[Sophie Darlington]: My name is Sophie Darlington and I'm awildlife camera woman.
[Julie Moniere]: Julie Moniere, I'm mainly additional camera person
working with material called the Ronin but also doing time lapses and I'm also helping Sophie.
[Sophie Darlington]: We're here a part of the Disney film group to make a feature film about Adeli penguins.
[Julie Moniere]: The film is about an adult
who's going to become a dad for the first time and is struggle to raise two
chicks until they can fledge and go to the sea.
[Sophie Darlington]: It'll be the life cycle of an Adeli penguin, but that doesn't do the story justice,
it'll be the most amazing comedy- drama, adventure, travel story you'll ever see.
I've never seen or worked with an animal that has more charisma.
They are natural film stars!
[Julie Moniere]: The Adeli penguins are very curious, but after a while
if you stay in one area, it's actually quite interesting they start not caring about you
and they've kind of get used to you.
So what really surprised me is how
resilient those little guys are. It doesn't matter what the weather is going
to be like, what the wind speed is going to be like, they're still going out sea
getting some food or in the colony feeding their chicks.
[Sophie Darlington]: They're absolutely priceless! They don't know they're funny,
but they are beyond funny and you'll be
sitting filming and suddenly, you know a couple was fertile path and fall over
and they're so covered in down you know they just get right back up.
They're the perfect subject for a Disney movie -
what child would not fall in love with an Adeli penguin?
[Julie Moniere]: [Laughter] I love them!
[Sophie Darlington]: There's a few challenges to workin here which I'm not particularly familiar with.
I've worked in the Arctic, but the Antarctic gives you
a whole new set of things to play with.
Isn't it famous for being the windiest place on earth?
[Julie Moniere]: The other two big challenges is really to wind and the cold
but you just have to put layers up and in the wind there's nothing you can do.
It's just a... a killer!
[Sophie Darlington]: Today it's beautiful it's summer in Antarctica.
It's gorgeous the sun's out, the Adelis are all preening, it's fantastic!
Within 20 minutes we can have a full-on storm here.
[Julie Moniere]: You can get really cold. We have to wear very thin gloves
to be able to touch our equipment and to get feel to be able to focus.
[Sophie Darlington]: There's so many challenges and then there's the logistics
where it's 70 miles from the nearest base.
[Julie Moniere]: First time you come here and you get helicopter in an enclosure, camp
and then the helicopter goes, then it's you, by yourself.
That's quite scary!
[Sophie Darlington]: It's full of challenges which makes it much more rewarding.
It's an extraordinary and unreal reality. You wake up you've got to prep your food
for the day, you've got to melt your snow, you've got to charge your batteries,
put on your generators...
it's just a whole different way - you've got to change your mindset.
[Julie Moniere]: We do make a plan every morning about what we're going to be filming and
then we get there and the weather is going to do something very different so
it's always very difficult to know what you're going to be filming.
[Sophie Darlington]: We can be here and this is going on but a hundred meters away you wouldn't even know
what was happening, so it's a matter of sort of sussing out what's going on
what changes have happened.
[Julie Moniere]: We work about nine to ten hours a day. You could do 24 hours obviously!
[Sophie Darlington]: By the way I'm thoroughly confused by this 24-hour daylight thing.
I don't get it. You get up and it's light you go to bed it's light.
If you wanted to you could work yourself to the ground.
[Julie Moniere]: Our camp is way up the hill and it takes about
40 minutes to hike up back to camp, which you know, can be challenging when you're
tired have to long day at work. I think it's also very good that we that far
away from the colonies so we don't disturb them.
[Sophie Darlington]: So we head up at around 10:00 or 11:00.
Home from midnight. A spot of dinner.
Try and get to sleep... with heat.
[Julie Moniere]: National Science Foundation gave us the permission to come to Cape Crozier which
is a protected area and we feel very privileged and lucky to be here.
[Sophie Darlington]: You've no idea the amount of effort that goesinto something like this -
the months and months of planning. Getting us out here is such a huge operation because it's
not just us, it's our tents, it's our fuel, it's our food, it's our gear.
[Julie Moniere]: Making a Disneynature film for children is very important for science.
[Sophie Darlington]: And it's that hand-in-hand science and wildlife filmmaking going together,
so we're building and working on the research that's been done here for years and
without the National Science Foundation we couldn't have done it.