Karen Bass: Unseen footage, untamed nature

100,542 views ・ 2012-05-09

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Translator: Timothy Covell Reviewer: Morton Bast
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I'm a very lucky person.
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I've been privileged to see so much of our beautiful Earth
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and the people and creatures that live on it.
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And my passion was inspired at the age of seven,
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when my parents first took me to Morocco,
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at the edge of the Sahara Desert.
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Now imagine a little Brit
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somewhere that wasn't cold and damp like home.
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What an amazing experience.
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And it made me want to explore more.
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So as a filmmaker,
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I've been from one end of the Earth to the other
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trying to get the perfect shot
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and to capture animal behavior never seen before.
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And what's more, I'm really lucky,
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because I get to share that with millions of people worldwide.
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Now the idea of having new perspectives of our planet
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and actually being able to get that message out
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gets me out of bed every day with a spring in my step.
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You might think that it's quite hard
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to find new stories and new subjects,
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but new technology is changing the way we can film.
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It's enabling us to get fresh, new images
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and tell brand new stories.
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In Nature's Great Events,
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a series for the BBC that I did with David Attenborough,
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we wanted to do just that.
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Images of grizzly bears are pretty familiar.
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You see them all the time, you think.
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But there's a whole side to their lives that we hardly ever see
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and had never been filmed.
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So what we did, we went to Alaska,
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which is where the grizzlies rely
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on really high, almost inaccessible, mountain slopes
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for their denning.
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And the only way to film that is a shoot from the air.
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(Video) David Attenborough: Throughout Alaska and British Columbia,
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thousands of bear families are emerging from their winter sleep.
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There is nothing to eat up here,
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but the conditions were ideal for hibernation.
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Lots of snow in which to dig a den.
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To find food, mothers must lead their cubs down to the coast,
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where the snow will already be melting.
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But getting down can be a challenge for small cubs.
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These mountains are dangerous places,
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but ultimately the fate of these bear families,
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and indeed that of all bears around the North Pacific,
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depends on the salmon.
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KB: I love that shot.
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I always get goosebumps every time I see it.
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That was filmed from a helicopter
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using a gyro-stabilized camera.
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And it's a wonderful bit of gear,
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because it's like having a flying tripod, crane and dolly all rolled into one.
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But technology alone isn't enough.
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To really get the money shots,
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it's down to being in the right place at the right time.
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And that sequence was especially difficult.
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The first year we got nothing.
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We had to go back the following year,
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all the way back to the remote parts of Alaska.
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And we hung around with a helicopter for two whole weeks.
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And eventually we got lucky.
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The cloud lifted, the wind was still,
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and even the bear showed up.
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And we managed to get that magic moment.
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For a filmmaker,
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new technology is an amazing tool,
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but the other thing that really, really excites me
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is when new species are discovered.
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Now, when I heard about one animal,
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I knew we had to get it for my next series,
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Untamed Americas, for National Geographic.
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In 2005, a new species of bat was discovered
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in the cloud forests of Ecuador.
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And what was amazing about that discovery
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is that it also solved the mystery
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of what pollinated a unique flower.
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It depends solely on the bat.
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Now, the series hasn't even aired yet,
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so you're the very first to see this.
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See what you think.
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(Video) Narrator: The tube-lipped nectar bat.
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A pool of delicious nectar
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lies at the bottom of each flower's long flute.
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But how to reach it?
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Necessity is the mother of evolution.
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(Music)
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This two-and-a-half-inch bat
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has a three-and-a-half-inch tongue,
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the longest relative to body length
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of any mammal in the world.
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If human, he'd have a nine-foot tongue.
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(Applause)
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KB: What a tongue.
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We filmed it by cutting a tiny little hole in the base of the flower
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and using a camera that could slow the action by 40 times.
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So imagine how quick that thing is in real life.
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Now people often ask me, "Where's your favorite place on the planet?"
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And the truth is I just don't have one.
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There are so many wonderful places.
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But some locations draw you back time and time again.
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And one remote location --
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I first went there as a backpacker;
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I've been back several times for filming,
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most recently for Untamed Americas --
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it's the Altiplano in the high Andes of South America,
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and it's the most otherworldly place I know.
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But at 15,000 feet, it's tough.
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It's freezing cold,
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and that thin air really gets you.
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Sometimes it's hard to breathe,
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especially carrying all the heavy filming equipment.
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And that pounding head just feels like a constant hangover.
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But the advantage of that wonderful thin atmosphere
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is that it enables you to see the stars in the heavens
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with amazing clarity.
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Have a look.
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(Video) Narrator: Some 1,500 miles south of the tropics,
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between Chile and Bolivia,
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the Andes completely change.
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It's called the Altiplano, or "high plains" --
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a place of extremes
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and extreme contrasts.
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Where deserts freeze
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and waters boil.
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More like Mars than Earth,
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it seems just as hostile to life.
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The stars themselves --
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at 12,000 feet, the dry, thin air
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makes for perfect stargazing.
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Some of the world's astronomers have telescopes nearby.
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But just looking up with the naked eye,
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you really don't need one.
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(Music)
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(Applause)
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KB: Thank you so much
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for letting me share some images
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of our magnificent, wonderful Earth.
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Thank you for letting me share that with you.
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(Applause)
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