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Episode 180: Lindsay McCrae — A Year Among Penguins
124 Plays5 years ago
Lindsay McCrae jumps on the podcast to talk about his book My Penguin Year: Life Among the Emperors.
Bay Path University's MFA in Creative Nonfiction Writing helped make this show possible.
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Transcript
BAFTA Win and Emotional Impact
00:00:00
Speaker
You don't sit there thinking you're creating BAFTA-worthy television. So when you get the nomination, it's very strange. But then when you actually win, it's like blimey.
Lindsay McRae and 'My Penguin Year'
00:00:12
Speaker
Hey, today we welcome Lindsay McRae to the podcast to talk about his book, My Penguin Year.
Creative Nonfiction Writing Opportunities
00:00:21
Speaker
But first, discover your story, man, with Bay Path University's fully online NFA and creative nonfiction writing.
00:00:29
Speaker
recent graduate Christine Brooks recalls her experience, but Bay Path's MFA faculty is being quote, filled with positive reinforcement and commitment. They have a true passion and love for their work. It shines through with every comment, every edit, and every reading assignment. The instructors are available to answer your questions big and small.
00:00:47
Speaker
and it is obvious that their years of experience as writers and teachers have made a faculty that I doubt can be beat anywhere." Don't just take her word for it, man. Apply now at paypath.edu slash MFA. Classes begin January 21st.
00:01:05
Speaker
You know who also sponsors this podcast? My monthly newsletter. That is going to be real important heading into 2020. So you need to heed this house ad and subscribe to the newsletter at BrendanOmero.com. Hey, hey, once a month, no spam. Can't beat it.
00:01:25
Speaker
So James Cameron, the famous film director said, if you set your goals ridiculously high and it's a failure, you will fail above everybody else's roof. Hey, you're here. It's you.
Introduction to the Podcast's Mission
00:01:51
Speaker
What's up, fellow CNF-er? It's CNF, the Creative Nonfiction Podcast, where I talk to badass people about the art and craft of telling true stories. We dig into what made them writers or filmmakers or radio producers and how they go about the work.
Social Media Break and Creative Focus
00:02:08
Speaker
So about earlier, the newsletter and such, my plan for a good chunk, if not the entire chunk of 2020, is to go on a social media sabbatical of some kind.
00:02:22
Speaker
Now, of course, I'd love it if you shared and linked up to the show wherever and whenever you can. Here's my reasoning. It's been taking up too much time and bandwidth, and I want to focus on the work. I want to make a podcast you love one worth sharing.
00:02:44
Speaker
I want to finish my damn baseball memoir. I want to start a long narrative podcast on a subject to be determined. I have determined it, but I have not, I have not determined whether I want to announce such a thing quite yet. I want to do more in real life things, but mainly I want to do good work and social media and my phone. It's this weird addiction I need to shake. I'm not a chronic tweeter or Instagram or Facebook or whatever.
00:03:12
Speaker
But I tend to mindlessly scroll when I have that odd moment of boredom and there's nothing to do. I check the phone like a rat getting a pit of cocaine from his feeder. There's something wrong there and I want to snap out of it. I want that energy to be directed at the work.
00:03:30
Speaker
Now, of course, I won't be a ghost. My email is very much available. Please send misses. Also, I'll communicate a lot through the newsletter. It's going to be much more robust, I think. It'll contain all the goodies you're used to, of course, but it'll probably contain things I'd tweet if I was tweeting.
00:03:49
Speaker
I'm making a list of all the sites that I tend to visit and things that I tend to stumble across on Twitter and making a list of people's tastes I really like so I can reach out to them and ask them, hey, what are the five things that you've been reading that you read this week that just kind of like blew your hair back? So thanks, Edward.
00:04:12
Speaker
To my newsletter, to me, newsletter subscriber is worth maybe 100 Twitter followers, you know? Because you signed up. There's no algorithm. We're enrolled in this together. And I want to, going forward too, I just want it to be kind of this community. I want to be able to offer really cool things. So I want to raffle off cool stuff.
00:04:33
Speaker
You know, if you subscribe to, I get a lot of books and I donate probably 90% of them might as well randomly give them away to you for being part of this community. You know, why not? You know, you're giving your time and your attention to this podcast, to the newsletter. I try to give as much value as I can here.
00:04:52
Speaker
But, you know, if I can throw you a bone elsewhere, why not, right? So that's where I'm at. I'll expand more, but I want to prime the pump as we wind down 2019. The best way to stay in touch, though, is through this podcast and that newsletter. So go ahead and subscribe to both. You exhausted? That was exhausting. It really was.
Lindsay McRae's Career Journey
00:05:17
Speaker
So Lindsey McRae is here, like I said, to talk about his 11 months in Antarctica filming penguins and he details it vividly in his book My Penguin Year. This conversation was a lot of fun and I hope you dig it.
00:05:50
Speaker
Yeah, it's funny, I grew up in the North West of England in an area called the Lake District and we
00:05:57
Speaker
had loads of green space, lots of mountains, lots of lakes, and I was just obsessed with the wildlife. Yeah, it was funny. I want to be a vet. I was desperate to want to work with animals. But then I was watching it on television and thinking, well, somebody's got to do that job. Maybe I can have a go at that. But you never quite think you're going to get there. I was just a normal boy from the north of the UK. And yeah, dreams don't come true for us. But I was one of the lucky ones.
