Face-to-face With the Elements

Abseiling down a 4,000-foot mountain or being swept away in icy cold water – New Zealand television series First Crossings took crew to the extreme. Cameraman**_ Murray Milne _**recounts his experience in television making that aims to take the audience along for the ride too.

First Crossings follows two Kiwi adventurers as they retrace the journeys of some of New Zealand’s great (but often unknown) early explorers. Styled on Man vs. Wild, the intention is that the camera is immersed in the journey (sometimes literally). To feel like we were taking the audience on the trip with us too. Of course this means whenever the guys climb a 120-ft cliff or abseil over the edge of a 4,000-ft mountain face or get swept away in an ice-cold river, so does the camera and therefore the camera operator too.

We had to backpack everything we needed for a week at a time, knowing there was no access to power for battery recharging. So there was definitely some discussion about what camera to take. The Canon 5D proved to be a good choice of camera for this expedition. It was small and lightweight enough to sling over my shoulder when climbing and used about four of the small internal batteries per day. It was cheaper to buy a week’s worth of camera batteries than it would be to helicopter larger batteries in to us. Also one 32Gb CF card lasts a whole day and weighs nothing. We mostly used the standard Canon 24-105mm zoom with a variable ND filter and had the 16-35mm wide zoom on the second camera. We did carry the 150-500mm and tripod for long lens shots.

My favourite item of all was my Ewamarine waterproof camera bag. We used this more times than I expected. Obviously it was great for all the rivers, waterfalls and boat journeys but it also allowed us to shoot the whole last day on the West Coast when it was lashing 40-knot horizontal rain. You wouldn’t normally even try to shoot in those conditions but with constant spit on the front glass to keep the water drops off we could shoot straight into the teeth of the storm and complete the journey. We did have to keep applying the anti-fog to the inside of the glass when dipping into the 4-degree water. I also loved the day we jumped into the sea to swim and film amongst the seals and the Ewa bag made it so easy.

I needed the Zacuto viewfinder to focus and to see the screen in really bright conditions, especially in the snow. I stripped a Red Rock shoulder support down to just a single handgrip to keep the rig as slim as possible, knowing how much bush bashing we’d be doing. I wanted to avoid being snagged on vines and branches.

My only lighting was some small LED panel torches, but with the very high ISO available on the 5D, we could shoot with firelight and use the LEDs as backlight.

Safety was managed by our knowledgeable and entertaining guides and we had some local experts when we did the really tricky rope work, but nothing prepared us for the suck of the Buller River. It was stronger than my wetsuit and lifejacket combined, but thankfully was the only real ‘uh-oh’ moment.

For sound we had radio mics on our talent Kevin Biggar and Jamie Fitzgerald. Our soundie Mark Messenger sent timecode to the camera for synching later, except for the few times when I was on my own, like mountain peaks and anything in the water.

My favourite trip was Fiordland and climbing amongst the Darren mountains. The scenery and helicopter trips were spectacular. The view from my sleeping bag in the rock bivvy would have to be the best in the world. Sleeping amongst the rock climbers at Homer Hut would have to be the worst and required the best of earplugs.

It was a very physical and adventurous shoot but I loved all those exciting South Island locations. Another highlight was staying in Plateau Hut beneath Mt Cook and having fun falling into crevasses and glissading down a steep snow slope. That trip finished with an arduous ascent of Mt De La Beche that included some ice climbing on crampon toe and ice axe points. That is certainly when I was happy to have a small light camera on board.