Yizhi's team's iron cage camera came in handy. The elephants traveled north, from Xishuangbanna to Kunming, where cities grew and the population became more and more dense. The further north they go, the harder it is for them to find their ideal habitat. At this time, how to guide the short-nosed family to return home and safely pass through the surging Yuan River is a problem for scientists and relevant departments, and it is also an important moment in Chen Yizhi's record.
△ Behind the scenes of the documentary "Walking with Elephants"
Chen Yizhi: Whether the elephants can cross the Yuanjiang Bridge, in fact, everyone is not sure. Scientists and experts deployed a week or two in advance to get them across the bridge, making a lot of plans. They even felt that if the elephants could not bridge the bridge, they might be stranded in Yuxi, and the Yuxi government would have to spend a lot of manpower and material resources to ensure the safety of people and elephants. In addition, it was the rainy season, the river was very fast, if the elephant herd wanted to go down to the river beach to cross the river, it was actually very dangerous for the baby elephants. But we also went to find some river beaches that might be crossed, so that we could give some guidance when the elephants had to cross the river.
Dialogue Chen Yizhi
It's the rainy season, the water is turbulent, and crossing the river directly is a huge challenge for the short-nosed family with cubs. With the cooperation of multiple departments, everyone tried to guide the elephant family to cross the bridge through fixed-point feeding and vehicle blocking.
△ Documentary "Walking with Elephants"
Yizhi Chen: I think this is the process of trying to communicate with living things and with the natural world. It is the process of learning how to perceive their emotions and perceive their laws of existence.
Tagawa: Do you want to arrange an infrared camera in advance to shoot this process?
Chen Yizhi: Yes. The Wongang Bridge isn't the only bridge this elephant has crossed, and sometimes you don't know if it's walking under the bridge hole or from the bridge, so we didn't put an infrared trigger less.
Tagawa: How many points are usually put?
Chen Yizhi: Every time, I have to put two or three points to try my luck. And it's all very sudden, because you don't know where the elephants are going, the command won't notify us, and we don't know what the terrain is. Often when the elephant is about to appear and the road is about to be closed, we rush to the infrared camera. Because we have people on our team who work with wildlife a lot, they speculate on elephants' judgments, and we use experience to judge where they might walk a little more water or where there are more rocky beaches.
Tagawa: It's also too difficult, there are countless possibilities.
Yizhi Chen: The norm of photographing wildlife is unknown. Sometimes you squat for a week and it won't come, and you won't be able to do it without coming.
Dialogue Chen Yizhi
Eventually, the Shortsnew family managed to cross the river safely and return to their habitat. As a result, the elephants' 17-month journey of northbound and southbound exploration came to an end. In order to ensure the safety of people and elephants along the way, the state has invested a total of 25,000 support teams, 15,000 emergency vehicles, 150,000 evacuated people, and more than 5 million yuan of fixed deposits and claims along the way.
△ Documentary "Walking with Elephants"
Tagawa: How did you feel when you saw them return to their habitat?
Chen Yizhi: It should be a relief for everyone, because it is really rare for a group of wild elephants to cross so many cities and have so many intersections with humans, but there has not been a single human-elephant conflict incident. I think both the object and the person are lucky.
Tagawa: Did the filming of Walking with Elephants change anything for you?
Chen Yizhi: I think the Asian elephant uses its huge contrast—its emotional delicacy and huge body—to make me more determined that I want to be in awe of nature. Reverence is a very active word, and it is you who choose to be moderate and restrained. I think humans and animals really need to keep a distance, to sell, to balance our space competition with other creatures.
Today, it is exactly one year since Asian elephants returned to their habitat. On August 12 this year, World Elephant Day, the documentary "Walking with Elephants" produced by Chen Yizhi and his team was officially premiered. On August 27, at 10 p.m. this Saturday, "Walking with Elephants" will be broadcast online on Phoenix TV. In the days when they can't walk the world at will, the story of elephant "travel" is particularly healing. But behind the camera, how humans and wild animals coexist, and the trend of fragmentation of wildlife habitats, are also urgent issues to be solved.
Producer: Zhang Yan
Choreographer: Yi Fan
Edits: 612