Shooting nature films: the technology of 'Iberia, infinite nature'

Arturo Menor, director, screenwriter and responsible for the photography of the Goya candidate for Best Documentary Film 'Iberia, infinite nature', breaks down the technological axes of his latest work.

53 weeks has dedicated the team of Acajú Environmental Communication to shape his latest film, Iberia, infinite nature, which takes the extensive catalogue of pieces of a nature by Arthur Minor and his two previous feature films: WildMed, the last Mediterranean forest (2014) and Barbican, the footprint of the wolf (2018). Menor conveys in 75 minutes full of overwhelming images the story of a golden eagle that, expelled from its habitat, embarks on a survival adventure throughout the Iberian Peninsula.

The film was created with the aim of treating a problem related to the Nature Preservation, chosen by Menor himself, also a naturalist and biologist: the electrocution of large birds on power lines, the main cause of unnatural mortality of birds in Spain. To this end, the team of Iberia, infinite nature, made up of regulars in fiction productions and collaborators such as naturalists, is part of a script that will be turned into images collecting the spontaneity of species such as wild eagles, minks or bears.

This mixture of Intentions and realities makes Menor decide to flee from the label of documentary, to frame his latest work in the category of "Nature movie": "The eagle, the protagonist of our film, is actually 14 different golden eagles, of which ten are wild and four are falconry, trained."

The ambition, beyond residing in the decision to connect with both the general public and those who love nature, is exemplified by a technical team with a remarkable curriculum: José M. G. Moyano (Goya by Marshland, Plague, Model 77...) and Manuel Terceño to the assembly (A Country to Listen to, Pioneers, The State Against Pablo Ibar); Carlos de Hita (Maixabel, Dehesa: The forest of the Iberian lynx, Guadalquivir) and Jorge Marín to sound (Goya for 3 days, Honor, Brooklyn Sevillanas), or Pepe Domínguez del Olmo, double winner of the Goya for Model 77 and Marshland, who was in charge of recreating a golden eagle's nest in a studio.

Minor, from his privileged vantage point as director, screenwriter, pre-editor and also director of photography, details how the production and post-production of Iberia, infinite nature without skimping on details. Capture, sound, editing or colour are addressed in this conversation, conveying the complexity, but also the magic, of nature cinema.

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Controlled unpredictability

60 locations in 19 provinces from all over Spain have allowed Arturo Menor and his team to transfer their vision of Iberia. Long days of filming, in which the Sunrises and sunsets (moments of activation of its unpredictable acting cast), were distributed over more than a year, always fleeing from the most extreme heat and cold.

"Thanks to the Naturalists, photographers and biologists that we hire, we know the places where what we want to film is going to happen, such as the heat of minks or bustards".

The planning of Iberia, infinite nature It did not stray from the initial scheme, something that can pass for readers when imagining the long hours of waiting (and even days) referenced by opulent narrators in the most traditional documentaries. To achieve this, Menor and his team relied on three key figures: Naturalists, photographers and biologists: "Thanks to these profiles, we know the places where what we want to film is going to happen, such as the heat of mink or bustards."

The Iberia he is in constant contact with these profiles, until the desired call arrives around the date stipulated in the provisional calendar: "There comes a time when they tell us: look, Tuesday of next week is going to be an optimal day to do this. And normally, when we go to the places, what we had planned to happen happens. Otherwise, it would be impossible to make the film, because there are so many things and so different... In this film there are more than eighty different species!"

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Capture: maximum versatility

Except on rare occasions, the filming of the São Paulo Scouting team Iberia, infinite nature, with Menor together with José Antonio Vallejo as cameramen, have involved long journeys that, at times, involved several hours of "walking": "Logically, many of the sequences are in remote locations: where the eagles or capercaillies are. We had to walk to the hiding place carrying cameras, optics, batteries, tripods and even sleeping bags, mats, water or food if we had to spend the night."

