Original subtitles

NARRATOR: National Geographic film crews fan out across the globe.

MAN: We're going.

NARRATOR: Their assignment: to film a new, landmark series

on the world's great animal migrations.

MAN: Did you see that?

NARRATOR: Over the next two and a half years,

they travel 420,000 miles...

to 20 different countries...

WOMAN: This is going to be trouble.

[monkey squawking]

MAN: Don't try this at home.

NARRATOR: ...pushing themselves to get closer...

and go further.

MAN: Go back, guys, go back.

MAN: Get out of here, go, go, go, go, go, go...

NARRATOR: These are the "Behind The Scenes" stories...

of Great Migrations.

MAN: l don't know if you can see this bright red glow.

lt's like the world came to an end.

NARRATOR: Guadalupe lsland...

150 miles west of Mexico's Baja Peninsula.

Every year, great white sharks migrate here.

Scientists think they're coming here to hunt or breed.

But there's little conclusive proof.

MAN: Got it!

NARRATOR: Mike Shepard and Eric Berkenpas are here

to shed some light on the mystery of the sharks' migration.

They've built a Crittercam:

a small high-definition camera in a waterproof housing

that they'll clamp on a shark's dorsal fin.

lt'll allow them to spy on the shark's behavior

from the shark's point of view.

SHEPARD: What we're going to do

is we're gonna put this on the end of a pneumatic pole,

and when the shark gets close enough to the boat,

we reach over the side and push the trigger on the attachment pole,

and it cinches the thing tight.

NARRATOR: Testing it and deploying it are two very different things.

lt's not a task for the faint-hearted.

They need to be in a small boat,

to get as close as possible to the fin of the breaching shark.

MAN: That shark is actually bigger than the boat, by far.

MAN: Five o'clock.

WOMAN: He's circling them now.

MAN: Here he comes, he's coming right under you.

MAN: Turn around, guys.

[thud]

SHEPARD: l couldn't see anything because l fell in with my sunglasses on.

Because you can't see anything, you are imagining that it's,

these teeth are coming after you...

and the shark had actually bit the motor

and started to come back to see what all the commotion was about.

Eric yells like, "Swim!"

[cheering]

WOMAN: He's right behind you guys, he's right behind you, to your right!

SHEPARD: The shark came in and l think it bumped the motor,

and the boat rocked and l fell off the bow,

like almost onto the shark.

The current took me away a little bit faster than l expected,

so, yeah.

BERKENPAS: l tried to reach for him and he just kind of went away.

SHEPARD: Then l realized that l was swimming

next to an 18-foot white shark that likes things flailing on the surface

and l swam my ass off.

NARRATOR: Undaunted, the team tries again the next day.

WOMAN: Oh, it's another one!

MAN: Woo!

NARRATOR: For the next four hours,

the shark takes its own migratory self-portrait.

The Crittercam footage is a rare, intimate view

of the shark's secret world.

But it doesn't help prove the theory that they're here to hunt or breed.

For cameraman Andy Casagrande,

solving the puzzle of these shadowy, misunderstood hunters

has become a lifelong obsession.

CASAGRANDE: First time l saw a great white shark was on television.

l was seven years old.

And l always thought, is that thing real?

And when l found out it was,

l said, how can they possibly film that thing without getting eaten?

Then l grew up and realized, "Wow, they actually used cages for that thing."

And after filming sharks for many years,

l realized cages really don't give you the best shots

and don't help you that much.

The only way to really get the stuff you want is outside of the cage.

This is about animal migrations

so we don't want to just see a static shot of a shark

coming to the cage and going past.

The only way to get these shots of the sharks

moving and traveling and on this grand journey

was to get out and swim with them.

Don't try this at home.

NARRATOR: From the cage, he observes the behavior of the shark.

With seven years of experience,

he's learned which sharks he thinks he can work with

and which ones to avoid.

CASAGRANDE: The first thing we do is to try to size up the shark:

ls this shark aggressive? ls he relaxed?

lf they look mean, they generally are mean.

lf the shark is really scarred up and scratched and missing teeth

and half of its tail is bitten off,

that's like a brawler.

lt's just like you go to the pub,

you see a guy with bloody knuckles and a black eye,

you don't run up and put your camera right in his face

and take his picture.

