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(soft music)
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Much about the super colony,
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remains unknown and for good reason.
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These ants move incredibly quickly.
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So you can see why it's so difficult to study,
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and even more difficult to film.
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At around 8 millimeters in length,
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these are bigger than many ants,
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but to us they're still tiny,
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and rarely stay still for more than an instant.
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To keep track of their frantic movements,
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while also getting down to eye level with their world,
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needed a very special camera.
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The brainchild of film maker Martin Dawn.
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This is Franken-Cam.
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It's a device for positioning tiny cameras,
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and small wide angle lenses into awkward corners,
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with extreme precision.
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It's called Franken-Cam because,
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it's got so many different bits in it.
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It has been said that it is an unholy alliance,
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between other bits of equipment,
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that should never have been put together.
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Now known by all of us as Frank,
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it enables us to follow tiny creatures,
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as they go about their lives, without disturbing them.
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(dramatic music)
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I first met Frank back in 2005,
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when filming for the BBC series, Life In The Undergrowth.
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Back then, he wasn't quite a sophisticated as he is now,
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but he still allowed us to see ants in a new way.
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12 years on, the equipment has grown into this.
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And this, enables us to enter the world of the ants,
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in a way that has never been achieved before.
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Mark, there's a lot of things going on over here.
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And long cabling allows operators,
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to take the control box away from the camera,
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so biting insects are less of a problem.
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What's going on?
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But of course, it doesn't stop the ants coming to us.
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(chuckles) I'm covered in ants.
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I'm finding it a little hard to concentrate.
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(soft piano music)
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With Frank's fluid movements,
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keeping th cation in focus is far simpler,
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than it would be using a conventional close up camera.
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It's incredibly easy to find focus,
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to go right in for the close up,
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so we can pull out for the wide shots,
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and we can see the detail, we can see the distance.
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We can put the whole scene in this meadow,
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so we can see it's this meadow,
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and it makes it easier to feel as if you're there.
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And now for the first time,
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the ants are in focus no matter where they're moving,
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and even I am too.
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However, while Frank's body parts cost many thousands,
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and it's construction needed the help
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of a mathematician and an engineer,
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ironically, the layers used for many
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of the most spectacular images,
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cost just ยฃ8 on the internet.
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This wasn't a cost cutting measure.
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This lens has amazing abilities,
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and it's perfect for the job, but it's only so cheap,
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because lenses like it are made in their many millions,
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for the cameras on your mobile phone.
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(dramatic music)
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One of the clever ways Frank's lenses
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takes us into the ant's world,
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is by changing the way we see distances.
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To an ant, five feet might as well be half a mile.
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This behind the scenes image, recorded on a normal camera,
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shows just how close I'm sitting to the nest,
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but if we view the same scene using Franken-Cam,
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it appears as though I'm much farther away.
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It's this magnifying of distances,
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that allows the operator to steer so precisely,
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between every blade of grass,
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and enables us to appreciate the world on ant scale.
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But even with Frank, there's one factor
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that effected every aspect of the ant's behavior,
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that we couldn't control.
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The weather up here is extraordinarily unpredictable.
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You never know what's gonna happen.
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This morning it was lovely sunshine, look at it now.
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Difficult to believe, but yesterday,
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these meadows were under three inches of snow.
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So you have to be prepared for anything,
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whether your an ant, or indeed, a naturalist. (chuckles)
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The ants have worked out how to survive here, we're novices.
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It was meant to be Spring now,
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and this was meant to be the shoot we did six weeks ago.
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With the weather so variable,
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predicting the ant's behaviors was difficult.
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We've just arrived,
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and found the nest covered in Wind Ants,
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which we weren't expecting at all.
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We were kind of expecting them to come out,
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in about a week, or two weeks time.
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Even the scientists are pretty surprised.
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Matters aren't helped,
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by Frank being just as fickle as the weather is.
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Unfortunately with Frank, it's tempremental,
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and sometimes he's brilliant,
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and as soon as you admit that he's brilliant,
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he decides to stop working,
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which is exactly what happened this morning.
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The focus box has received a knock,
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or it's being sad it's not working anyway.
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Kit failure is always a concern,
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but when there is only one of your camera in the world,
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you just need to find a way to carry on.
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And doing so, enabled us to record behavior,
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scientists can't normally observe in such detail.
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Like the intricacies of antenna movements,
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when ants interact.
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Or following a parasitic queen through the undergrowth,
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as she slowly builds her chemical disguise.
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To obtain new observations,
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leading to a new understanding of the ants,
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the team filmed for over 100 days, spread over a year.
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And the ants love it.
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I'm happy, great, lovely thanks guys.
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With the help of Franken-Cam,
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they took us into the world of the super colony,
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and remarkably, using a tiny lens,
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just like the one on the phone in your pocket.
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(dramatic music)
10080
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