My last shoot for the BBC’s Alaska series is done. All went pretty well; two weeks up in the Arctic then a final few days charging around filming various scenics and wildflowers.
The time up in the arctic, based at the fantastic Toolik Field station, was great. We were continuing the Arctic Ground Squirrel sequence that we started a couple of months ago. This time the aim was to follow the pups emerging and heading off into the wild. Everything in the world of the arctic ground squirrel is weird – and the development of their pups is no exception. The summer is so short that they have to race through their pup-hood in record time, it was incredible to watch these tiny, gerbil sized, pups emerge and increase dramatically in confidence in a matter of days. In a few weeks they will be the size of a bunny and getting ready for the daunting prospect of 8 months of super-cooled hibernation, I’m not sure its a life I would choose, but they seem fairly resigned to things.
My room, and a selection of my clutter, at the wonderful Toolik field station
Toolik field station is about 400 miles up the Dalton Highway (of Ice Road Truckers fame) is an incredible location. A couple of hundred miles north of the arctic circle it’s a tiny collection of huts, cabins and labs – a fantastic community of 100 or so biologists, climatologists, geologists etc with a super friendly atmosphere with amazing facilities. We were made to feel extremely welcome, a huge thanks to everyone there.
North of the arctic circle at this time of year the sun never sets, and when it wasn’t actually raining, we set up a couple of time lapses to track the sun through a 24hr cycle. We got a couple of lovely shots, an interesting mix of calculation, guesswork and luck.
Setting up a sun tracking time-lapse with some friendly mosquitos
At the end of the shoot we spent a couple of days in Denali National Park, one of the most spectacular and beautiful places I’ve ever been. We were on the hunt for wildflowers, but in keeping with the weird weather we’ve had to cope with this series wildflowers were hard to find, but it was a fantastic place to be to round up the year I’ve worked on the series.
I’ve had a week at home, filled with school sports day, honey extraction, catching up with some very special old friends and finishing off the work to finally reclaim our house after the floods of this winter.
Next stop is Japan on Monday. I’m heading back to some very familiar territory – locations I filmed at extensively a few years ago for a film I made about Japanese Macaques. I’m really looking forward to getting back to a country I really love and seeing friends that I haven’t seen in far too long.
The last evening of filming, not a bad view, with Joe Tuck