How To Film in the Alps I Behind the Scenes

The sky above the Alps. Mighty mountain peaks and snow-covered glaciers characterize the landscape here. A place of steep, impressive and impassable terrain. These stunning images, showing the alpine wildlife in the midst of their habitat, stem from an unprecedented documentary in the making, called The Alps, Wild Mountains, Extreme Lives. But how were these breathtaking shots captured? Let's have a look behind the scenes. For the shots in the wilderness, wildlife filmmaker Otmar Penker and his crew take matters to the extreme. In order to get as close to the wild animals as possible, they have to rappel down steep rock walls and make long, difficult climbs in rough terrain. In the winter months, they have to overcome dangerous snow cornices and cross slopes on the deep snow. The deep powder makes the long and demanding climbs to the filming locations a physical challenge. Once at the top, the crew sometimes has to tough it out for days at very low temperatures in order to get the right shots. It took Otmar and his crew several weeks to get close enough to the chamois in order to show the animals in winter survival mode. It is very important for me to show animals outside, in their habitat, to show them as they behave in the wild. Of course, this takes a very, very long time. It's essential for a cameraman to handle the work he does outdoors in nature with great sensitivity. It is therefore very, very important to present yourself outdoors as if you'd never been there at all. But the patience in the wilderness pays off. Penker succeeds in capturing spectacular natural dramas with his camera, such as this failed attack by an inexperienced young eagle. As a cameraman, you don't give a second's thought to what's happening during such a ride down into the valley. I think any cameraman would certainly compare this to a skier winning at the Olympics. It was very important for us to shoot as many of the film's outdoor scenes in the right wild environment as possible. And we would not have been able to find these areas without the cooperation of the national park ranges and the professional wildlife trackers. Where are the eeries you've photographed? Where would it be interesting to film? It is always important that we have people on site to monitor this, who then draw conclusions from this behaviour. You then have to learn how to think like an animal, and then you can begin shooting. In order to get really close to the wildlife, you need more than just a film crew. Biologists and rangers, who follow the movements of the wild animals every day, play a crucial role. Actually, getting the shots you want or the ones you need for a feature film is not all that easy. But we really try to get some great shots, which is no problem at all with this landscape. However, precisely these shots of the golden eagle that people expect to see in the movie, that's really difficult. Embedded into stunning alpine landscapes, the Hohetown National Park proves to be the ideal setting for filming wildlife. For the desired shots, the heavy film equipment has to be taken deep into the pristine countryside and set up at the filming locations. Large jib grains were set up on mountain peaks to follow the golden eagle's movement smoothly through the air. Stay tuned for our upcoming episodes of the Behind the Scenes series and find out how our amazing bird's eye view was filmed.