00:06:26
Speaker
And what is or at what point did you realize that this was kind of a path you could chart? You know, were there people that started to emerge that was like, yeah, Lindsay, you can if you just kind of follow this path, this is this is how it can unfold for you. Yeah, when I was an early teenager, I wrote to the BBC wanting them to come and film in my area because I knew the place like the back of my hand and could direct them in the direction of
00:06:55
Speaker
certain wildlife but um yeah well they did they didn't make a film about the area they made a little film about me because this was sort of 18 years ago now i suppose and for a young boy it was kind of a funky thing to be doing none of my mates were into wildlife or bird watching it was just me and it was relatively unusual so they quite liked the idea they made this film about me watching a family of badgers and through that i met a few people and kept in touch with them and i think that was
00:07:25
Speaker
the first key ingredient, if you like, in my career, meeting some key people in the BBC that I could keep in touch with. And what were your, as you were growing up, what did your parents do? Well, my dad was a builder. My mum worked in education. Neither of them were into wildlife. Where I picked it up from, I'm not entirely sure. But they started paying interest because I was interested.
00:07:53
Speaker
Yeah, it was it was a weird one. I think it's purely because where I was brought up. It was such a beautiful area and we were out in the rural countryside. So it wasn't as if I could quickly knit down my mates house because that was a few miles away. So I just entertained myself and did so by watching the local animals. So I think that's probably
00:08:34
Speaker
quite sure whether it would work or not. I actually left school at 18. I got, they're called A levels in the UK, but it's the qualifications before you go to university. And I decided not to go to university, which thinking back was a pretty bold move, but it was in that first year I had no work whatsoever. In fact, I started working behind a bar. It was in that first year that the BBC offered me a job and all I was doing was making cups of tea and doing the shopping, but it was a foot in the door and
00:08:35
Speaker
how it all started.
00:09:02
Speaker
meeting yet again more people. And what kind of, as you were, as you had that foot in the door, what kind of notes were you taking, you know, figurative or literally as you were in that door but not doing the concrete work that you wanted to eventually do? Yeah, well I remember my first job at the BBC, it was for a program called Spring Watch, which is a live three-week event and it's live on the television every evening for an hour. And my work would be
00:09:32
Speaker
They'd be pretty long hours. I'd be working from eight
00:09:35
Speaker
am until about 10 p.m. non-stop and just doing what any whatever anybody wanted me to do I was a sort of dogs body on the production so my only spare time was pre 8 a.m. and obviously the best time for wildlife is early in the morning so I'd go in early you're talking four five o'clock in the morning and I'd be finding stuff and seeing stuff and ringing the producers and ringing the camera people saying look I found some cool stuff come and film it so they very quickly realized that I meant business and I knew what I was on about so
00:10:05
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, it was what I loved doing was watching wildlife, but it soon gave them an idea that I was keen and I knew what I was on about. That level of industry on your part is, I think, pretty rare. I think a lot of people might get kind of jaded for having to run errands and maybe fall into a sense of entitlement like, oh, I have talent. Why aren't I doing the thing?
00:10:34
Speaker
Off the clock you're already working like a like a fourteen hour day and then on top of that you're going out and scouting and finding things for them to do so where does that come from. Well it's just what i love doing i don't feel as i've ever worked a day in my life because everything i do with with wildlife is what i want to do and it's what i enjoy so.
00:10:54
Speaker
Even though I was finding stuff for the guys to film, I was seeing this amazing stuff as well and that was all I wanted to do. So it was win-win really.
00:11:11
Speaker
You can kind of pick your spots, but at the same time it can be unpredictable. So what was that experience like as you started transitioning into your freelance chapter of your early career?
Freelance Filmmaking Challenges
00:11:25
Speaker
Well, it's interesting really because I've never really known anything other than freelance. Even that first job at the BBC, it wasn't freelance, but it was a five-week contract. It was nothing really. So yeah, it's funny. I hear all these people that
00:11:38
Speaker
that worry about going out into the freelance world from security. And I've never actually experienced that security. So yeah, I can't really comment. I mean, I've been quite lucky. I don't feel nervous as a freelancer. I quite enjoy it. But I can imagine if I was to move into it from knowing what was happening, that it would be quite tricky. But yeah, that's all I've known.
00:12:00
Speaker
Yeah, and how do you maybe chart those waters and fill up your calendar with jobs that sustain you and your family, but also creatively as you try to pick those spots and continue to make a living doing the thing you love.
00:12:20
Speaker
Yeah, well, I'm quite lucky really, I can pick and choose what I like and there's not a lot of wildlife which I don't want to see. Yeah, anything that comes my way, I'm pretty keen. But yeah, it is tricky and like you say, you can't plan your year, it's almost impossible just because a lot of trips can jump around, times can change depending on either the wildlife or the weather.
00:12:48
Speaker
So, yeah, it is tricky and my wife and I very rarely are able to plan anything because I can't come back from Brazil, say, for just one day to go to a wedding or a friend's party just to go back again, so you end up missing it. So, yeah, it is a difficult lifestyle, but on the plus side, I get to see this amazing wildlife all the time and get unprecedented access.
00:13:15
Speaker
And as a videographer and cameraman, early on, what were some growing pains that you might have experienced as you were developing your skill set? I don't know, really. I mean, I started very young. So when I made that first film for the BBC, they actually lent me a camera. And that was my first experience with a camera. It was what I wanted to do, but I had no all my interest and expertise was on the wildlife.
