March of the Penguins

In the june 2005 issue of Videography there is an article describing the making of the film “March of the Penguins. The movie is meant to be a documentary of the journey that Antarctica’s emperor penguins make ever winter. The penguins travel to their ancestral breeding grounds to lay their eggs and stay there until the end of winter.
Although the film was originally going to be a French television show, director Luc Jacquet wanted it to be a full length movie and was able to do so with the help of “Wild Bunch” ( http://www.wild-bunch.com/homepage.cfm ). The crew of 3 and Jacquet went to shoot in Archipelago in Adelie Antarctica and remained there for 13 months to shoot the movie. They brought 2 specially modified Aaton XTR Super 16mm cameras. The problem was that the grease that helps the mechanics of the camera move would have frozen if introduced to the cold Antarctic environment. The modifications involved removing the grease. The crew knew to bring 2 of everything because if a piece of equipment broke, there would be no replacement for thousands of miles.
Having filmed penguins before, Jacquet knew what shots he was looking for. For important events the crew used both cameras to capture the events from different angles. Customized, waterproof, battery-opperated heating pads were wrapped around the camera to keep them warm and functional. When filming underwater, 2 divers used DSR-PD170 camcorders encased in Scubapro housings. They also drilled a hole in the ice and attached a small Toshiba IKATU-68 camera to the end of a pole to get extra underwater scenes.
The result was 120 hours of footage. The biggest difficulty in editing was to make some individual penguins recognizable to viewers. There was also trouble to find an appropriate pace for the film because penguins are very slow animals.
The movies French release included voice overs for the adult and baby penguins, but for the American version, the voices were cut out and replaced by a “elegant narration” by Morgan Freeman. No visual effects were necessary but the film did need allot of image stabilization and dust and scratch removal.