If you are given one of the top ten classic nature documentaries that you must show for children, "Frozen Planet" will definitely be on the list.
Following the launch of "Frozen Planet" focusing on the polar world 11 years ago, the BBC spent 3 years and traveled to 18 countries and regions around the world, breaking through the ceiling of ecological documentary photography technology, and finally launched the sequel to the series "Frozen Planet II".
"Frozen Planet 2" poster
As the annual contribution of the BBC Earth series, the film is written by Blue Planet II producer Mark Brownlow, narrated by Sir David Attenborough, and Hollywood gold medal scorer Hans Zimmer creates the soundtrack.
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"Frozen Planet 2" trailer. (01:03)
In an interview with The Paper, producer Mark Brownlow talked about the upgrades of "Frozen Planet 2".
Compared with the first season, "Frozen Planet 2" further explores the ice and snow world beyond the polar regions, from ice and snow deserts, deep snowy forests, to melting ice and snow captured from space, and directly hitting the life force of rare wild animals such as killer whales, emperor penguins, and Siberian tigers in the extreme cold environment to fight the severe challenges brought by climate change.
He also praises his work, "Frozen Planet 2 can bring the audience a theatrical immersive experience, we promote the development of the storyline through the perspective of animals, and through the immersive narrative method, the audience is eager to understand the plot development and the ending of the story. We hope that Frozen Planet 2 will allow viewers to escape reality for 45-50 minutes, transporting them to fary, fairyland-like natural wonders. ”
"Frozen Planet 2" stills
Natural wonders had to rely on advanced filming techniques, and the film crews pioneered the documentation of many rare animal behaviors.
For the first time, the film team of "Frozen Planet 2" used drones to film the whole process of killer whales cooperating with each other to hunt. Viewed from the air, the process of killer whales making waves is extremely shocking and more intuitive, providing valuable material for scientific research and television programs.
In East Africa, near the equator, during the day, tropical sunlight spills on the slopes of Mount Kenya, dispelling the cold; But at night, frosts occur as the temperature plummets. Here, the film crew of "Frozen Planet 2" filmed the entire process of helmet chameleon production for the first time. Most chameleons produce their next generation by laying eggs, but in Mount Kenya, because the night temperature is extremely low, the eggs cannot be hatched in the wild, so the helmeted chameleon will hatch directly in the body and give birth to a small helmeted chameleon, a process known as viviparous development.
In addition, the film crew also went to China's Wolong National Nature Reserve and filmed giant pandas who like "handstands" through 4K remote trap cameras.
"Frozen Planet 2" stills
The constantly "changing" "Frozen Planet" is the core theme of this film. Chief producer Mark Brownlow emphasized: "Due to the impact of climate change caused by human activities, the ice and snow world has become the fastest changing region on the earth, and one-fifth of the earth on which human beings depend is covered with ice and snow at all times. Compared with the ecological environment and animal habits recorded in "Frozen Planet" 11 years ago, this 'frozen planet' 11 years later has undergone tremendous changes. It's a documentary with a global perspective – contemporary, novel and substantive. With Frozen Planet 2, we hope to show viewers the scale and speed of the current natural environment, and how this change affects wildlife, which is extremely cold adapted. As we show in episode six, the world of 'changing' ice and snow is also relevant to everyone. Through this film, we hope to convey the connection between these stories and contemporary society, and make everyone aware of the importance of these frozen regions in the ecology of the earth. ”
In order to enhance the interaction between the content of the program and the audience, "Frozen Planet 2" will also present an exclusive panoramic 360-degree circular interactive photo installation in Taikoo Li, Sanlitun, a fashion landmark popular with hipsters from all walks of life in early January 2023, and vividly reproduce the extremely cold ice and snow in the documentary through a large 3D screen, so that the participants can experience the frozen world immersively.
It is reported that the film will exclusively land on Migu Video on December 17.
"Frozen Planet 2" stills
【Dialogue】
The Paper: In addition to the North and South Poles, where else did you go this time? How long was the shooting time? Which animals were photographed? What is your favorite animal?
Mark Brownlow: Compared to the first season, Frozen Planet 2 explores the world of ice beyond the polar regions, witnessing the dramatic survival stories of wildlife living in other cold regions of the world, such as mountain peaks, snow deserts, snowy forests, and cold oceans.
Our film crew traveled to various filming locations, spanning 18 countries and regions on all continents, as well as around Antarctica and in space, completing a total of 102 shooting missions and 2,188 days of field shooting in three years.
Among them, we have recorded unprecedented species and numbers of wildlife, such as killer whales living in Antarctica, Wadel's seals and emperor penguins, rabbits living in the Himalayas, Siberian tigers living in the boreal forest belt, musk oxen in the Arctic tundra, crowned seals and polar bears in the Arctic, helmeted chameleons in Mount Kenya, and Japanese macaques living in the highlands of the birthplace of the Japanese Alps.
For me personally, my favorite part of the episode "Frozen Peaks" was the sheeppecker we photographed living in the Southern Alps of New Zealand, which is very adapted to the snow and ice, loves to play in the snow, even snowballs, and wrestles with each other in the snow. So in the process of choosing a shooting location, we not only showed the animals that overcame the challenges of the extreme cold environment, but also wanted to photograph how the animals took advantage of this environment.
The Paper: We generally think that pandas are doing well, but in the harsh environment, I don't know if there are some more unexpected things?
