In their first sitdown interview since their return, Australian filmmaker James Douglas Cooper and National Geographic award-winning photographer Rodney Bursiel talked with the Wimberley View about their once-in-a lifetime expedition to Antarctica in February to film the documentary, “True South: An Antarctica Story” at the Devil’s Backbone Tavern. Here is Part One of their story.
“As far as the wildlife goes, penguins are great actors but they don’t take direction very well. They have a lot of personality on camera and they’re amazing, but there’s no directing an animal.” – Australian filmmaker, James Douglas Cooper
Now that you are back on terra firma and, after months of planning, did you find that your equipment and gear were adequate?
Cooper: Out of all the equipment that we took – the underwater gear, the dry suits to keep us warm in the water, the extra camera gear – the one thing for me that failed were the gloves for the dry suit. The first time I got in the water with them, my inner gloves became wet and my hands went numb.
And it took some getting used to the underwater camera housing. Once we felt comfortable using it, everything else pretty much went smoothly.
Bursiel: As far as land-based gear and equipment goes, I found that I had too much gear. There was so much stuff that I never used. It was recommended that we take buffs and extra face coverings, but with the summer temperature in the thirties, we didn’t need it. It was actually colder in Texas when we left than it was on land on Booth Island in Port Charcot, one of our favorite places.
As far as being in the 28 degree water, I could have stayed in the water all day long if it wasn’t for my hands. So next time, I will have some kind of electric glove under my waterproof gloves because thirty minutes in the water is about all you can handle. There was one day that I was easily in the water for an hour and a half and I’ve still got nerve damage on my fingers from the cold.
Cooper: When I travel, I actually like to be minimal. In this case, it was the opposite. We had wet weather gear, warm wet weather gear, thermals. . . Not to mention that I had two camera kits instead of one.
Cooper to Bursiel: You probably were traveling with three times the amount of camera gear that you usually have.
Bursiel: I think we had one carry-on bag just for batteries. I’m surprised they even let us on the plane with all the lithium batteries we were carrying.
Cooper: Despite that, we got all of the shots and the footage we needed. None of the cameras or the batteries gave out in the cold.
Bursiel: Honestly, I didn’t even notice a difference in the battery life of my still cameras from using them there or at home.
Cooper: The only thing lost was your Go-Pro, which I lost. I got too confident with the GoPro selfie stick on the Zodiac. I had it in the water as we were hooting past this shipwreck. I got this amazing crane shot and it went down into the water and it was gone. It didn’t have a flotation device on it. Our GoPro is on ice.
Bursiel: Literally. Cooper: That’s the only thing we lost. Considering that we were shooting over the water a lot of the time, it’s pretty good.
Were weather conditions favorable?
Bursiel: In regards to the weather, we were pretty fortunate. I was expecting overcast and drab conditions, but we had some beautiful sunny days. There were a couple of days, though, that were cold, snowing and extremely windy. On those days it was hard to get into the mindset to put on a drysuit and get into the water. Putting on the drysuit is a chore in itself.
Cooper: It takes a good twenty minutes to suit up because you’re putting on undergarments and secondary undergarments. Then you have to get it over the top part of your body and zip it up, put your hood on, and then put on under gloves and then outer gloves. . .
Bursiel: . . . and then somehow climb over the bow of the Zodiac with your camera. . . Except for the days it was super windy and snowy, it was nice. We lucked out.
Did you have any “Oh, what have I done” moments?
Bursiel: For me it was getting the dry suit on. . .
Cooper: For me it was Day One of the Drake Passage crossing. Through my porthole I could see the waves coming at us. I had a “come to Jesus” moment and thought, “What have I gotten myself into?”
Bursiel: And maybe, “I hate Rodney?”
Cooper: Right, who is this Rodney guy?
Bursiel: For me too, was sailing through the Drake Passage on the way back. It was a lot worse than our trip out because of the swell. The boat was pitched at 45 degrees and I thought, “This is crazy.” But I looked over at one of our captains and he was just sitting there and talking and I saw that he wasn’t concerned.
Cooper: I looked over and saw that you were working on photographs and I didn’t know how you could be doing that.
Bursiel: Yes, that was fun lying in the bed with my laptop and literally getting thrown out of the bed.
Cooper: The crossing is something I will never do again.
Bursiel: Never say never.
Did you experience full days of sunlight?
Bursiel: We had more nighttime than I was anticipating. It was dark at 10:30 and the sun came back up at 5:30 a.m. It was pretty easy to keep a normal-ish schedule.
Did you get the footage that you needed?
Cooper: I got all kinds of footage and a lot that I hadn’t anticipated. I didn’t get some that I had planned because the trip unfolded in a way that I’ve never experienced. I wanted to orchestrate things because I had my director’s hat on. Three or four days in, I realized that’s not how this is going to work. I can’t force the shots here. The weather and the light could change by the hour. I couldn’t plan what the light was going to be like, what lens to use, how much battery I would need, and so on. And then I realized that I just have to go with this.
As far as the wildlife goes, penguins are great actors but they don’t take direction very well. They have a lot of personality on camera and they’re amazing, but there’s no directing an animal.
Cooper: And then I realized I needed to get into your headspace, think of things as a still photographer and expand out from that and try to be flexible.
Bursiel: Shooting the humpbacks was hard because the temperature and salinity of the water created a haze. If the subject wasn’t right in front of me, I knew I was going to get a hazy shot.
Cooper: You have a lot of underwater shooting skills, Rodney. The first two or three times in the water, I wasn’t getting what I wanted and I was getting cold. I couldn’t feel my hands. Plus, we had two cameras and two motion cameras to deal with.
Bursiel: The only thing that we couldn’t get were the orcas at Marguerite Bay. A storm rolled in from the south and we had to turn around.
End of Part One.