NARRATOR: He thinks he's found a cooperative shark

and makes the decision to leave the safety cage.

CASAGRANDE: Your adrenaline starts pumping,

you're swimming out there,

you're trying to keep the camera really stable, really still.

One of the biggest sort of mental mind game challenges

of filming great white sharks is yourself.

You have to mentally tell yourself

and fight that feeling to want to flee from this animal.

NARRATOR: Casagrande needs to stay alert for other sharks.

CASAGRANDE: The biggest sort of danger is not the shark that you can see;

it's the shark you don't see.

They like to be below you,

and you are vulnerable when you're above them.

WOMAN: Andy is so hardcore.

Yeah. Oh, my God.

Dude, seriously?

Yeah, that was intense.

NARRATOR: The risk pays off.

CASAGRANDE: When you're able to get out of the cage,

you can do all kinds of things.

You can get silhouette shots, you can swim along with the animal,

you can zoom in on the teeth, it just opens up a whole new world.

NARRATOR: Casagrande gets more than he bargained for.

Four sharks is three too many.

CASAGRANDE: Four of them at a time,

that one swam up at the surface coming out,

and l decided to swim out to it, getting a nice shot,

then l realize, "Whoa, there's one down there,

there's one over here, and there's one behind me,"

and l saw you looking at me going, "Get back, get back."

And that was pretty sketchy

but, man, there's nothing like getting outside of the cage

with these apex predators.

NARRATOR: Casagrande has managed to get beautiful shots

of great whites migrating.

But he still wants to help solve the mystery of why they come to Guadalupe.

He tries a different approach:

an underwater camera attached to a long pole.

After a month trying, he hits pay dirt:

incredibly rare footage of a great white feeding.

The footage and the identity of the shark's prey is a vital clue

about why great whites journey all the way to Guadalupe:

to intersect with the migration of northern elephant seals.

Over 7,000 miles away, in Mali, West Africa...

cameraman Bob Poole searches

for an elusive group of migrating desert elephants.

But the Sahara is about to throw him a gigantic bombshell.

POOLE: We knew that eventually there would be a dust storm,

or what there they call a tempete.

The day that the thing came, l felt something funny,

l kept saying, you know, tempete?

And then El Medhi was with us, said, "Oui, oui, grand tempete."

This thing is going really, really fast.

Yeah, we are. We're going to stick this out.

God, it's...it's across the entire horizon.

Didn't spend a lot of time wondering

what it was going to be like once the thing hit,

because there was nowhere we were going to run.

Scary, man, look how fast it's going.

And it was just wind, you know, with driving sand.

But we just kept rolling.

And the thing ran over us like a freight train.

lt's turning red, l can't believe this,

the sound and the wind, it's so scary, it's so crazy.

We were just watching this wall of sand come at us

and it got closer and closer,

suddenly it just turned red, and then it just went black

and, l mean, black as in the middle of the night.

And now we are hunkered down in the back of this cab,

and the wind is just howling over our heads, blowing sand,

and you can see, l don't know if you can see,

but it's a bright red glow, it's like the world came to an end.

NARRATOR: lt seems like they've been transported to Mars.

For four hours, the sand blocks out the sun.

POOLE: lt's like jumping into a giant sandblaster.

Oh, my God, it's getting lighter, look at this.

But, man, oh, man, that is nuts.

l tell you, John, it really, this goes down

as the wildest thing l have ever seen in my life, honestly.

Can you believe that?

NARRATOR: Poole has survived his trial by sandstorm.

But now, he has to survive the desert elephants of Mali.

POOLE: lt's four.

Best part of the day.

lt only goes downhill from here.

NARRATOR: Today, he is hoping to film family groups at dawn.

But mothers and their calves present a very daunting challenge.

POOLE: lt's not like they are out to get you or anything like that,

but these females, you know, they're stressed,

and their babies are, you know, are their priority.

We have to get in there, into the midst of these elephants, undetected.

That's our challenge.

