With the inevitability of that seal being washed off the ice floe to be gobbled up by a marauding pod of killer whales, the Frozen Planet camera team bagged the Best Photography prize at the Royal Television Society awards last night – somewhat predictable, but I think I would have had a heart attack if it had gone any other way, it was a very deserving winner.
It was a great evening though; free champagne and a red carpet which was a bit more like a large doormat than the usual Academy Award type walkway. Ants did look fantastic on the big screen, and did get a big cheer when it came up as a nominee.
It was lovely to see material I’d filmed featured in a few of the nominated films; Madagascar, Ants and my snow monkey footage from the One Life feature film all looked great on the cinema screen. There were some very deserving winners; Madagascar got pipped by the wonderful ‘My Life as a Turkey’ in the Best Wildlife Programme category (also beating Frozen Planet to show that there is hope for the little guy!) and Human Planet won Best Specialist Factual.
I’m off to Alaska tomorrow to carry on with the two films I’m working on there for Parthenon / Animal Planet. The main aim of this trip is to see if we can film wolves scavenging on a moose carcass. I think it could be tricky, I tried filming wolves from this pack several years ago and after a huge amount of effort only got one shot on a remote camera, this time we’re taking out a much more elaborate remote camera setup and I’m really excited at the thought of what we might see – wolves, wolverine, brown bear (apparently there is still one out and about in the area despite it being midwinter) and, of course, the Sasquatch.
I’m working with old friends Rick & Jessy from the Alaska Department of Fish & Game, they seem pretty relaxed about the chances of the wolves turning up and it’s been a very hard winter in Alaska this year so they should be hungry. The action is probably going to happen at night, I’ll be filming in infra red and it’s going to be a case of sitting and monitoring the cameras throughout the night, it’s been -26C there recently, I’ll pack some extra socks.