Filmmaker James Cameron on penguins, arctic cold, and lowlight cameras

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James Cameron wasn’t near the penguins this time around, but he is extremely familiar with their environment.

“When I went to Antarctica myself, I had a Nikon still camera adapted to the cold with special lubricants,” he tells Popular Science. “I went to the South Pole and the film shattered in my hand when I tried to change it. The camera froze up. I took a video camera, I wrapped it in a heating pack and it [died] in two minutes. I have a good sense of what it takes to take conventional equipment into that environment and survive.”

This time, the legendary director of Titanic, Terminator 2, the Avatar series, and more served as an executive producer for National Geographic’s three-part documentary Secrets of the Penguins. The latest in the award-winning series, Secrets of the Penguins represents the culmination of a two-year excursion around the world. Over 70 scientists and filmmakers traversed the globe from Cape Town and the Galapagos islands all the way to Antarctica’s Ekström Ice Shelf to observe these iconic flightless birds. 

On the Ekström Ice Shelf, a three-person film crew withstood a total of 274 days documenting a 20,000-strong Emperor penguin colony. The team captured never-before-seen footage there of chicks navigating drift ice, penguins using their beaks to climb out of a crevice, and even a bonded pair of adults appear to practice rolling a future egg using a snowball stand-in.

While Cameron didn’t endure the subzero temperatures for Secrets of the Penguins, he still helped edit down the resulting hundreds of hours of footage into the new three-part series. And he’s grateful the team came prepared with more than just a Nikon.

“Just getting systems adapted to the cold and the heat in the tropics [required] cutting edge drone technology,” he says. “They used the DJI drones which are very, very good for this type of thing. GoPro, Osmo, Canon—I mean, you name it.”

What particularly interested Cameron—himself a pioneer in underwater and deep-ocean filmmaking technology—were the custom rigs designed to glimpse penguin colonies up close and personal.

[ Related: Poop stains reveal four previously unknown Emperor penguin colonies. ]

“[They have] to be able to get low and to move in amongst the penguins,” says Cameron. “It’s a personal acclamation. They have to get comfortable with some weird new thing in their environment, but after three days they’re kind of over it.”

He also cites the need for lowlight cameras due to the Antarctic’s unique sunlight conditions.

“A lot of stuff for that liminal environment when the sun is just skirting along the horizon and eventually just goes. You’re in kind of a constant twilight for a couple weeks,” Cameron says.

While Past Secrets of series entries focused on octopuses, whales, and elephants, Cameron says the themes are part of what sets this new series apart from previous entries.

“Look, you can’t study penguins without bumping up against climate change… [but] thematically, we wanted to present the wonder of nature and not beat people over the head with a guilt trip about our behaviors as human beings,” he said. “[But] they’re always being encroached upon, they’re always being negatively impacted.

Although Cameron says they tried their best not to be “too Cassandran” about the situation, he admits that the effects of warming temperatures were more striking than in previous seasons.

“Penguins live in these marginal coastal environments. Many are in Antarctica, and it’s being impacted. The polar regions are being impacted first and most strongly by climate change,” he says.

However, Cameron emphasizes the main aim of Secrets of the Penguins isn’t despair at all, but hope.

“The goal of the series is to take a new generation of viewers and cause them to have a sense of love and wonder at nature,” he says. “If we respect nature and we respect its wisdom about how these animals have learned to adapt and survive, maybe that will influence our behavior when push comes to shove.”

For Cameron, the world is still full of people dedicated to conservation and the celebration of nature.

“I like to think that’s the case, that we’re capable of that. I think many people are. Unfortunately, not enough people who are currently in power are,” he concedes. “But you know, you never know. We do our best.”

Secrets of the Penguins premieres April 20 at 8PM EST on National Geographic, with all episodes becoming available to stream the following day on Disney+ and Hulu.

 

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