How does the extreme cold affect filming?
For one, cables can snap with a slight touch when it’s minus 40, so you have to be very careful moving cables. Batteries of course don’t perform very well in the cold, so often we have to keep a battery inside the parka to keep it warm. At times we could hardly see through the cameras’ viewfinders, because they don’t react that well to the cold either. Almost all of our cameras say “for use to 32 degrees Fahrenheit,” so we were really pushing that! Did you have to trek long distances with the equipment? We did. We had some real long ski trips, in which case we’d put all the gear onto sleds. They were tremendous loads; our sleds were about 150 pounds each. And we did some backcountry trips with photographer Tom Murphy, which were extremely strenuous. It all looks quite tranquil and beautiful in the film, but there is definitely a good amount of work involved. We had very cold temperatures and probably 50 mile-per-hour winds. It was a real blizzard, and actually Tom seriously injured his