00:13:42
Speaker
Um, so they let me this camera. I had to give them that back, but very quickly managed to save up and buy myself one. Um, and from then on, so from my early teen years, I'd be filming as much wildlife as possible and sending tapes to these people and in the BBC, and they'd be commenting and advising on where I could improve. So by the time I got to sort of 18, 19, um, I had a fairly decent idea of what I was doing. Um, but still I, I assisted.
00:14:10
Speaker
experience camera people and very quickly you learn just by watching them. I can't say what you learn but it just it's almost instinct on their part and me learning is almost instinct on my part so yeah it just rolls along.
00:14:27
Speaker
Right, and I always like to sometimes piggyback off of sport metaphors of even the most elite athletes. They've got all the physical talent, but even those elite athletes, they spend some of the most time watching film and studying and that kind of thing. And who might you be able to point to who is just such a great videographer, but they also did
00:14:55
Speaker
this unseen work that made them all the more better, all the more elite? Well, there's a couple of camera guys in the UK that are still filming now, but I grew up watching. One guy is still filming, but he's retired. He's a guy called Hugh Miles, and he was probably the greatest, in my opinion, the greatest wildlife camera person that's existed. I think he's in his 70s now.
00:15:25
Speaker
But there was him, there's a couple of guys still working that are in Scotland and they're all very, very keen and passionate about their wildlife rather than the technology. And that's always been my feeling. I've always, it's always been wildlife first and then sort of camera kit afterwards. I'm not a very technical person at all. But just, yeah, knowing, knowing what the wildlife's going to do. And yeah, I think, I think those guys and
00:15:54
Speaker
Yeah, watching their work was a definite help as I grew up. Yeah, and that kind of leads into what I wanted to ask you next, which kind of boils down to, you know, what kind of studying do you do ahead of a trip? And let's just say Antarctica with the Emperor penguins, you know, what is the kind of research you're doing ahead of time so then you're, you know, you're ready to see and document these wonderful things happening out on the ice?
00:16:23
Speaker
Yeah, well, Antarctica was the same as anywhere else, really. All I do is, if I don't know the wildlife very well, then just have a look at what behavior is known. But it's funny, because a lot of the stuff I've grown up watching in the UK here, common species, those principles of what behavior they demonstrate,
00:16:46
Speaker
are the same across the world. So say a red deer in the UK would be similar to an elk in the US or dogs and wolves.
00:17:01
Speaker
Once you've got a decent idea of general wildlife, then you're sort of covered. But in respect to the emperors, the penguins, their life cycle is fairly well known. So that didn't take much learning. But obviously, it's completely different responding to the conditions we were working in. And we simply couldn't replicate those. So it was a case of waiting till we got down there.
00:17:27
Speaker
And then learning on the job if you like because there's nowhere like Antarctica Yeah, what was the that moment the the rude awakening moment of wet of of getting hit in the face Maybe quite literally with the conditions down down there. Yeah Well, we'd actually we'd we'd not done any what we'd done training but on a glass here in Austria we'd put cameras into a a
00:17:54
Speaker
freezer room in the UK and drop the temperature to minus 40. But yeah, absolutely nothing could prepare me for those storms down there and the wind and just the environmental conditions. And it's funny that the storm was one of the times of the year I was most looking forward to because I knew that they'd be the hardest conditions I'll probably ever experience. And that's what excited me because even
00:18:18
Speaker
even scientists tend to head back to the warm in those kind of conditions. And obviously we had a job to do. We wanted to film the birds battling against these conditions. It's what they've evolved to do. So yeah, but still you're, you're looking into the wind and the only bit of exposed skin is your, your eyes. You've got this balaclava on, you've got this strip across your eyes and it's like somebody's yeah, just throwing sand at you. These tiny bits of ice just smashing you in the face and
00:18:45
Speaker
Yeah, every five, ten minutes you have to turn around and give yourself a break. Wow. And Antarctica, it's such a story of extremes itself. And just in your study, in your experience of the continent, what maybe surprised you about Antarctica that you weren't prepared for in all your preparation before you got down there?
Living and Filming in Antarctica
00:19:13
Speaker
I think just the purity of the place, there's beauty everywhere. I mean, I knew it would be a special trip and it was a place I'd always wanted to get to, but everything about the place was beautiful and the silence is indescribable. There's obviously, there's no noise pollution, there's no light pollution, and just that, it's just as nature intended it to be. I think the thing that got me is we were obviously filming the penguins. They breed on a frozen ocean which freezes in the autumn and then
00:19:44
Speaker
breaks up the following spring and summer. So that environment that the way like the icebergs and the sea ice freeze for that autumn for that winter is only like it for that 10 months or whatever and we were the only people to experience that landscape at that time as it was during that moment. So once it broke away again nobody else would see that landscape as it was.
00:20:08
Speaker
So I felt very, very lucky too. I mean, it was almost like going to the moon, I suppose. And what's amazing too, what you write about is that there was a time, and I don't know if it still happens now, but there definitely was a time when certain researchers or people like yourself would actually have like an appendectomy going down there because of the isolation and not being able to, you know, if someone's appendix burst,
00:20:34
Speaker
Talk about danger so those kind of precautions people would take it's it just it speaks to the the almost Suffocating isolation when you really think about it in those terms was it was it kind of when you think of it like that? Was it kind of you know scary in a way?
