“I was about twelve or thirteen,” BAFTA award-winning cinematographer Bertie Gregory recalled during a TCA press conference about his earliest experience filming wildlife with a handheld camera. National Geographic just released the first season of the new Disney+ series Epic Adventures with Bertie Gregory as part of the Disney+ Day Event. “Those early days when I had a camera, the camera provided two things for me. The camera was a great way of channeling my obsession, and I guess explaining to my mum and dad where I’d been when I’d just sneak off into the woods by myself and disappear for hours, but the key thing that I learned during that time was that if you’re into something that most people think is a bit strange, if you can take pictures of it, that’s a really great way of getting other people excited about it. I realized, wow, actually, by taking pictures of it, and later taking video of it, that that is a way to get people excited about things you’re excited about, and excitement leads to so many other amazing things.”
(National Geographic/Bertie Gregory for Disney+)
Viewers will get to see some of the amazing things Bertie has been up to in the series, which finds him filming wildlife on land in Zambia and into the oceans off Costa Rica and Antarctica. “The most ambitious shoot we went on was for the Antarctic episode, and we went to try and film the biggest gathering of fin whales ever,” Bertie shared. “We spent six weeks on a sailboat. We had to cross the Drake Passage, one of the roughest parts of oceans on the planet. We spent six weeks there, and we were on a 75-foot sailboat. We had drones. We had diving equipment. We had gyro-stabilized cameras. We were really throwing the kitchen sink at these adventures.”
Ever-changing technology has given Bertie new tools to play with in the field. “As a wildlife cinematographer, you can be a specialist or a generalist, and I really like doing lots of different things,” explained Bertie. “That has really allowed us with this series to go after lots of different subjects, lots of different environments and habitats, whether that be underwater or in a jungle or in the Antarctic. The thing that I love doing most is flying drones. It just gives you such a unique perspective on things, and even wildlife events — some of the episodes, we've gone on for things that have never been filmed before. Some of the episodes, we've revisited things that I think people are familiar with and film them in a new way. So, in the lion episode, we were filming a very special pride of lions that specialize in hunting buffalo which is an incredibly challenging target for them. An individual buffalo can be 1,500 pounds. They're very grumpy. They're well-armed, and the herd that the lions we were filming were trying to attack was 300-strong. And to film it, we really want the viewer not only to be on the adventure with us but be on the adventure with the animals too. And these hunts that happen, the lions going after the buffalo, they're on the move. And so, we want the cameras to be on the move with the lions. Not only do you feel like you're with me, you feel like you're a lion on the hunt. And so we would throw multiple cameras at these action events to film them like a live sports match.”
(National Geographic/Sam Stewart for Disney+)
Becoming a wildlife photographer was Bertie Gregory’s dream, but it’s a job that comes with some unusual hazards. “We were filming the lion episode in Zambia, and I came back to my room in camp. I had my headtorch on, I walked into my room, and there was a crocodile in my bed. And I can't say that's happened to me before. So I went charging out the room to go and find one of our guides. I'd love to tell you that I was really brave, but I wasn't. I screamed. And I ran out the room and went to get one of our guides and said, ‘Yeah, Adrian, dude, there's a crocodile in my bed. Can you come and sort it out?’ And during the shoot, we played loads of practical jokes on each other, so I definitely suffered from crying wolf or crying crocodile. And Adrian, it took about 10 minutes for me to convince him that actually, this was an actual problem and could he come help? And he comes reluctantly to my room, and he opens the door. The door creaks open, and he turns the lights on. And he then comes flying out of my room past me and goes, ‘Bertie, there's a crocodile in your bed!’ I'm like, ‘I know. I came to tell you that.’ And anyway, we then went into the room, and at which point, the crocodile started death rolling, which is how they kill their prey. They grab their prey, and then they start rolling really violently. And it managed to death roll itself into the mosquito net that was hanging over my bed, so it was just a hot mess. Fortunately, on this series, we work with amazing professionals and scientists and specialists, and Adrian's very good at dealing with difficult situations. And he actually managed to get a towel on this crocodile's head. And together, we managed to grab it, and Adrian picked it up and walked it out to the river.”
Bertie was calling into the press conference from Botswana in the middle of the night, watching a herd of elephants just off-screen while filming an episode for Season 2, which was greenlit ahead of the series premiere. “Our wild world is in a really difficult place, and through the series, I really hope that I can inspire people to get outside and spend time with nature and realize just how important it is for us. And, in the series, we’re not just showing the adventure, we’re not just showing amazing animal behavior, we’re also meeting scientists and conservationists doing incredible things to make sure that the animal characters that we meet go on to have incredible lives.”
(National Geographic/Mark Sharman for Disney+)
All 5 episodes of Season 1 of Epic Adventures with Bertie Gregory are now streaming on Disney+.