Father-son filmmakers Greg and Shaun MacGillivray head to the
Arctic for an IMAX documentary on temperature changes and turn the
spotlight on a polar bear family.
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By Susan King, Los Angeles Times
April 19, 2012
Polar bears tend to be camera shy, which caused problems for the
filmmakers of the newWarner Bros./Imax adventure"To the
Arctic,"opening Friday.
The 40-minute 3-D documentary examines extreme temperature
changes in the Arctic, which has led to the permanent ice pack
melting quickly and endangering the existence of animals such as
polar bears, caribou, seals, walruses and birds that are indigenous
to the region.
Narrated by Meryl Streep, "To the Arctic" is the latest movie
from two-time Oscar-nominated filmmaker Greg MacGillivray ("The
Living Sea," "Dolphins") and his producer son, Shaun MacGillivray
("Grand Canyon Adventure: River at Risk"). The film's editor,
Stephen Judson, wrote the script.
The production lasted four years, including eight months on
location in the Arctic — but for the first six trips, the
filmmakers were unable to get any usable footage of polar bear
mothers and cubs, the animals most closely associated with the
Arctic.
"When it comes to wildlife filmmaking, you can have the best
script in the world but you don't know what you are going to get
until you are there," said Shaun. "We got incredible footage of
caribou herds, good stories with other animals like the walrus and
great aerial photography."
Then, on their last trip in 2010, the crew spent a month on a
130-foot ice breaker, the MS Havsel, in and around the seas of
Svalbard, Norway. That is where they found their stars.
"We were with them for five days straight," Shaun said. "We got
that incredible sense of both being emotionally connected to them,
but also what it was like for a single mom polar bear to be raising
two cubs in an environment that gets harder every day."
At one point, the ice floe the bears were resting on floated
within 20 feet of the ice breaker. "Even then she would sniff at
us, but she wasn't freaked," said Greg. "The captain of the boat
... he felt after observing her for a couple of days that 'this is
the smartest bear I have ever been around. She is not expending
energy to get away from us all. Bears I have seen expend energy —
they jump in the water, they swim away and they walk along the ice
floe to get away. But she said I am not going to expend any energy
to get away from this boat. I am comfortable.'''
Extremely comfortable.
The first day they saw the trio, the mother and her cubs were
sleeping and playing when suddenly, she began to dig a hole in the
ice. "I said, 'Why is she doing that?' Maybe there is a seal
there," said Greg.
But that wasn't the case. She actually fashioned a chair out of
the hole. "She lounged back in the air and she huffed," said the
director. "It was a certain kind of huff and all of a sudden, the
two cubs came running over and it was time to nurse. She was on her
back, vulnerable as she could be with her nose — which is more or
less her early warning device — lower, not high like they want it
to be. The captain was right. This is an exceptional bear. This is
our story. We got to stay next to these bears as long as we
possibly could. It was an exceptional experience."
There are many "Aww" moments in the film with the cubs
rough-housing and playing hide and seek on the ice floe. One of the
cubs loves to play with its own paw.
But there was a lot of heavy drama because the bears' primary
food source, seals, are not as plentiful as they once were. So male
polar bears are now devouring bear cubs for sustenance. The
MacGillivrays were able to capture frantic moments when the mother
bear was trying desperately to save her cubs. "Our hearts were in
our throats," Shaun said, especially because their rule as
filmmakers is that they can't interfere with Mother Nature.
Each time, though the mother bear was able to hold off the
attack. "She was just so amazing to be able to stand up to the male
polar bear and be able to communicate with her cubs to always stay
in front of her," said Shaun.
"You just go, 'Wow. That is true courage and true love,'" Greg
said.
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