00:20:55
Speaker
Yeah, very. I think when I agreed to go on my dream of going to Antarctica and filming Emperors, I was never really aware of what it would take to actually fulfill that dream. And when I agreed to the trip and all this training and all these medical tests were going on, I was thinking, crikey, this is serious stuff. And yeah, that eight months of isolation, it changes everything because you have to be completely self-sufficient because you're right, there's no way you can get any help.
00:21:25
Speaker
you can get help you can you can ask to be evacuated but the likelihood of that actually happening is so small that you just accept that. It probably won't happen in fact it is actually easy to get somebody off the international space station than it is pulling somebody out of antarctica in the winter. And yeah absolutely i mean we fortunately had incredible medical facilities on the station that we were staying at our station leader was a.
00:21:50
Speaker
qualified and experienced surgeon Fortunately, he never had to use his skills, but you do think in the back of your mind, you know something goes wrong You're in trouble. So You've just got to live with those things if you want to to watch emperors through an entire breeding season and how do you mentally approach the the isolation and maybe at what point does it start to erode at your psyche a bit and
00:22:20
Speaker
I didn't really think about this until the couple of months leading up to leaving. And I really started to struggle. We've not been tested at all mentally, whether we could cope with being isolated, knowing we couldn't get home. And that couple of months leading up to leaving, I really started thinking maybe I'm not quite ready for this and thought about throwing the towel. Unfortunately, I didn't. But
00:22:46
Speaker
It just sort of dawned on me. You know, it was more that I was leaving people at home. I had a wife and I was thinking, Craig, I'm not going to see her for 11 whole months. But once you get down there and you get busy, we had good internet and what did help, we were on the same time zone. So you can pick up a phone whenever you want and call home. Um, so that did make life a lot easier, but still, there are some incredibly tough days in the middle of winter where you just want to get out, but you know, you can't.
00:23:14
Speaker
But we had a great team. There was 12 of us in total that lived together for that eight months. And we didn't have one argument. We all got on incredibly well. We looked after each other. And that's what made the difference, I think, at the end of the day. Yeah. And you also write that you were kind of the resident prankster. So to that point, what were some of the pranks that you were doing to foster a sense of camaraderie and also probably N11?
00:23:40
Speaker
I just loved playing jokes. I mean, it's just me anyway. But especially down there and keeping people's morale up. One thing I did have difficulty with was wasn't actually a prank at the end of the day. It was it was the day I became a father. So I became a dad in the April. And I'd not told anybody on the station, but I'd been relentlessly playing jokes up until this point. So when we sat down for dinner that evening and I informed everybody, look, guys, this is my new little boy. No one believed me.
00:24:11
Speaker
And it took me a good hour to convince everybody that, yeah, that I wasn't joking. How were you able to keep that a secret? Because that's such an animating force of this book, too, that as you go down Antarctica, your newlywed wife, essentially, is a few months pregnant, and you're going to miss the birth of your son, Walter. So how did you keep that bottled up up until that moment, given that you were kind of wrestling with that struggle?
00:24:39
Speaker
Yeah. Um, well, I mean, first things first is I didn't tell my producers at the BBC because I mean, it's a mental enough challenge getting through eight months of isolation as it is, let alone knowing that you're going to become a father whilst you're there. So I thought if I tell them they may pull me off the project and this is the, this is my dream. This is my one opportunity. And I didn't, didn't want that to change. So I didn't tell them.
00:25:05
Speaker
until the last plane that actually left, so there was no way out then. And I thought, I'll just send this email and hope they don't get mad with me. But yeah, the other guys, it wasn't, well, Becky and I was our first child, so we didn't know what to expect ourselves. And that's one of the reasons we chose to go ahead with this. I think if we knew what was coming our way, I probably wouldn't have done the trip, but it was the first experience for both of us. So that's why I went ahead with it.
00:25:34
Speaker
The other guys had their own worries. They'd left home as well for over a year. And I didn't want them worrying about me knowing that it wasn't their problem. So I just kept it to myself. And when it happened, it happened and let them all know. And I mean, they loved it because it was sort of a little nugget of normality, if you like, into our extraordinary year. And they were big. They were party animals, the rest of them. So it was a great excuse for a few drinks that evening.
00:26:05
Speaker
And there's a moment in the book, too, where you're watching The Penguins, and I believe you miss the transfer of an egg from the mother to the father, and you were transfixed by it, but then also, once that moment,
00:26:23
Speaker
receded you're like oh like oh shit I missed this and like there's that moment of kicking yourself what was that moment moment like and how do you process that and maybe recover from it so you don't dwell on it and you can get the next one yeah well that the moment was actually an egg being laid and okay yeah but it but yeah it's all part of the same process because within half an hour it is transferred to the the male and the female heads off but
00:26:50
Speaker
The egg laying was one of the key bits of behavior I wanted to capture because it hadn't been done properly before. I'd scoured the internet trying to find footage of emperors laying eggs and I just couldn't. And I knew that it was a key part of our film. We couldn't really demonstrate emperors reproducing without shots of them laying eggs. And even though
00:27:15
Speaker
Um, we still had what, 5,000 birds to lay eggs. That first one that I missed. Yeah. I was incredibly angry because I thought that may be my only chance and.
