Kamchatka is a peninsula on the east coast of Russia. Map of Kamchatka.. It is famed for being one of the few remaining areas of true wildernesses in the world. Until the 1990’s the area was a secret Soviet Military zone - the natural harbour of Petropavlosk being the home of their nuclear submarine fleet. Outside the small towns there are no roads, no people, no farming or logging, instead the area is a unique natural paradise for wildlife and flora, especially salmon and bears. We spent three weeks there in July filming for National Geographic’s Monster Fish series.
We land in Vladivostok and straight away are faced with a taxi driver who very quickly gets very upset about our pile of cases. We keep telling him that we’ll just get two taxis but he stays pretty mad and looks like he might cry as he speaks into his phone. He’s also wearing a string vest, on the outside.
He drops me and our 200kg’s of kit off at the door of the hotel that has a 200 meter walk and 3 floors of stairs with no lift. The other taxi with no gear in takes the rest of the team to the front door where there is an elevator, thanks for that.
Still we rebook Mr Stringvest to take us back to the airport the next day, under the proviso that he comes to the other door.
Vladivostok feels like the back of beyond, but it’s actually much more cosmopolitan than I’d expected. We decide not to film anything and go for a walk and get dinner. It’s a pleasant evening and we have wine (very expensive), local beer (like Newcastle Brown), vodka (cheap and rather nice - much more like rum than vodka) and pizza (surprisingly good).
Next day the sea front is shrouded in mist and I shoot some nice GVs (general views of the place or B-roll to you Americans) of crumbling concrete architecture and do a piece to camera about being at the end of the world but going further. . .
Back to the airport. Day 2 of the string vest, wonder how many days he can get out of it? Suppose you can always turn it inside out. Check in at Vladivostok Air is pretty hard work and a lot of excess baggage is paid for. Almost the whole excess budget has gone and we’ve not even got there yet. There are A LOT of people checking guns in and wearing khakis, what the hell is this place?
The flight attendants are huge, people smoke in the toilets and I secretly film on the EX1 for the opening travel sequence off the show.
None of us really have any idea what to expect from Kamchatka. There is very little information about the place online and I’m a bit nervous. Later in the shoot I spoke to Brian Smith (a seasoned adventurer) and he said nowhere he’d ever been had felt like such a journey into the unknown. I didn’t feel so silly after that.
We arrive in Petropavlosk, or PK to the locals. We’re picked up by Martha our fixer and guest-house owner for the time we’re in civilization. PK is a shock, fulfilling every Soviet and post-soviet stereotype you can imagine. There are rusty cars on every street corner, wild looking mongrel wolf-dogs bark and chunky people in black leather three quarter length jackets go about their business. I’ve never been to Russia and for the first few days it’s almost impossible not to see the whole place as a James Bond set.
We meet the kayak team who are to accompany us on much of the trip. This includes Brian Smith who is the expedition leader and a film maker in his own right. He’s going to be helping me, shoot some second camera and as it happened, do most of the underwater shooting. The kayakers website for their Kamchatka exploits can be found here - www.kamchatkaproject.org/
The first day is grim weather and is spent filming in a polluted city center stream. Brian, who along with rest of the kayakers had spent the last two weeks in the mountain wilderness, couldn’t get his head around what we must being thinking of the place. We’ve come to the last great wilderness of the World and we're upto our knees in a filthy lifeless stream full of old cars.
The next day we plan to leave for the Zupanova river for a 6 day river trip but the weather has other ideas. The only way to get anywhere in Kamchatka is by helicopter and they don’t fly in low cloud. We sit around all day waiting for the cloud to clear but it doesn’t. We can’t even go shooting GV’s as we’re on hourly standby for weather updates from the helipad.
Day three is more of the same except we manage to get out into PK to shoot some wet GV’s. The weather forecast is bad for the next day so we plan to do some filming with a local indigenous family called Itelmen. They’re a really friendly family and we eat salmon patties, salmon head soup, salmon stew, slamon pasties, salmon caviar and smoked salmon in their home which is an old cargo container. This place is getting less like Bond and more like Mad Max. Zeb and I don’t really like Salmon.
Next day the weather looks brighter. We still can’t fly in the morning though. I use the time to fix the headphone socket on the camera which rattled loose during last nights bumpy journey back from the Itelmen. The socket is easily fixed but I accidentally pull something else loose inside the camera. It won’t start up. Oh dear.
We’re waiting for the call from the helipad any minute and now we don’t have a working camera. For the first time in 3 days I start hoping that the call doesn’t come. Where the fault lies isn’t clear. After quite some time I find that one of the electronic ribbons that connects the side of the camera to the main boards has been pulled out a tiny amount; it’s barely noticeable. I haven’t done a repair like this for years so rack my brain to remember how the little clips that hold it in work. Eventually I suss it and hold my breath while the camera boots up. It works and I can breath once more. I probably won’t open the side of the camera again.