The logistical difficulty of filming led Menor to opt for a Lightweight equipment possible, which is why, moving away from the more common cinematographic options in filming for the big screen, he chose the Pocket Cinema Camera 6K Pro of Blackmagic Design: "It's a camera that shoots in RAW and 6K, and it gives us superb quality for cinema." With respect to the Optical, the cinematographer opted for lightweight lenses of Canon. Specifically, a goal 24-70mm and a 100-400mm: "Animals are not as far away as we usually think. We hire naturalists to help us get as close to the action as possible. Optics, logically, are very limited by physics itself, and we know that if we were at a greater distance we could face aberrations or the reverberation of the air itself."

This desire to get closer to animals has led Menor and Vallejo to entrust the focus and operation of the camera to their own skill, dispensing with the need for Extenders or intermediate tools: "It's hours and hours waiting for the animal to come. The only shots we have done with a cable extension are the underwater ones, with the salmon. We placed the camera underwater and with an external monitor we monitored what was happening underwater."

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Looking for unique shots with drones, FPV, CableCam…

Menor admits to finding his inspiration for technical solutions in other nature documentaries, which he tries to see in his phases of preproducción to get inspired for their next works. The golden eagle, on this occasion, was the ideal pretext to test various solutions Aerial Capture Technologies not so frequent in their previous production.

An old acquaintance is the drone, specifically the Mavic 3 of DJI, which was used to capture spectacular images of some of the most outstanding landscapes of the Iberian Peninsula. In this production, he had a little brother who allowed him to provide unpublished takes in the production of Acajú: "We used a Mosquito drone built and operated by Iván Merino, champion of the Iberian Drone League. It is the minimum expression of the drone: it is very small and carried a camera GoPro Hero10 completely disassembled, with just enough for the lens, the processor to record the images and the battery." The set of aerial solutions was completed by a Small camera attached to some of the golden eagles which allowed the generation of first-person shots of great spectacularity.

Another innovative solution was the use of a system of CableCam that was mounted in Algámitas, a town in the Sierra Sur of Seville, and that was used to capture the flight of several eagles between two falconers: "We got in touch with Noxon, a company from Navarra that has a cablecam system with very good performance, and that they have been charming and have thrown themselves into the project. With this system, tracing very specific eagle flights, we were able to shoot very close shots of the birds." The Acajú team completed the Noxon system with a stabilizer Asian Brand Zhiyun.

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Filming in inhospitable territories

Iberia, infinite nature It's a production shot in 6K, although it has subsequently been transcoded into 2K for its distribution in cinemas and its future arrival on digital platforms: "Our distributor tells us that the film is neither demanded nor paid for in 4K, so we have decided to bet on this format".

"Our distributor tells us that neither is it demanded nor paid The film in 4K, so we have decided to go for 2K."

6K shot in RAW formats means High transfer speedsas well as Important storage requirements. Dispensing with larger crews, which are common in large productions in controlled shooting environments, Menor opted for three SSD hard drives of Samsung of 1 TB apiece.

Another problem was the question of Batteries, essential so as not to miss the stellar performance of the film's protagonists: "We carry eight numbered and ordered batteries in our backpacks. If your battery runs out and you have a lynx in front of you, for example, you have to quickly change the battery and not be aware of whether you put one back in that is discharged."

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When actors surprise for good... And for the worse

The filming of a nature film yields anecdotes and unexpected situations that translate into cinematic opportunities, unfortunate experiences or surprising moments for the entire production team. Menor, after spending weeks and weeks behind the camera trying to make his script a reality, keeps in his memory two moments of the filming of Iberia, infinite nature.

The first is led by the Tail, a coquettish native bird from North Africa already common in southern Spain: "We filmed the Alzacola in Montilla, a town in Cordoba, and curiously, to our surprise, it is a very docile bird that let us get very close and do what we wanted during the shooting. We have had the possibility of backlighting, or changing position to cause the bird to land on a specific vine or branch. It's not at all frequent, but it's given us a lot of possibilities."

The second anecdote She's not so lucky: "Normally, golden eagles are collected in January at the latest, since the mating season begins. Like everyone else, at that moment they become more surly and aggressive. As we were shooting the film and we had some objectives, we had to stretch the eagle collection season a little longer," says the director of photography, providing context to the anecdote: "We were shooting, and I was so comfortable seeing how the eagle came towards me making a magnificent dive. I was doing my thing, trying to make everything square, in focus, and at that moment the falconer came running towards me because he was aware of what was happening: the eagle was coming for me with bad grapes. Fortunately, the falconer dissuaded her from hitting me, although I was already prepared to protect myself behind the tripod and the camera. Hazards of the trade!"