00:27:25
Speaker
It's funny, I go back to knowing what was going to happen through watching other wildlife. And I do write this in the book. The only experience I'd seen of birds laying eggs were from a kestrel back at home. Not many people see wild birds laying eggs. It's a very private affair. But me watching that kestrel a few years before Antarctica was the only bit of
00:27:50
Speaker
It gave me the only clues in my head of what to look out for. Anyway, I missed that first emperor laying an egg, but very quickly noticed which birds were about to lay eggs. Fortunately, we ended up getting five or six shots of egg laying, but it wasn't easy. That evening, I was pretty down because I really thought I'd screwed our only opportunity.
00:28:12
Speaker
Yeah, because it also happens in very, very low light, if not completely at night. So you're dealing with, it's hard to spot, I imagine. And so you've, you know, if you miss the one opportunity and based on where the wind's blowing and how that pushes the colony, like, that could have been the opportunity. But fortunately, you were able to recover and get the shots you needed.
00:28:36
Speaker
Yeah, it's funny because the only part of the breeding process that had happened by the 20th of May, which is when we lost the sun, was mating. Everything else happened in that period of
00:28:49
Speaker
I mean, it's not completely dark, but certainly very, very short days for 62 days when we don't have the sun. You've only really got a couple of hours over midday where the sun comes close to the horizon and gives you enough light to be able to film. And yeah, all that behavior happened during these two months. So we were under a bit of pressure during the winter, but yeah, we had the kit to be able to help us out.
00:29:16
Speaker
It's interesting, the last time the BBC I think overwintered in Antarctica to film emperors in this way, they were all still on film cameras, so a lot has changed since that last trip and fortunately we had access to an incredible amount of technology during our trip.
00:29:32
Speaker
And what kind of struck me too about just the process of you guys getting all this tape and all this film was it made me wonder if the film, their script and their narration is based solely on what you're able to capture or if you're given a rough script of this is what we want to talk about, please capture this if you can. How does that work for the final package?
00:29:59
Speaker
Yeah. Well, and this was slightly different because the series that we were working for was, um, was a series where each program was focusing on an individual family of animals and that same family rather than jumping across the planet, filming just key bits of behavior from different species. Um, so we were given, we were obviously given each, uh, we were given a shopping list, if you like, of, uh, emperor.
00:30:27
Speaker
behavior so that included mating, egg laying, the transfer of the egg, the male's huddling. This is all behavior which is well known in Emperor Penguins and it's a story that's been told numerous times before, it wasn't new. Yeah, because we were just making a film about the emperors, a lot of what did make the final film, we were relying on what happened when we were down there and fortunately we had endless amounts of time, we had the entire year where we were just sat with the penguins hoping that
00:30:56
Speaker
big events would happen in front of us unfortunately we did we got we got a few events we got a kidnapping and then this behavior is known to science but to be able to see it in such detail in front of us was in we were so lucky
00:31:10
Speaker
We had another event where a couple of birds were incubating a snowball, a lump of ice rather than an egg. And that was apparently then practicing. And after a big storm, the birds, the colony was pushed so far across the ice, they actually relocated and in long lines traveled back to where they'd started. And that was new to
Penguin Chick Survival in Antarctica
00:31:29
Speaker
science. So these tiny little events, which only occurred once or twice in front of us, did form the ingredients for our final film. And we couldn't have planned any of those.
00:31:40
Speaker
What surprised me too, and of course these birds have evolved over millennia to withstand this kind of pressure and weather in that environment, was really the abject carnage of after the hatching takes place.
00:31:59
Speaker
being windy and cold and there's a lot of there's a lot of death on the ice and a lot of chicks don't make it and they have one shot per season and it's it kind of amazed me how many how many chicks didn't they don't make it just because that's just the nature of the season did that surprise you as well yeah I I knew we'd we'd see some death I didn't quite expect to see so much
00:32:26
Speaker
But yeah, I think during the winter when males are incubating eggs and they're sort of waddling around with one egg on their feet that doesn't move, that's relatively easy. It's when the chicks start hatching and they're wriggling around and obviously once they get to two, three weeks old, they want to hop off and run around themselves. It's quite difficult keeping them under control. And yeah, very quickly with a bad bit of weather, a chick can get separated from its parent and that's the end of it, unfortunately. They just can't
00:32:56
Speaker
withstand the brutality of those early days on their own. And yeah, we had some horrendous storms. The weather just seemed to be more and more unpredictable in the spring. I was expecting a quite dramatic improvement from the winter, but the wind especially was just so relentless and that did cause a bit of damage in amongst the colony.
00:33:18
Speaker
And in watching things of nature like planet Earth or whatever, and you see these great mating displays with birds and this, that, and the other, this gorgeous cinematography, I think a lot of people might not necessarily understand the immense amount of patience that you guys as the camera operators are undergoing to maybe catch a five to 10 second clip where you might be sitting there for maybe eight to 10 hours to try to get that.
00:33:46
Speaker
I imagine – maybe take us behind the scenes for that about how – sometimes how long it takes for you guys to get that perfect shot that we're so lucky to see on the television or on the movie screen. In my head, nothing's ever perfect. You always want to improve. Right. But yeah, for Antarctica – I mean penguins aren't difficult to film. They don't move very fast.