The phone call comes and we head to the helipad. We have a large scene to film there and as the helicopters are charged extortionately by the minute - time is very much money. The whole thing is a bit of blur, not only are we shooting a big scene around the loading doors of a huge old MI8 helicopter but we’re about to fly to one the remotest places on earth for a week. With the addition of a Ryan, our fishing guide, and three Russian camp facilitators, cooks and rafters the team has grown to fourteen people. The real expedition is beginning.
We land in Vladivostok and straight away are faced with a taxi driver who very quickly gets very upset about our pile of cases. We keep telling him that we’ll just get two taxis but he stays pretty mad and looks like he might cry as he speaks into his phone. He’s also wearing a string vest, on the outside.
He drops me and our 200kg’s of kit off at the door of the hotel that has a 200 meter walk and 3 floors of stairs with no lift. The other taxi with no gear in takes the rest of the team to the front door where there is an elevator, thanks for that.
Still we rebook Mr Stringvest to take us back to the airport the next day, under the proviso that he comes to the other door.
Vladivostok feels like the back of beyond, but it’s actually much more cosmopolitan than I’d expected. We decide not to film anything and go for a walk and get dinner. It’s a pleasant evening and we have wine (very expensive), local beer (like Newcastle Brown), vodka (cheap and rather nice - much more like rum than vodka) and pizza (surprisingly good).
Next day the sea front is shrouded in mist and I shoot some nice GVs (general views of the place or B-roll to you Americans) of crumbling concrete architecture and do a piece to camera about being at the end of the world but going further. . .
Back to the airport. Day 2 of the string vest, wonder how many days he can get out of it? Suppose you can always turn it inside out. Check in at Vladivostok Air is pretty hard work and a lot of excess baggage is paid for. Almost the whole excess budget has gone and we’ve not even got there yet. There are A LOT of people checking guns in and wearing khakis, what the hell is this place?
The flight attendants are huge, people smoke in the toilets and I secretly film on the EX1 for the opening travel sequence off the show.
None of us really have any idea what to expect from Kamchatka. There is very little information about the place online and I’m a bit nervous. Later in the shoot I spoke to Brian Smith (a seasoned adventurer) and he said nowhere he’d ever been had felt like such a journey into the unknown. I didn’t feel so silly after that.
We arrive in Petropavlosk, or PK to the locals. We’re picked up by Martha our fixer and guest-house owner for the time we’re in civilization. PK is a shock, fulfilling every Soviet and post-soviet stereotype you can imagine. There are rusty cars on every street corner, wild looking mongrel wolf-dogs bark and chunky people in black leather three quarter length jackets go about their business. I’ve never been to Russia and for the first few days it’s almost impossible not to see the whole place as a James Bond set.
We meet the kayak team who are to accompany us on much of the trip. This includes Brian Smith who is the expedition leader and a film maker in his own right. He’s going to be helping me, shoot some second camera and as it happened, do most of the underwater shooting. The kayakers website for their Kamchatka exploits can be found here - www.kamchatkaproject.org/
The first day is grim weather and is spent filming in a polluted city center stream. Brian, who along with rest of the kayakers had spent the last two weeks in the mountain wilderness, couldn’t get his head around what we must being thinking of the place. We’ve come to the last great wilderness of the World and we're upto our knees in a filthy lifeless stream full of old cars.
The next day we plan to leave for the Zupanova river for a 6 day river trip but the weather has other ideas. The only way to get anywhere in Kamchatka is by helicopter and they don’t fly in low cloud. We sit around all day waiting for the cloud to clear but it doesn’t. We can’t even go shooting GV’s as we’re on hourly standby for weather updates from the helipad.
Day three is more of the same except we manage to get out into PK to shoot some wet GV’s. The weather forecast is bad for the next day so we plan to do some filming with a local indigenous family called Itelmen. They’re a really friendly family and we eat salmon patties, salmon head soup, salmon stew, slamon pasties, salmon caviar and smoked salmon in their home which is an old cargo container. This place is getting less like Bond and more like Mad Max. Zeb and I don’t really like Salmon.Next day the weather looks brighter. We still can’t fly in the morning though. I use the time to fix the headphone socket on the camera which rattled loose during last nights bumpy journey back from the Itelmen. The socket is easily fixed but I accidentally pull something else loose inside the camera. It won’t start up. Oh dear.
We’re waiting for the call from the helipad any minute and now we don’t have a working camera. For the first time in 3 days I start hoping that the call doesn’t come. Where the fault lies isn’t clear. After quite some time I find that one of the electronic ribbons that connects the side of the camera to the main boards has been pulled out a tiny amount; it’s barely noticeable. I haven’t done a repair like this for years so rack my brain to remember how the little clips that hold it in work. Eventually I suss it and hold my breath while the camera boots up. It works and I can breath once more. I probably won’t open the side of the camera again.
To be continued. . .
Awesome stuff Rob, I am both inspired and jealous of your adventures, and look forward to the next installment.
ReplyDelete-Graham