Earth: DisneyNature's new film

Earth, the hotly anticipated new film from Disneynature—in theatres on Earth Day (April 22)—follows three families of mammals. It captures the spectacle of the animal kingdom on the Arctic sea ice, in the tropics and Kalahari Desert, and at the Antarctic’s Southern Ocean. Green Living caught up with Emmy Award-winning wildlife filmmaker and Earth’s co-director Alastair Fothergill (best known for producing and directing the BBC series Planet Earth) for a chat about climate, camera angles and the thrill of the chase.

Green Living: What do you hope people will take away from this type of film?

Alastair Fothergill: I think people are living an increasingly urban life and many will never see the sort of world or the animals we show. I hope that they’ll leave the cinema engaged, enlivened, enriched and stimulated to learn more about their planet.

GL: Earth shows the fine balance between life and death in the animal world—and it hints that climate change may disrupt that balance. Why wasn’t the environmental angle stronger?

AF: The message is subtle and it is deliberately subtle. We set out to show people—in an epic way—the beauty of the planet. I feel that people need to see and be inspired by these places. At the same time, we chose three characters that reflect major environmental issues in the natural world. Clearly, the polar bear is the symbol for global warming. Elephants, like many big land animals, have increasingly smaller spaces to live in because of an ever-growing human population. And the humpback whale has the largest marine migration of any mammal—4,000 miles! It does no good to just preserve Antarctica; you have to preserve the whole 4,000-mile migratory route.

GL: How did you get as close to the animals as you did, without disturbing them?

AF: The key was the aerial photography system we used—a Cineflex. It stabilizes a zoom lens on a camera and you can fly four times higher [about 500 metres] and still get the close-ups you need. The classic example from Earth is the wolf hunt [of caribou], which we filmed in Canada. Keeping up with the wolves on the open tundra was impossible—they’re too fast. That whole hunt—apart from two or three shots—was filmed from the air using a helicopter.

GL: What was your favourite part of filming?

AF: My favourite image is the swimming male polar bear. I knew I was filming something completely new. It was also a very beautiful image. I love the pull-out shot, where you start in on the world’s largest land carnivore and you pull out further and further, and it becomes this tiny white dot in the middle of the ocean. It seems to be a wonderful symbol for the fragility of the natural world.