00:34:10
Speaker
But the call, you know, there's a lot of them and I'd spend, I, I tend to either kneel on the ice or sit on the ice. The camera, we'd obviously want to be very low just to generate that low perspective. And, and that would mean me bent over quite a lot in temperatures that would drop to what minus 15 nearly minus 60 with a bit of wind for hours and hours on end. And.
00:34:35
Speaker
Yeah, I'd sort of focus on, well, just to give you an example, a couple, so maybe trying to capture a couple either laying an egg or transferring an egg that could take a while.
00:34:47
Speaker
I'd focus on these two birds and watch and film them as much as possible. And it wouldn't take much for another bird. They're very inquisitive and they just tend to walk over to you to stand in between me and the two birds I'd been watching for so long and ruin my shot. And I'd have to stand up, move the camera to one side to be able to see the two birds. And by this time, the other two birds have either disappeared or they've been
00:35:12
Speaker
Obstructed by other bird is incredibly frustrating at the end of the day so yeah, it takes a lot of time and perseverance, but It's funny because in Antarctica obviously is so different from everywhere else a really really good day in Antarctica where everything goes right no kit breaks and
00:35:33
Speaker
is a horrendous one anywhere else on this planet. You're just constantly battling with the conditions. So yeah, I think we had to learn to cope with the frustration because it was happening all the time.
00:35:46
Speaker
And at what point did you, after you've come home of course and you've unpacked your footage and sent it off to your producers or whatever, at what point do you know that this is a book worthy story and this is something that you want to take on from that creative outlet? Yeah, well I'd always wanted to write a book, I mean from a young boy I've always enjoyed writing and I
00:36:11
Speaker
well, never really had the time or, or the opportunity. And even before this trip had happened, I thought this, you know, this is such an extraordinary thing to be doing. This is the perfect subject for me to, to write about. And I did start writing down there. Um, and I got to the end of February, so a couple of months in and I just couldn't, couldn't keep up. There was too much to be doing, but I kept a detailed diary. And obviously we had a film at the end of it to remind us about what happened.
00:36:36
Speaker
So as soon as I got back, I, um, I started again. And, um, yeah, I mean, the whole idea was that it's such a remote place and so few people ever get, will ever get the opportunity to visit Antarctica. Uh, it's also very expensive. So even tourists, very few of them get down there. Um, that this was my, my way of trying to tell people what, what the place is like. So yeah, I feel very lucky, but, but also, um,
00:37:05
Speaker
hoping that I can tell people and show them that these kind of places still exist on Earth and they're worth looking after. And as you were crafting this and getting into the mud of the writing process, what was your challenge of trying to sustain and tell a long story where there aren't that many characters, of course? Maybe the main character is the landscape.
00:37:34
Speaker
Yeah, I'm not sure. I based it in obviously chronological order from when we arrived and it was very much centered around the bird's breathing behavior and breathing season. And the cool thing I found was even scientists that have studied emperors their entire life have not had the opportunities that we had. We had this uninterrupted year where we could just sit and watch
00:37:59
Speaker
Emperors living their lives and it was such a rare thing to be doing I think you could probably count on one hand if not two The amount of people that have been able to do that and yeah, so it was it was mainly following the Emperor's Year, but but also weaving in my
00:38:19
Speaker
Emotionally experienced so obviously a lot of people will have seen the final film and there's so much more that goes into these trips than just that And also it's not just me that made the sacrifices to be able to do it I had a wife back at home and in the end I had a little boy and these without these people the trip wouldn't have happened so Yeah, that was That was the main thing behind the book really
00:38:43
Speaker
Yeah, and one of the more harrowing scenes in the book, of course, comes towards the end where, you know, you guys have made some, you know, you've filmed what's going on, a big storm comes through and blows a bunch of pairings and families basically into this gully and you guys have a decision to make. Maybe take us to that moment because, you know, you guys really wrestled about what to do.
00:39:07
Speaker
Yeah, we've been with the birds probably 10 months at this point and we knew them incredibly well. We cared for them. We'd been through almost everything with them ever since they arrived back in the March. And we arrived back to the colony. We'd not been able to get to them for a couple of weeks at least with just the most horrendous storm that came through and just didn't relent. And this was right in the middle of chicks hatching. So it was a real key time of year for them.
00:39:35
Speaker
And it was carnage when we got back down to them. There were chicks running around. There were dead chicks everywhere. There were parents looking for chicks they'd lost. And then there were these massive gullies where birds had been blown into them. And obviously our first job was to work out what was happening. This was a really unique event that we didn't expect was going to happen. And we needed to document what was happening. That was our job first and foremost. So we sat back and very quickly we realized that
00:40:05
Speaker
parents that still had such small chicks that they were still on their feet and relying on the warmth of their parent. Those adults couldn't move around, couldn't use their legs to the greatest extent, and they were just shuffling about. And those are the birds that couldn't climb these walls of ice. Birds that could use their feet and didn't have a chick to worry about, amazingly, could get up and down with no problem whatsoever. They were using their beakers and ice axe and their strong claws to
00:40:33
Speaker
pushed themselves up and I mean that was pretty cool because we didn't know emperors could climb that well to start with but these birds were having to make a pretty horrendous decision it was either save themselves and leave their chicks to die at the bottom of this gully that couldn't get out or they both died and this event was so unique in the fact that they hadn't been chased in there by a predator
00:40:56
Speaker
There weren't any other predators in Antarctica at this time of year. Emperors are the only animals to stay and breed through the winter. And that's one of their strategies, is they breed when no other creature exists, so there's no predators to worry about. But on the other hand, the weather is their big predator. So if we were to intervene, we weren't affecting the balance of nature here, because there was nothing else that would benefit off dying penguins.