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Creating Soundscapes in Post-Production

As is customary in many pieces of nature cinema, the team of Iberia, infinite nature practically dispensed with the capture of sound in the takes, given the Logistical difficulties that it implied. In the pre-editing of the film, Menor introduced Reference sound captured directly by the cameras on the basis of which Carlos de Hita built the Sound Design of the film: "As he says, practically what we gave him is a silent film."

Based on these environmental sound references and the visual elements of the film, De Hita is in charge of building soundscapes that help the viewer to approach the filming locations: "He usually puts a base of wind, taking into account that it sounds different in an open field than in a beech forest. Then he adds resources that give depth to the shot, such as a crow being heard in the background, and adds elements in the foreground with their respective panning: for example, in the cinema you hear the bird flying to your right and then it enters the shot through there".

The sound elements of Iberia, infinite nature are completed with an important work of Foley, with which De Hita recreated elements such as the footprint of animals, the sound of an eagle perching on a trunk or the birds' own flapping of their wings, created using gloves or leather material.

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Mounting, VFX and color

Minor undertook the pre-assembly of Iberia, infinite nature Relying on the software Final Cut Pro X. The first version of the film lasted Two hours, which were reduced, condensed and improved by the work of José M. G. Moyano: "Every time I went to see him I enjoyed a lot how everything was evolving and how he was giving his personal touch. I always like to say that editors are specialists in audiovisual editing and correct spelling mistakes that I may make."

"There is a episode in which one of the Electrocuted eagles. We shot the eagle in a studio with Chroma, we integrate it into the landscape and we digitally draw a electric arc, which is the element that causes the eagle to be electrocuted, and what triggers electrocution”.

Iberia It also has up to 60 plans were carried out under the coordination of Juan Ventura Pecellín of Antipodes Film Lab, a study defined by Menor as "one of the most modern that there may be now in Andalusia for these works". Some of the works carried out were the integration of the golden eagle's nest into natural landscapes, the elimination of elements that can distort (such as "a telephone tower"), the integration of an eagle flying in a landscape of the Pyrenees that was shot in front of a green screen or the generation of one of the most shocking moments of the film: "There is an episode in which one of the eagles dies electrocuted. We shot the eagle in a studio with chroma key, integrated it into the landscape and digitally drew an electric arc, which is the element that causes the eagle to electrocute and what triggers electrocution."

For color correction, Menor once again relied on Juan Ventura, who carried out this task with the software DaVinci Resolve of Blackmagic: "In fiction, sometimes you can give a peculiar color or a personal point so that the film stands out and catches your attention as a viewer. In the case of Iberia, infinite nature, I asked him to respect natural colours as much as possible, because in the end that's what it's all about: that nature looks realistic and isn't distorted by weird elements that disturb it."

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The road to the next documentary

About to complete the cycle of Iberia, infinite nature, with the promising Goya Award nomination on the horizon, Arthur Minor he is already thinking about his next production: "For the next film, I have the task of seeing more films and works from production companies worldwide. Fundamentally, I will look at the BBC, which is the one that innovates and is at the forefront of this type of filming. When I see it, I'll think: let's see how I do this with a tenth of the budget."

"At last, the Nature cinema is having the Recognition He Deserves at the cinematographic level (...) Let's hope that this effort, with great professionals and very long shoots, will materialize in a Such an important prize as is the Goya".

2024 will mark the beginning of this particular pre-production, with the horizon set within three, four or five years. Minor shown optimistic in being able to move the project forward again: "Internationally, there is an important recognition of nature cinema, with works winning at the Oscars, the Césars, Sundance or in the documentary category at Cannes. Finally, nature cinema is getting the recognition it deserves at the cinematographic level (...) We hope that this effort, with great professionals and very long shoots, will materialize in an award as important as the Goya".

A report by Sergio Julián Gómez

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