NARRATOR: Poole is with a local tracker named El Medhi Doumbia

and Producer James Byrne.

They have to work on foot‒

the elephants here are not habituated to vehicles

or comfortable around people.

POOLE: They call this forest over here Tabarak Borak,

but we call it Tora Bora because it's a super dangerous place,

it's just stuffed with elephants, nobody goes in there.

We are trying to get the elephants walking, you know,

that classic shot with the elephants walking in front of the ball,

the sun as it rises.

Wind's blowing this way.

NARRATOR: Filming elephants on foot is a risky assignment.

But Poole has a strategy.

POOLE: Elephants don't see very well at all,

but they can hear really well and they can smell incredibly well.

NARRATOR: The key is to stay downwind and work silently.

POOLE: We are going to creep up to the edge here

where we'll be close enough to get nice shots,

but we won't be detected,

but we got to move fast because the sun's coming up

and they're already on the move.

Right here.

NARRATOR: El Medhi and Byrne watch Poole's back.

POOLE: Sometimes your heart starts pounding because you think,

"Oh, my God, if the wind shifts, or suddenly they discover l'm here,"

and you're too close, you can't run, there's nowhere to run, you know?

There's nowhere to...maybe run around a bush or something.

NARRATOR: He's downwind and in a perfect position

to get the sunrise shot he wants.

POOLE: You can easily find yourself in this point of no return,

where now you are so close that if you move, they can see you.

l am definitely, you know, sort of trembling at that point.

Because you just realize that, God, you know,

if this thing suddenly detects me, what are you going to do?

NARRATOR: There's a problem:

another group is coming up behind him.

POOLE: Then suddenly these guys come out of the bushes,

and you don't even hear them, and then they've got you backed,

they're behind you and they're in front of you

and you don't have anywhere to go

but out into the sand dunes in front of them.

NARRATOR: Poole has no choice but to retreat.

POOLE: But now my tripod is stuck down there.

lt's going to be interesting to see what they do.

[elephant snorts]

[bleep]

[laughs]

Come sneaking up on me like that.

Ay yi yi.

Well, that was interesting. At least my tripod didn't get trashed.

Was close, though.

NARRATOR: Over 5,000 miles away,

on the Mississippi River in the United States...

cameraman Neil Rettig is also trying to get close to his subjects.

They're a lot less intimidating than elephants,

but no less challenging.

RETTlG: Absolutely claustrophobic as heck in this blind,

but l think we are going to get some great stuff in the end.

Twelve feet away from the peregrines,

and a hole down in the bottom of the blind,

makes it kind of difficult to keep equipment in.

And l stay roped in the entire time l'm in here.

NARRATOR: Rettig's daring cliff face blind

gets him rare close-ups of the nesting behavior

of one of his favorite birds:

the peregrine falcon, the fastest bird on Earth.

RETTlG: You guys see him?

NARRATOR: For Rettig, birds are a lifelong obsession.

RETTlG: lt's really neat to watch falcons stooping,

coming pretty fast at the bald eagles.

lt's spectacular, actually.

NARRATOR: For the Great Migrations series,

he's been tasked with cracking the code of the migrating birds

that come through the Mississippi Flyway in Wisconsin.

Wild birds are incredibly skittish and really hard to get close to.

Rettig and fellow cameraman John Benam have an ingenious idea:

a floating blind that looks like a muskrat lodge.

RETTlG: What we're doing right now is to get some unusual shots

of these huge rafts of diving ducks

and trying to stealthily kind of just paddle with these fins on‒

l've got fins on right here‒

very slowly move in,

and try to get within range with the high definition camera,

and a wide angle lens to actually get some really cool shots,

right on the birds' level from a couple of feet away.

You guys got to kind of tell me where l am,

l can't see [bleep], 'cause l'm going backwards.

Am l moving? Am l making good time?

BENAM: Yeah, man, you're fine.

RETTlG: When you're in it, you've got to paddle backwards.

We had these flippers on, you can't see where you're going,

so every now and then, you'd have to stop

and peep through a little peephole,

and we were able to get within 10, 15 feet

to get some really extraordinary shots.