00:41:22
Speaker
and the dead penguins would only get buried anyway. So we took the steps to jump into this gully and dig them a little ramp.
00:41:33
Speaker
just give them a shallower incline to be able to climb up and we didn't help them directly. We gave them an option and fortunately they decided to use it. Yeah, it was amazing is that you gave them that option and then they I imagine that they're kind of watching you the whole time and then you know you let them be like you know here's
00:41:54
Speaker
here's your ramp and if you want to use it, it's on you guys and it must have been a great feeling for you guys to see that first head pop up and as they start kind of marching their way up and into a little bit more safe conditions. Yeah, no, it was fantastic. We dug this shallow ramp and I remember looking over to them and this group of birds at the other end of the gully, their heads were hanging low.
00:42:20
Speaker
They looked like they'd given up. But by this time we knew the birds well, we knew, I knew how intelligent they were. And I did wonder, I was like, do you, do you know what we're trying to do here? Do you know that we're giving you an option? And it only took a minute or two once we got out of the way for the first bird to go over and inspect it.
00:42:39
Speaker
and start climbing up it, and that's all it took. Obviously, the rest followed then and copied, and that was that. And as you're sitting down to write this book, of course, I love digging into routines about how people generate their pages in a merry, maybe that perfect vision they have in their head with the garbage that is coming out onto the page.
00:43:02
Speaker
And so how did you set up a writing discipline over the course of your drafting process of this book? So you were getting pages, getting words down that you could shape later. Yeah, well, the only time I got really was from about December last year. And I actually have two boys now. Ernest was born in April this year. Nice, congrats.
00:43:25
Speaker
Thanks very much. But I knew that if I don't get this book done by the time Ernest is born, it won't happen. So I really did have to be disciplined. And I sat down every day and I just thought if I could get this many words done today or this many words done this week, I'm on course. And I think by the time this was born, I still had the last chapter to write, but that was just about doable with the carnage of two boys.
00:43:54
Speaker
But yeah, that was it. Yeah, I quite enjoyed just sitting down and get it doing. Obviously, this time of year in the UK, the weather's pretty rubbish. So you're looking out the window and just watching the bird feeders. But yeah, in the rain, it's quite nice just sitting down and putting pen to paper. At what time of day did you usually sit down to start writing? Probably, yeah, a decent session in the morning and then break over lunchtime, maybe a quick walk with the dogs, and then say them again in the afternoon.
00:44:24
Speaker
And it's funny, I always wanted to be more disciplined. I was like, well, this week's gone pretty good. Maybe I should up it for next week. And before you know it, you've done it. So, I mean, that's the way it worked with me, but I guess everyone's different. But yeah, it went a lot faster than I thought it was going to with this book.
00:44:47
Speaker
And I like to say that books are often made of books. And what were some books that you could point to and that helped sort of inform the book you wanted to write? You know what? None. This was a book that was... Well, it was... The Emperor of Behavior that I wanted to write about was purely on
00:45:12
Speaker
from my experience this this was stuff that I wanted to write about that I'd witnessed firsthand and there was obviously key facts about you know what how much food a penguin eats or how heavy they become but what I wanted to make this book is is from the perspective of one of very very few people that has actually seen all these events with their own eyes and I don't know how many people can say that but I just wanted to
00:45:42
Speaker
to be able to write all this from my own point of view. So I didn't actually read that much about Antarctica beforehand. I just relied on what I'd experienced.
00:45:53
Speaker
And I think the real special grace note of the whole book is here you are documenting this very sort of intimate mating ritual and parenting ritual while you yourself are sort of removed from that early experience with your newborn son and your wife.
Parental Reflections During Filming
00:46:14
Speaker
I think that tension worked really well to your advantage of
00:46:19
Speaker
just the experience and the distance that you must have been feeling as you were filming this with these penguins. Yeah. It's funny, some days you feel extremely far removed and to be honest, didn't feel I was a dad until I got home. On the other hand, when I did get back, I felt like I knew Walter so well because Becky had been able to send me pictures and videos every day and the only thing I hadn't done was touched him.
00:46:48
Speaker
But, but yeah, there were some, there were some tough days in the, in the middle of winter, but the whole experience was so magical that you, I think back now and it's difficult to remember those bad days because you sort of looked at the whole thing through rose tinted glasses and you, and you just remember the good bits.
00:47:08
Speaker
and to beckon my wife constantly reminds me, you rang me in tears so many times and yeah, it's definitely helped with the book to keep going back to those personal bits.
00:47:21
Speaker
And towards the end of the book, as you're packing up to go from Antarctica to make your trip home, you said you had read cautionary tales of people returning to reality. What was that moment of apprehension like for you as you leave this isolated place with no noise or light pollution and then re-enter modern civilization? How hard was that transition?
00:47:44
Speaker
Yeah, it was something I was petrified of, if I'm honest, because we'd experienced such an easy way of life down there and got very used to it. And nothing happens slowly down there. And we were actually told, you know, in the next 48 hours, there's a weather window, the first plane's coming, you're going to jump on it, you're on your way home, so pack your bags.
