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  • Translator: Timothy Covell Reviewer: Morton Bast

  • I'm a very lucky person.

  • I've been privileged to see so much of our beautiful Earth

  • and the people and creatures that live on it.

  • And my passion was inspired at the age of seven,

  • when my parents first took me to Morocco,

  • at the edge of the Sahara Desert.

  • Now imagine a little Brit

  • somewhere that wasn't cold and damp like home.

  • What an amazing experience.

  • And it made me want to explore more.

  • So as a filmmaker,

  • I've been from one end of the Earth to the other

  • trying to get the perfect shot

  • and to capture animal behavior never seen before.

  • And what's more, I'm really lucky,

  • because I get to share that with millions of people worldwide.

  • Now the idea of having new perspectives of our planet

  • and actually being able to get that message out

  • gets me out of bed every day with a spring in my step.

  • You might think that it's quite hard

  • to find new stories and new subjects,

  • but new technology is changing the way we can film.

  • It's enabling us to get fresh, new images

  • and tell brand new stories.

  • In Nature's Great Events,

  • a series for the BBC that I did with David Attenborough,

  • we wanted to do just that.

  • Images of grizzly bears are pretty familiar.

  • You see them all the time, you think.

  • But there's a whole side to their lives that we hardly ever see

  • and had never been filmed.

  • So what we did, we went to Alaska,

  • which is where the grizzlies rely

  • on really high, almost inaccessible, mountain slopes

  • for their denning.

  • And the only way to film that is a shoot from the air.

  • (Video) David Attenborough: Throughout Alaska and British Columbia,

  • thousands of bear families are emerging from their winter sleep.

  • There is nothing to eat up here,

  • but the conditions were ideal for hibernation.

  • Lots of snow in which to dig a den.

  • To find food, mothers must lead their cubs down to the coast,

  • where the snow will already be melting.

  • But getting down can be a challenge for small cubs.

  • These mountains are dangerous places,

  • but ultimately the fate of these bear families,

  • and indeed that of all bears around the North Pacific,

  • depends on the salmon.

  • KB: I love that shot.

  • I always get goosebumps every time I see it.

  • That was filmed from a helicopter

  • using a gyro-stabilized camera.

  • And it's a wonderful bit of gear,

  • because it's like having a flying tripod, crane and dolly all rolled into one.

  • But technology alone isn't enough.

  • To really get the money shots,

  • it's down to being in the right place at the right time.

  • And that sequence was especially difficult.

  • The first year we got nothing.

  • We had to go back the following year,

  • all the way back to the remote parts of Alaska.

  • And we hung around with a helicopter for two whole weeks.

  • And eventually we got lucky.

  • The cloud lifted, the wind was still,

  • and even the bear showed up.

  • And we managed to get that magic moment.

  • For a filmmaker,

  • new technology is an amazing tool,

  • but the other thing that really, really excites me

  • is when new species are discovered.

  • Now, when I heard about one animal,

  • I knew we had to get it for my next series,

  • Untamed Americas, for National Geographic.

  • In 2005, a new species of bat was discovered

  • in the cloud forests of Ecuador.

  • And what was amazing about that discovery

  • is that it also solved the mystery

  • of what pollinated a unique flower.

  • It depends solely on the bat.

  • Now, the series hasn't even aired yet,

  • so you're the very first to see this.

  • See what you think.

  • (Video) Narrator: The tube-lipped nectar bat.

  • A pool of delicious nectar

  • lies at the bottom of each flower's long flute.

  • But how to reach it?

  • Necessity is the mother of evolution.

  • (Music)

  • This two-and-a-half-inch bat

  • has a three-and-a-half-inch tongue,

  • the longest relative to body length

  • of any mammal in the world.

  • If human, he'd have a nine-foot tongue.

  • (Applause)

  • KB: What a tongue.

  • We filmed it by cutting a tiny little hole in the base of the flower

  • and using a camera that could slow the action by 40 times.

  • So imagine how quick that thing is in real life.

  • Now people often ask me, "Where's your favorite place on the planet?"

  • And the truth is I just don't have one.

  • There are so many wonderful places.

  • But some locations draw you back time and time again.

  • And one remote location --

  • I first went there as a backpacker;

  • I've been back several times for filming,

  • most recently for Untamed Americas --

  • it's the Altiplano in the high Andes of South America,

  • and it's the most otherworldly place I know.

  • But at 15,000 feet, it's tough.

  • It's freezing cold,

  • and that thin air really gets you.

  • Sometimes it's hard to breathe,

  • especially carrying all the heavy filming equipment.

  • And that pounding head just feels like a constant hangover.

  • But the advantage of that wonderful thin atmosphere

  • is that it enables you to see the stars in the heavens

  • with amazing clarity.

  • Have a look.

  • (Video) Narrator: Some 1,500 miles south of the tropics,

  • between Chile and Bolivia,

  • the Andes completely change.

  • It's called the Altiplano, or "high plains" --

  • a place of extremes

  • and extreme contrasts.

  • Where deserts freeze

  • and waters boil.

  • More like Mars than Earth,

  • it seems just as hostile to life.

  • The stars themselves --

  • at 12,000 feet, the dry, thin air

  • makes for perfect stargazing.

  • Some of the world's astronomers have telescopes nearby.

  • But just looking up with the naked eye,

  • you really don't need one.

  • (Music)

  • (Applause)

  • KB: Thank you so much

  • for letting me share some images

  • of our magnificent, wonderful Earth.

  • Thank you for letting me share that with you.

  • (Applause)

Translator: Timothy Covell Reviewer: Morton Bast

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