The
project brought together a top-notch team that included Ernest
McNabb as Director of Photography, macro-photography contributions
by Peter Parks of Image Quest 3D, and underwater photography
by Howard Hall and Bob Cranston, as well as outstanding
aerial photography from Spacecam's Ralph Mendoza. Denis
Papillon, editor of the Oscar-winning The Old Man and the Sea,
was the picture editor for the project. Visual Effects Supervisor
for the project was Jacques Lévesque of Montreal-based
Icestorm, which created the digital-animation sequences illustrating
global deforestation, and a 3-D animation sequence of the water system
of New York City, amongst others. An animated matte painting, re-creating
the Mayan city of Tikal just prior to its abandonment around 950 AD,
was produced by Toybox of Toronto.
Shooting over a period of 29 weeks throughout the Americas, the team
set out to capture Bayley Silleck's unique vision. The result
is a feast for the senses, a series of unforgettable images and sounds,
which celebrate what Harvard biologist Edward O. Wilson called,
"the wondrous diversity of life that still surrounds us."
From filming a rare black jaguar in Guatemala to a raft of sea otters
off the California coast, the team experienced many unexpected and
memorable moments. Jeff Marvin, one of the film's producers,
recalls a personal highlight: "In Guatemala, we were telling the story
of how the once-great Mayan city of Tikal was abandoned and eventually
reclaimed by the jungle. At one point, near the end of the shoot,
I was out recording sounds by myself. As soon as I turned on the microphone,
I realized how much life was actually around me. There were creatures
everywhere, and I could hear them as if they were right next to me—insects,
birds, chattering monkeys, coatimundis... Even though I had chosen
a relatively quiet spot to record," recalls Jeff, "the voice of the
jungle came through with tremendous force."
Struggling to put Lost Worlds on film, others on the team shared
similar experiences. As city dwellers thrown into an environment exploding
with natural abundance and vitality, many were deeply moved. It was
exactly this kind of profound experience of nature's diversity that
the team was working hard to bring to giant-screen audiences.
"Every time you go out to film an endangered species, like the sea
otter, for example, the situation is delicate," notes director Silleck.
"Obviously we have to get the shot, but at the same time, we have
to do it without altering the natural behavior of the animal in any
way. Trying to do this with a large and noisy IMAX camera makes things
even more difficult. The trick, as with all wildlife photography,
is to be extremely patient and cautious."
The film's central storyline follows a group of scientists on a RAP
(Rapid Assessment Program) expedition to the legendary "Lost World"
of Venezeula's high plateaus. Much of this 10-week shoot proved to
be an enormous survival challenge for the crew, a high-risk venture
exceeding the expectations of all the veterans involved.
Gearing up to leave for Venezuela and the first shoot of the production,
the team received word that the worst flooding and mudslides in a
century had struck the Caracas region, their principal staging point.
The country's infrastructure had collapsed; even the customs offices
literally had been swept out to sea. Floods and mudslides had claimed
somewhere between 30,000 and 50,000 lives. The shoot was delayed,
but when the team did arrive in Venezuela weeks later, the country
was still reeling from the disaster.
The most serious challenges for the production stemmed from the effort
of filming deep in the interior of Venezuela. "Anytime you go into
a location, it helps to have a production infrastructure," notes Line
Producer Daniel Ferguson, "people that are used to dealing
with a ton of equipment, a ton of people, helicopters, etc. In a lot
of places where we went, that just didn't exist."
Led by Venezuelan biologists Margarita Lampo, Fabián A.
Michelangeli and Celsis Senaris, the film crew finally
set out for the mysterious "Lost World," a unique and breathtaking
wilderness made famous by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's 1912 novel. Located
some 800 kilometers southeast of the capital, Caracas, the region
is renowned for its remote, rugged, and startlingly beautiful high-altitude
plateaus. The highest of these, Mount Roraima, soars to 2,772 meters.
Auyán-tepui, another plateau in the region, is the source of
the spectacular Angel Falls, the world's highest waterfall (997 meters).
The Lost Worlds team was one of the few film crews granted
permission to film on the summit of Auyán-tepui. "It's one
of the last great unexplored places on the Earth today," observes
Silleck. "These high plateaus have been isolated from one another
and from the forests and grasslands below for millions of years. Many
of the species that evolved up there are endemic—they exist nowhere
else in the world."
Four helicopters were needed to carry the scientists, film crew, and
4,000 pounds of gear to the top of the mist-shrouded Mount Roraima.
To make it to this altitude carrying heavy cargo, the helicopters
were forced to travel with a minimum fuel load—just enough to
reach the summit and return. When visibility at the top dropped suddenly,
the helicopters would abort the trip, unable to spare the fuel required
to hover and wait for the clouds to clear.
"It took us three days to get in to Mount Roraima, where we camped
for two weeks," recalls Ferguson. "Once we were up there, we
didn't see a day without rain. By the time we left, the water level
in our campground was so high that we literally had cases of equipment
floating off the mountain. We dealt with storms, weather changes every
five minutes, the dangers of getting in by helicopter, of being trapped
there without enough supplies and food: we had power outages—you
name it—every problem there could be, we faced it."
To ensure the safety of the crew, the production employed a number
of local Pemón Indian guides with an intimate knowledge of
the mountain so as to keep crew members from getting lost in Roraima's
many labyrinths.
The production also brought its own helicopter mechanic and replacement
parts from Venezuela, but the dangers proved inescapable. Flying over
remote rain forest in a vintage 1941 DC-3 (the only transportation
into the region), Director of Photography Ernie McNabb looked
out the window to discover that one of the aircraft's two radial engines
was spewing oil and shards of metal. The propeller had stopped. The
craft was forced to make an emergency landing, but thanks to a coolheaded
veteran pilot, the crew emerged unscathed. In another incident, a
sling used for carrying supplies and gear underneath a helicopter
snapped in flight, plunging valuable supplies and exposed film stock
to the earth below.
"It keeps you on the edge, knowing that if you ever miscalculate,
if you skimp on anything, the lives of your crew members could be
at stake," reveals Line Producer Ferguson. "We all deal with
challenges to get the movie on the screen, but when you are dealing
literally with how to keep people alive, the challenge becomes very
daunting. To work with a 30-person crew and never know for certain
if radio communications were reliable, if the weather report was accurate,
if it was safe to go in, or if you would be able to get out, was quite
terrifying. While we were there, we actually helped the Venezuelan
National Parks authority clean up the wreckage of three helicopters
that had crashed on the summit of Roraima the previous year."
For director Bayley Silleck, the ever-changing weather on Mount
Roraima made continuity filming nearly impossible. "One minute we
would be set up to film a scene with bright sun, and the clouds would
suddenly roll in, making it impossible to even move. As soon as we
re-set for an oncoming storm, the clouds would disappear! Normally
we get about six good shots in a day, but some days we were lucky
to do more than two set-ups."
Despite these conditions and difficulties, the production team captured
an amazing collection of images of rare and unique wildlife from this
part of the world. "This remote area [of the table mountains in Venezuela]
is truly extraordinary," explains Silleck. "One always felt
gifted to even be present there."