Mark Brownlow: Before that, many people probably couldn't associate giant pandas with the word "frozen". I think giant pandas are one of the most fascinating vegetarians on the planet. Although pandas eat almost exclusively bamboo, they are not good at absorbing nutrients from bamboo, so they need to eat 10 to 16 hours a day, and the panda's evolved digestive system can also digest meat. Sometimes they mark their territory with smell in an "upside-down" way. We observed that pandas would climb backwards on their hind limbs up the trunk until they were completely upside down, so they could leave their scent higher above. Since the whereabouts of wild pandas were difficult to capture, and the film crew could not crouch from the bunker, in order to capture the relevant footage, we used a high-definition remote trap camera, placed it in multiple shooting locations, and finally recorded the precious footage.
The Paper: The most interesting thing in the documentary "The Hunt" is the "Polar Bear Hunt", which is very unsuccessful every time, is there such a particularly interesting scene in "Frozen Planet 2"?
Mark Brownlow: Speaking of which, I have to mention the "wave washing" picture of killer whales.
As an "intelligent" predator, killer whales live all year round in the rich waters around Antarctica. To get close to their favorite prey, the Wedel's seal. In the first season of Frozen Planet 11 years ago, we only photographed killer whales appearing, and in this "Frozen Planet 2", our film crew used drones for the first time to film the whole process of killer whales cooperating with each other to attack, successfully documenting this incredible hunting method. "Wave-washing" is a sophisticated hunting technique used by killer whales, in which multiple killer whales swim side by side and slap the sea surface with their tail fins in unison, creating waves with the aim of washing seals off ice floes into the sea. On the Antarctic Peninsula, only about 100 killer whales have mastered the technique. It is usually coordinated by the female "patriarch" of the killer whale family who is over 100 years old, and this predation is passed on from generation to generation.
From the air, the killer whales make waves more intuitively, their incredible combination is striking, and these images also provide new material for scientific research and TV shows, which is also the most memorable scene for me.
"Frozen Planet 2" stills
The Paper: In the documentary "The Truth That Is Hard to Ignore", Gore once said that polar bears eventually drowned, because there is no ice floe to ventilate it, so what did we learn about the latest data that is difficult to ignore in this shoot?
Mark Brownlow: For thousands of years, the Arctic Ocean froze into ice in winter and gradually melted in spring and summer. Over the past 40 years, however, summer sea ice has shrunk by 50 percent. It is predicted that as early as the summer of 2035, the Arctic Ocean will no longer freeze. In order to photograph the massive melting of the Arctic Ocean every year, we shot on an unprecedented scale. The film crew of "Frozen Planet 2" used microscopes to film ice cracking, complete time-lapse follow-up with motion control, send drones to repeat flights in different seasons, and finally record melting phenomena over time around the world through satellites. We hope that these images will give the audience more and more profound thinking.
For example, in the episode "Frozen Peaks" that Alex was responsible for, we installed a rugged time-lapse camera on the top of Kercaya in the Peruvian Andes, and completed a time-lapse shooting for up to 3 years, and by comparing the footage captured in these 3 years, we found that the ice and snow on the top of the mountain receded by as much as 60 meters. In addition, we installed cameras on Greenland's glaciers to fully capture the fleeting ice cracks on Greenland's Store Glacier. We also used drones to film from the air to record the Arctic tundra gradually thawing and collapsing.
Not only that, but we also document the impact of climate change on wildlife that depends on cold environments for survival. During the filming of Frozen Planet 2, we captured a heartbreaking scene: on the east coast of Greenland, spring ice floes are the nursery ground for harp seals. These lovely, weak harp seal babies typically take 5 weeks to grow fur on ice floes. But because the ice is now melting faster, the time left for harp seal babies to grow is greatly reduced. At the same time, climate change is also bringing more intense storms, which can also have a serious impact on their survival. Scientists predict that these harp seal babies won't even survive the end of the century. Arctic sea ice is expected to disappear completely by the summer of 2035.
There is another sad story: climate change has also had a huge impact on the cap-banded penguins that live on the coast of Antarctica. Due to climate change, the coast of Antarctica, which used to often snow, is now starting to rain. And the hat-banded penguin, which is good at coping with ice and snow, is powerless in the face of rain. The increasing amount of ice and snow meltwater, the situation of hat-banded penguins has become worse and worse, small hat-banded penguins will shivered due to cold meltwater caused by hypothermia, and the humid environment makes penguins unable to adapt, resulting in a sharp drop in its body temperature, resulting in extremely low temperatures and very dangerous situations, and even leading to the extinction of penguins in large penguin habitats. We celebrate these wild animals in extreme environments through the lens of Frozen Planet 2. But as human beings, when we see these heartbreaking sights, there is no way we can't help but be moved.
"Frozen Planet 2" stills
The Paper: We know that every time we shoot a documentary about animal populations, we more or less observe new behaviors or social patterns of groups.
Mark Brownlow: There are many, for example: narwhal and beluga whales share the same migration routes, but interactions between these two close species are rarely observed. The narwhal behavior captured in Frozen Planet 2 is very special and provides research material for a scientific publication. There is also a "spa" for bowhead whales. Bowhead whales can live up to more than 200 years, and every year, ancient and long-lived bowhead whales arrive in large numbers at secret bases known as "spas" for "rehabilitation", and their special "spas" have not been discovered until recently. In order to capture the scene, our production team also specially developed underwater "trap cameras" suitable for remote control.
The Paper: Please recommend "Frozen Planet 2" in one sentence.
Mark Brownlow: Get ready to embark on an epic journey to the most remote, extreme, yet magical places on earth and experience the wonders of life beyond human beliefs.
"Frozen Planet 2" stills