SHAUN: We've always wanted to make a film on humpback whales.
They're truly the most dynamic and interesting animal.
Humpback whales are the perfect subject.
They're so big, they're so playful
and they're just incredible.
GREG: For me, the film is about
the wonder of the humpback whale.
They breach higher and more often than any other whale
and they have this amazing song.
We went to three different locations--
Alaska is where the whales feed
and we show how intelligent they are by feeding together
in groups of six or eight,
where they'll communicate with one another
and then gang up on schools of herring.
In Hawaii they're studying the humpback's song
and female behavior, and the mating courtship.
And then in Tonga
we study what it's like to be a mom and to raise your young.
And so you end up, through the film,
learning about all the ways that a humpback lives.
SHAUN: And we ended up getting fantastic footage,
footage that blew us away.
ROBERT: We are in Alaska and we're about to film
some humpback whales bubble netting.
Day one!
GREG: Alaska is where the whales feed
and we wanted to show how humpbacks find food
in a super intelligent way.
FRED: Bubble netting is a way that the whales
are able to capture these speedy schooling fishes.
One whale dives down and deploys a ring of bubbles
from its blowhole.
It rises up around a fish school,
the rest of the animals dive down underneath
and they all come rocketing up through this tunnel of bubbles
and engulfing the fish at the surface.
ANDY: This is probably the only place in the world
you're going to see anything like this.
BRAD: Filming humpback whales
doing the bubble-net lunge feeding behavior that they do
is borderline impossible.
MAN: Oh. Right there. Ohhhh!
ALL: Ohhhh!
BRAD: Where do they come from?
MAN: Ohhhhh.
MAN: We'll get it.
GREG: Capturing any of these behaviors
out on the ocean is really tough.
It's a lot of waiting and it's a lot of being,
just being prepared.
We were able to work with Fred Sharpe and Pieter Folkens
and Andy Szabo, all scientists,
great scientists who both help with the logistics.
Obviously were the ones who told us
where the whales were going to be.
JASON: Okay, so we're dropping in the hydrophone
and hoping to hear some vocalization of these guys.
FRED: Hydrophone is very useful,
yet it also provides acoustic information
and they start to blast the prey with these long series of pulses
and then right before they come up to the surface,
it starts to rise in frequency.
GREG: And Fred knows those calls and he can then say,
"It's gonna happen in ten seconds
"over there in that area."
FRED: Like, you'll hear a pause
in the call right before they pop up.
FRED: Maybe, soon.
Coming up. Lunging.
-Lunging? -Lunging.
Yeah!
MAN: And once you do get a whale that is gonna cooperate,
it's absolutely phenomenal.
MAN: I can't believe that was right behind us!
BRAD: These events have been filmed in other formats,
but nothing is going to give the feeling and the sensation
and the experiential visceral experience that IMAX brings.
SHAUN: In the end we got what we came for
and that was to get bubble-netting sequences
and incredible shots of humpback whales,
and I think people are gonna be
really excited to see these shots.
MICHELE: That was the day, Shaun. Today was the day.
-That was amazing. -That was...
Absolutely one in a million day.
MICHELE: Today, October 11th was the day.
HOWARD: It was one of the best encounters I've ever seen.
Here we are in Tonga
heading out to go film some humpback whales
with Howard, Michele, Peter Kragh, Bob Haskell
and Jason with Sam and myself.
When we were picking out locations
for our film, Humpback Whales,
we knew we wanted to find a place
where we knew we could find
humpback whales with their calves.
We came upon this place called Tonga.
We wanted to use that location,
it was just so stunningly beautiful.
ROBERT: Water is absolutely gorgeous.
And uh, thumbs up, let's go!
Every day we would go out and we would look for humpback whales
which could be very, very aggravating you want to say.
Never even saw a thing.
-Never even saw it? -Nope.
SHAUN: There's the problem of finding the whale….
-Good shot? -Blue water.
SHAUN: And then there's the problem of actually filming
with the whales.
I think we might get this.
This could be a good one.
SHAUN: They just went right under you and then…
HOWARD: Yeah.
SHAUN: It is very difficult to film these whales.
MICHELE: It was a little bit frustrating today
with the rain that we've had the last two days.
HOWARD: We haven't had any sun for almost seven or eight days.
BRAD: But you just don't stop at the first roadblock.
MICHELE: Today we've been sitting and searching
and motoring and searching and then we got an intel
that there was a mom and calf down this way breaching.
So we are hoping that today is going to be our day,
Thursday October 11th. Whales!
HOWARD: Exciting, I got no spit.
SHAUN: And it's tough to do, you have to put in the time,
but when you get it right, you get it right.
JASON: And we were able to spend four and a half hours
with this mother humpback and her calf
and really get a sense of what it's like to be these animals
and in this environment.
MICHELE: Wow.
ROBERT: It was magical, absolutely magical.
I'm really stoked that we came to Tonga
because it has a unique culture.
SHAUN: What they've done is gone from a whaling society
to a conservation/education and tourist society.
GREG: Because they were ancient whalers
and they actually hunted whales for sustenance,
it makes the saving of the whales here much more poignant,
and I think that'll touch people's hearts.
ROBERT: Alright, it's Tuesday, March 12th.
We just had a phenomenal, phenomenal day filming whales.
GREG: Hawaii was beautiful.
The conditions that we shot under were so unparalleled.
They're studying the humpback's song
and differences between males and females.
Then we had the opportunity to show
where humans are risking their lives
to try to rescue humpbacks.
MEAGAN: Today we've been mostly looking for singers.
we've been trying to find a singer, identify it,
record it and give you all a glimpse of,
of what singing whales are like.
JASON: There he is, right here.
MEAGAN: Yep
MAN: Jason, looking good.
GREG: Well, I can hear him.
-Yeah, can you hear him? -Yeah.
MEAGAN: He was really loud.
Oh, he's close.
[whale sounds]
GREG: Oh, you can tell when he's actually coming up.
MEAGAN: Yeah, there he is.
GREG: Oh, my gosh! There he is.
ROBERT: That was beautiful.
He's down about 30 feet deep.
-A singer? -Just a singer, singing a song.
Just woooh.
JASON: He was down classic singer position, head down,
tail up and I was just getting ready to make a dive
and all of the sudden he moved.
STEPHEN: One of the female whales
during the mating season in Hawaii took off,
started swimming and, as so often happens,
a lot of males were pursuing her.
ROBERT: The female would be swimming and the eight males
would just be just kind of jockeying for position.
And he was darker,
more scratched up, you could tell,
I mean you could hear him down there
when he was making collisions with the other males
and you'd hear it,
it sounded like bricks coming together in a grinding.
You know, it's like trying to film elephants in the fog
and you're running with them
and you want to get close enough to take a picture
but you don't want to get too close so you get trampled.
GREG: A young whale got wrapped up in some floating ropes
that were out in the ocean off Maui and an extraordinary team,
led by Ed Lyman, from NOAA, rescue this whale.
ED: My role here is to help distressed marine mammals,
especially humpback whales.
We have cameras that we put on the end of poles,
put them in the water
so we get both topside view and the rest of the view.
GREG: We were so lucky
'cause we had just seven days of helicopter time.
One of those days he got an entangled whale.
ED: We lost track of that calf
along with mother and the two escorts
and it was the IMAX team that actually relocated the animal
and allowed us to keep working on it.
GREG: It's such a nice story in the movie
and gives you the sense that humans
are out helping other animals on our planet.
It's a truly earth-shattering film
and has many scenes that you'll never see anywhere else.