I still consider Luc Jacquet’s March of the Penguins from 2005 to be the most committed and heroic filmmaking project in the history of natural world documentation. From a budget of $8 million, the box office receipts topped $125 million, and rightly so.
The main challenge in making the documentary was the weather, with temperatures between -58 and -76 degrees Fahrenheit (-50 and -60 degrees Celsius). At dawn, the film crew would spend half an hour putting on six layers of clothes, and on some days they could not spend more than three hours outside. They also worked in winds with gusts up to 125 miles per hour. But the result was an astonishing achievement and the most immersive insight into the extreme yearly life of emperor penguins. Jacquet and his team deserve every accolade they received.
In comparison, my work in South Georgia with king penguins was a complete walk in the park. There was absolutely nothing heroic about the trip at all and, if anything, the weather was a little too springlike to offer the kind of visceral imagery I was seeking.
Penguins do march very much like a military regiment, and I hoped that one day my team and I would be treated to some miserable conditions in South Georgia, as snowfall can add character to an image and endorse a sense of place. We got our day, and luckily this king penguin group obliged with this vignette. The lead guy certainly has a Napoleon look about him, and the topography of the beach added to the composition and offered some depth to the narrative.
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