NARRATOR: On the other side of the world, in the rainforests of Borneo,

camerawoman Justine Evans also uses a blind

to spy on her unsuspecting subjects.

To get to it each morning,

she has to climb over 150 feet up into the roof of the jungle.

EVANS: Looks like we found the perfect fruiting fig.

NARRATOR: She's here to film all the primates

that congregate for a brief explosion of tasty figs.

EVANS: She looks like she's lining up to go for a big jump here.

Whoa! That was it!

l think l stayed with her.

That was amazing.

l've got red leafs,

l've got red leaf monkeys coming into the tree.

There's going to be trouble. Yeah, look, she's coming down.

She's getting really close to him.

Wow, the female gibbon is really upset.

She's so furious.

She tried to touch him.

Both of them have dropped out of the tree.

lt's been absolutely incredible, and it's been non-stop all day long.

NARRATOR: Over the next month, for 14 hours a day,

Justine stakes out the fig tree.

Meanwhile, the rest of the Borneo crew

gears up to film a monkey's eye view of the canopy.

Andy Shilabeer and his rigging team deploy their own unique invention.

lt's called the Black Widow:

a remote-camera system designed to glide through the treetops.

They spend two weeks dangling 150 terrifying feet above the ground,

setting up the ropes and cables‒

all forjust three quick shots.

MAN: The view that it opens up is just great.

Yeah, this is gonna be an epic shot.

l think this is really gonna blow some minds.

NARRATOR: The final results are a breathtaking glimpse

into the aerial highways used by Borneo's acrobatic primates.

From the steaming jungles of Borneo to the land of the midnight sun...

St. Lawrence lsland, off the west coast of Alaska.

RAVETCH: Okay, we're going.

Here we are.

NARRATOR: Cameraman Adam Ravetch is here to film migrating walrus.

Underwater cameraman Johnny Friday

has packed the bare necessities for the day trip.

FRlDAY: We've got 24 gallons of fuel, a can of Spam...

and a gallon of water.

We also got a few rifles in case we need to live off the land.

NARRATOR: lt's 8 a.m.

They start theirjourney of up to 30 miles through ice and rough currents

to get to the walrus.

RAVETCH: A lot of fog out here. A lot of ice.

FRlDAY: We're already in a jam. 150 yards.

RAVETCH: See if we can do some baby/mom stuff.

We've been weathered in for 15 days.

We only have one day of filming walruses.

We just found a group over here, so we'll see if we can film them.

Cool opportunity here.

A lot of babies and mothers.

l'm wondering if l can get over on a chunk of ice.

NARRATOR: The walrus seem unperturbed by the team's presence.

They manage to film intimate close-ups, both above and below the water.

After waiting for 15 days for the weather to clear,

they've finally got the shots... but at a cost.

Unwittingly, they've become prisoners of the ice.

FRlDAY: With he wind dying down and the current,

or the tides moving all the ice together,

so we are trying to find a way to pick ourselves through this ice,

but it's not looking so good.

We've made a little bit of headway,

but every time we get about a mile up,

we have to turn around and go back another half mile or mile or so.

NARRATOR: They burn precious fuel trying to find a way through the ice.

RAVETCH: We are in a maze of ice that's closing in around us.

There is very little open water.

MAN: Oh, [bleep]

MAN: Go back, guys, go back. You're both falling in.

MAN: How's the CB working?

MAN: lt works. l tried to call out and nobody answered.

NARRATOR: They're so remote that rescue is impossible.

RAVETCH: Trying to get to this open water right here,

trying to get home, but we are still 1 1 miles out.

Lots of ice.

Forward!

NARRATOR: Finally, they reach open water.

But by now, their fuel supplies are dangerously low.

MAN: Are you worried?

RAVETCH: Well, yeah, a little bit.

l mean, what happens if we run out of gas?

We just got to keep going, keep pushing over the ice,

keep making our way and gambling.

NARRATOR: At 6 a.m. the following morning,

22 hours after they left, they make it home.

They have only one gallon of gas to spare.

RAVETCH: We just saw land, we just saw land.

Getting a little worried there for a while.

