Penguin Safari Airs Fri., May 25 7p et/pt Migration Formation Watch as Penguins take on the elements. Watch a Preview >>

Nigel Marvin- Producer

Filming ‘Penguin Safari’ was a real logistical challenge. South Georgia, where the film is based, has no permanent inhabitants and no airstrip. In order to get there, we chartered a boat, ‘Le Sourire’, from a fantastic husband-and-wife team of Antarctic experts. Their 60-foot yacht became our home for seven weeks. We sailed from the Falkland Islands with a crew of five – a cameraman, an editor, a sound recordist, a production coordinator and me as producer. Additionally, the yacht owners’ two children were on board, Theo, aged 9 and Marilou, aged 12. Mature beyond their years, they helped keep the yacht running and assisted with filming where possible – when they weren’t occupied with their dreaded school work!

The 900 mile crossing from the Falklands took five days and initially seasickness confined virtually all of us to our bunks. But as time went by we gained our sea legs and were able to get up and about. Living conditions were very cramped – we all shared cabins and the edit machines filled half the space in the one saloon room. Due to the half ton of gear we carried, the boat could only take 400 gallons of water on board, so we were rationed to one shower a week!

Finally, after what seemed like an epic voyage, we sighted land – our first view of the island of South Georgia, where we would be staying for the next five weeks. We soon fell into a filming routine, getting up around 7am and going ashore in our Zodiac inflatable boat at 8. We carried the gear in specially designed waterproof rucksacks, which came in handy with the notoriously unpredictable weather on South Georgia.

Filming took us right through till sunset at 9pm – packed lunches and flasks of hot coffee enabled us to eat and drink in the field, which saved a lot of time, as ‘Le Sourire’ was often over an hour’s hike away from the shoot location. Dinner was served on board the boat at around 10pm and then there was a short time in which to check satellite emails and view the previous day’s edited material before falling asleep to the sound of distant seal and penguin calls at around 11pm.

We suffered biting cold, wet feet, rain and snow, acres of penguin droppings and thousands of aggressive fur seals, but every second was worth it to spend a month amongst the jaw-dropping scenery and spectacular wildlife of South Georgia. I hope that through watching ‘Penguin Safari’ you can enter this world too.