00:48:07
Speaker
And so we didn't really have time to think about leaving. But then, yeah, you're right. I've not seen a car. I've not seen a tree. I've not seen anybody else other than my 11 colleagues for that entire eight months. And all of a sudden, I was going to be thrown into Cape Town Airport. And then Heathrow back in the UK and back into normal life. And I was worried because I had read some horror stories about people returning from isolation like that. But
00:48:35
Speaker
I think the one advantage I had, which ended up saving me, was being thrown into parenthood so quickly, because I wasn't given that opportunity to think about life down there. I was just, here's your boy, look after him, which is obviously a 24-7 job. So I think without little Walter and without that job of being a dad, I'd have thought about it, and I think I'd have really struggled. But thankfully, he was the best distraction I could have had.
00:49:04
Speaker
Yeah, it worked. And take us to that moment when you win the BAFTA for your work on this project. What was the predominant feeling as you win a premier award for your primary work? Yeah, very strange. We obviously do this because we love wildlife. You don't sit there thinking,
00:49:29
Speaker
you're creating BAFTA worthy television. So when you get the nomination, it's very strange. But then when you actually win, it's like blimey. I mean, it's lovely to be recognised for the work that we've done. But yeah, on the other hand, it was it was very strange. But I know how lucky I am. I mean, a lot of these programmes are filmed by
00:49:50
Speaker
up to 10 camera people, they film different sequences across the globe and they all get put together. But for this, I was the sole camera person. And just to be given the opportunity to be able to make a whole film on your own about the creature you dreamt about making a film about, not many people get that chance. And then to win a BAFTA on top of that was
00:50:16
Speaker
Yeah it did feel good but very strange on the other hand because yeah usually these nights out I was like oh no thanks I'll just stay at home but it was Becky was like you have to go to the BAFTAs this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity so yeah so we went and yeah we got lucky.
00:50:34
Speaker
And over the course of writing the book, was it a process that you celebrated and enjoyed and something you want to continue doing? Or are you going to light a match and burn the bridge from that experience? Yeah. Well, you know what? I made very clear to my publisher beforehand that you do realize I've never written a book before, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. And yeah, I would absolutely love to write something else.
00:51:05
Speaker
What's the space so i'll think of something and hopefully have another go but you know i really enjoyed it so different to the television world so.
00:51:14
Speaker
Yeah, no, I loved it. And just a couple more things, Lindsay. I wonder if, just given that Antarctica is so isolated and so dark for so much of the year, can you describe what the sky and the stars must look like, devoid of all light pollution? What's that like for someone like me who would love nothing more than to see a perfect lit up sky like that?
00:51:42
Speaker
I mean, it is amazing. We spent a lot of time with the birds under moonlight in the winter and for tourists,
00:51:50
Speaker
visit the lucky tourists that can visit Antarctica obviously they only do that during the summer when they can get in and out otherwise you've got to experience that period of isolation and you've got to be working for that really so you don't see many sunsets or you know it's blinding blue and white during that time of year but to really experience that
00:52:12
Speaker
Magic is when the sun starts to set and you start to get the darkness and yeah for that you have to stay for those eight months. So yeah that dark and cold period is phenomenal because like you say there's nothing there to spoil it and I think one of the most memorable evenings of our trip was when we filmed the southern lights over the colony because that event just blew us all away. It was just I don't think I'll ever see a site like that again and
Antarctic Night Sky Beauty
00:52:42
Speaker
It's funny because it's probably the most beautiful that our earth, you know, the most beautiful natural site our earth has to offer. And one of very few people that can say they've seen it. Well, Lindsay, where can people get more familiar with your work and maybe find you online so they can buy the book and also just follow what you're doing and your exploits in the wilderness?
00:53:07
Speaker
Well Instagram and Twitter and both at BadgerBoy05 and the BadgerBoy comes from my first film for the BBC when I was a young teenager because I filmed Badgers and I was a boy so they nicknamed me BadgerBoy so that's where that came from yeah BadgerBoy05
00:53:25
Speaker
Well, fantastic. Well, it's the kind of work that you're doing that gives people maybe that extra push for conservation and letting us know what amazing critters are out there so that maybe we can stem the tide of a lot of this human-induced worldwide destruction so we can all live and these animals can do what they do and maybe we can save this planet.
00:53:52
Speaker
Thanks for all thanks for all your work Lindsay and I and thanks for writing the book. Oh, thank you ever so much for having me It's been good fun. All right. Take care Lindsay
00:54:02
Speaker
I tell you, recording the intro, I lost all my mojo. That intro took a lot out of me today, man. Well, how was that? That was all right. That was not bad. That was a great conversation with Lindsay. That was a lot of fun. Gotta love the accent, right? You know, we Americans, we just, we love a good British accent. So thanks so much to Lindsay and thanks to Paypath, of course, for supporting the show and thanks to you for listening.
00:54:28
Speaker
I don't just say that offhandedly and dismissively like so many other hoes do. I am figuratively on my knees. Thank you for your time and listening. Like I said at the top of the show, be sure to subscribe to the newsletter, BrendanOmero.com, hey hey, and join that community first of the month.
00:54:45
Speaker
Also, subscribe to the podcast. I mean, why not, right? It's free. We want to keep fostering greater connections among the CNF and genre. If you're feeling kind, leave a review on Apple Podcast. We're getting close to 100. Can you believe it? Let's do this, man. Let's get to the finish line. Hey, some things they never change. Like if you can do interview, see ya.