Climate change documentary in the works……

We are currently in production of a climate change documentary based around the work of biologist George Divoky and his 40 year study of seabirds in the Arctic. As part of the project, several industry magazines recently printed a story about the project and the choice of Anton Bauer products to power equipment in challenging locations. Here is the story as it appeared-

(Cooper Island, Alaska–July 19, 2012) When award-winning filmmaker David Wright of Planet Earth Pictures agreed to travel to Alaska and film the upcoming educational documentary, An Uncertain Future, he chose batteries from Anton/Bauer®, part of Vitec Videocom, a Vitec Group company, and a premier global provider of batteries, chargers, lighting and other mobile power systems for the professional broadcast, video and film industries, to power his equipment. Wright traveled with a supply of Anton/Bauer’s DIONIC® 90 and CINE VCLX batteries to support his Panasonic HDX900 and Canon XF105 cameras, as he embarked on a month-long excursion to Cooper Island, a remote location off the coast Alaska, as well as a voyage around Svalbard in the Norwegian Arctic, to shoot a documentary on biologist Dr. George Divoky who is conducting climate change research.

For the last 40 years, Dr. Divoky has made the journey to Cooper Island each summer to study the migration and feeding patterns of a colony of seabirds. By studying this colony, he has gleaned a wealth of information about how climate change is affecting the habitat they live in, as well as the lives of other creatures living in and around the surrounding Beaufort Sea, including the sea life serving as food for the birds. Over the last five years, Divoky has witnessed the arrival of starving polar bears, which feed on the birds and their eggs. The polar bears seek refuge on the island due to a loss of habitat caused by the increasing lack of sea ice in the warming Arctic basin.

Photo Credits: David Wright

Wright met Dr. Divoky in 2011 during the filming of the BBC series Frozen Planet. Intrigued by Dr. Divoky’s work, Wright agreed to document him in action, with the goal of producing a film that would educate climate-change skeptics on the growing peril climate change presents to the planet and its inhabitants. Wright served as cameraman and field producer, spending a month with Dr. Divoky in his small, 10 x 12 foot cabin on the remote island. With few resources available, facing a mix of below-freezing and unusually warm temperatures, as well as weeks of fog, the trip presented quite a challenge to the filmmaker. Thanks to help from Anton/Bauer’s batteries, however, Wright was able to power his camera through the entire trip.

Photo Credits: David Wright

“I have been a big fan of Anton/Bauer products for the last 20 years,” explains Wright. “I travel to some of the world’s most extreme environments, which tests my equipment to the absolute limits. Not only have I used Anton/Bauer batteries in the frigid temperatures of the Arctic but also in the tropics of Central Africa and the heat of Central Australia. I always travel with a supply of DIONIC batteries as my main power source. They are light and powerful for their size, plus the positive lock system is far superior to other mounts when working in arduous conditions. I have also started using the high-capacity CINE VCLX when I need to run equipment that draws a high current or needs to run for extended periods. It has performed wonderfully.”

For this trip, as he does for many others, Wright traveled with eight DIONIC 90s and keeps them charged with an Anton/Bauer TWQ four-bay simultaneous charger. According to Wright, this is more than enough for a day’s shooting and provides enough power for the LED lighting that he also uses.

“When you don’t know when you will next get a chance to find a power source, it is so great to have some reserve energy,” he says. “Even in the cold of the Arctic, the fully charged Anton/Bauer batteries have held their energy for days without a problem.”

The DIONIC 90 was designed by Anton/Bauer to deliver consistently reliable performance even in the most challenging shooting environments on Earth. It offers a RealTime® display that continually updates the operator on how much run time remains and on the state of the current charge. Weighing only 1.7 pounds, the DIONIC 90 can be transported without restriction under the IATA and DOT safety regulations (http://www.antonbauer.com/Support/TransportationInformation). The 95Wh battery can handle a maximum load of six amps, and offers run times ranging from six hours at 15 watts to a little over 2 hours at 45 watts.

CINE VCLX batteries provide superior run time and service life for the power demands of today’s cinema production and lighting equipment. Known for providing extended run-times for some of the most popular film and digital cinema cameras, including ARRI, RED, Sony and Panavision, CINE VCLX batteries provide all the safety and high power-draw performance of Nickel Metal Hydride (NiMH) cell chemistry technology in a power package specifically designed for the integration of 24V film and 14V video equipment. The high-power 28V output is also capable of powering 200 W HMI lights, lighting panels and portable microwave units. The CINE VCLX batteries feature a RealTime® LCD that accurately displays remaining run-time and a visual LED warning indicator when 15 minutes of run-time remain.

An Uncertain Future is currently in post production, with a projected release for later this summer, available for free, online at the film’s website: http://www.changingourclimate.net.

In addition to his work on An Uncertain Future, Wright recently finished shooting a feature film, Blind Pass, in Ireland and Florida. For that project he also used Anton/Bauer DIONIC 90s to power a RED MX and 1×1 Litepanels. He also specializes in high-speed work, using the Phantom, which requires a 24V supply. The CINE VCLX provides an excellent solution for this camera, or if he is traveling to more remote locations, he will use two DIONIC 90s. For more information about David Wright’s work visit http://www.planetearthpictures.com or follow him on twitter at https://twitter.com/#!/LunaSeaFilms.

For more information about Anton/Bauer’s roster of products, visit http://www.antonbauer.com.

Climate change, sea birds and the polar bear proof Nanuk camera case….

For the last couple of years we have been shooting a story with ornithologist George Divoky. You can see more about the project at our website www.ChangingOurClimate.net. He has been working on the same remote Arctic island for the last 40 years (www.CooperIsland.org) Starting out with the intention of studying the region’s sea birds, the research has grown into much more and has become an amazing window into climate change across the Arctic.

George monitors a population of black guillemots that have become his spies across the Arctic ocean.

In his latest studies George has been using geolocators that the birds carry on their daily foraging trips. He knew that the disappearance of sea ice was impacting the birds ability to feed, but this new information confirmed just how serious the situation really is. They are making trips of more than 1000 miles to feed. You can read more about this startling revelation on George’s blog

The most dramatic change has been the regular arrival of polar bears on the island. Each summer, as the sea ice now retreats further and faster, the bears have to flee to land and don’t have access to the regular food source of seals out on the pack ice. Its  a tragic situation for polar bears that are now facing seemingly insurmountable problems across their whole range, but also not good news for George or the birds he studies. For several years the hungry bears completely wiped out the birds’ colony, killing just about every chick. This put the researcher in danger and meant the 40 year study may come to an abrupt end. Thankfully George came up with a unique solution and thanks to the folks at Nanuk, the colony has been saved and the study will continue.

George now has several hundred Nanuk camera cases placed across the island, each converted into a guillemot nest box. They provide an ideal site for birds to escape from marauding bears, and even if a full grown polar jumps up and down on the case, the birds remain safe inside.

Having tried just about every camera case on the market, and in some of the world’s harshest environments, I have to say Nanuk have come up with a winning formula of strength, while still staying low in weight, as well as having a great catch design. But as rough as my field tests can be, George has definitely come up with the ultimate, if a full grown polar bear can’t break one of these cases, its your best chance to protect your camera gear!

If you interested in purchasing a Nanuk case, visit our own Amazon store, they are top of the list.

For more about our adventures on Cooper Island, go to David blog entry at Adventure in Climate Change

Contributor- David Wright