National Geographic: Wild Passions Page #3

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Some unusual skills are required

for filming birds of prey.

Everybody ready?

Did it go over?

Neil uses a cross bow to rig cable

for tracking shots through

rain forest canopies.

We have a vertical tracking system

where we can lift the camera

from the ground to the top

of a huge tree.

We have a horizontal tracking system.

You get a floating sensation,

tracking through the forest.

All these things take a lot of time

and it's a lot of hard work.

Neil became known as a man

who could film in high places.

For awhile,

every phone call I was getting

from producers had something

to do with climbing.

No climbing was required

when Neil went to film in the Arctic.

A plane put him down on top of

remote Prince Leopold Island.

But the job did call for someone

who wasn't afraid of heights.

It was just incredibly bleak.

I mean the cliff just falls away,

a thousand feet straight down.

The cliffs were bathed

in sun the day Neil arrived.

But things went downhill after that.

We had the worst weather I think

I've ever experienced out on the field.

I mean blowing gales, and sleet,

and freezing rain, and howling wind.

Trapped in their tents

by the harsh weather,

Neil and his soundman were

going stir crazy-Arctic style.

All the eggs have fallen off the cliff

All the eggs have fallen off the cliff

All of them.

When the weather did clear,

Neil had other problems.

He was trying to film

a colony of murres,

nesting in crumbly stone

on the sides of the treacherous cliff.

To get the shot,

Neil had to go right to the edge.

The wind literally would

buffet you and, you know,

it threatened to blow you

right off the cliff.

Of course, you're not going

to survive falling 1,000 feet.

So we're talking about this 200-pound

apparatus that we had to set up right

on the edge of the cliff

with these rocks that are flaking away

And to get the shot, we wanted

to actually sweep the camera out

with a wide angle lens to sort

of give you a birds-eye view

of what it'd look like

to look straight down.

Neil got the shot

and then, a bonus.

There were thousands of nest sites

spread out along this cliff face.

And there was an Arctic fox

that used to raid the nests,

but he never came to the area where...

we were filming,

which was the ideal spot for filming.

One day, the fox came along

and I was just thinking,

"God, wouldn't it be great

if he started raiding these nests right

in front of the camera?"

And sure enough,

he went in front of the camera,

raided the nests, maybe 10 times,

I mean, it was just like

perfect choreography.

And that was probably the most

rewarding sequence

I've ever done in the wild.

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