NARRATOR: Seven and a half thousand miles away,

in southern Sudan, East Africa...

one of the least known great migrations in the world is under way.

This is the annual journey of 800,000 white-eared kob

in Boma National Park.

Because of Sudan's tragic civil war,

our crew is the first to film on the ground here

in over two decades.

To find the kob, they must go off-road

and follow their GPS into the wild unknown.

[talking]

BYRNE: We're not going to Pachella. We're going all the way over here.

NARRATOR: Producer James Byrne leads the expedition.

BYRNE: ...and go off-road due east.

NARRATOR: The local support team is clearly skeptical about the plan.

Cameraman Bob Poole works hard

to convince them to entrust their lives to a GPS unit.

POOLE: But there's no swamps.

Well, there may be a swamp, but if there is, it's a small one.

You go around it.

NARRATOR: Even second cameraman John Benam has his doubts.

BENAM: There's a GPS with a point

that just kind of says, you know, you are here,

but we don't really know where here is.

NARRATOR: lt's a perilous trip:

land mines and armed gangs are real and present dangers.

The team enlists five rangers for security.

NARRATOR: But they discover that what they need more than anything

is a good off-road driver...

[bleep]

NARRATOR: ...and a good mechanic.

[starter cranking]

POOLE: Man, that's your problem there.

Your ground is completely finished.

The thing is, the roads are so rough that on the way over here the guys,

the housing that holds the battery is broken off.

Take this battery out, go over there, hook it up with some jumpers.

[engine revving]

We are in the middle of nowhere.

l mean, you can't even believe how far this place is from anywhere.

NARRATOR: The team's progress off-road is painfully slow.

Every day they literally spin their wheels.

BYRNE: What we have here is the official definition of a quagmire.

POOLE: This is a quagmire.

Let it be known that that vehicle over there

is what we call in Swahili "juocali."

lt means like, it's completely [bleep].

NARRATOR: Undaunted, they soldier on.

But as soon as they overcome one obstacle, a bigger one appears.

Cameraman, mechanic, now potential human prey.

ln a river likely to be home to crocodiles,

Poole checks for logs that could obstruct the vehicles.

POOLE: Let me give you my stuff in my pockets.

NARRATOR: Eight days of travel begin to take their toll on team morale.

BENAM: Today was a lot of driving without a road.

There will be more of that tomorrow

and there was more of that the day before.

MAN: lt's like a journey without end.

MAN: ln my life, l think this is the toughest

since l started doing safari.

BYRNE: They've been on the road for about eight days,

so these guys are tired.

NARRATOR: Finally, on the ninth day, the end is in sight.

[cheering]

BYRNE: All right, this is it, man.

MAN: Awesome.

POOLE: Beautiful! Unbelievable!

Look at this place.

Oh, my God.

lt's just perfect.

l mean, even from the air it didn't look as good as this.

lmagine, these guys have been driving 1 1 days to see this...

oh...roadless wilderness!

BYRNE: Full of kob everywhere... kob as far as the eye can see.

We're in kob heaven. Kob heaven!

NARRATOR: They've timed their arrival perfectly

to coincide with the kob's annual rut,

when males fight each other for mating rights.

For the first time in over two decades,

these little-known pugnacious animals and their epic migration

can be seen once again.

Just 650 miles south of southern Sudan, in Ndutu, Tanzania.

Cameraman Andy Casagrande is on a mission

to get the definitive slow-motion shots

of cheetahs hunting migrating wildebeest and zebra.

CASAGRANDE: The sun's coming up here in Africa.

We've been up for a couple of hours.

We're heading out onto the plains

to catch some of the action of the migration.

Hopefully, we'll get lucky with some cheetah kills, lions,

whatever else that might be hunting this morning.

See what happens.

NARRATOR: He decides to follow a mother cheetah.

With three extra mouths to feed, she's sure to be hunting every day.

CASAGRANDE: That looks pretty clean.

So...we're filming the fastest land animal in the world, the cheetah,

with the super high-speed, super high-definition video camera.

lt captures 1,500 frames per second.

lt's essentially super, super slow motion,

and with cheetahs you need every bit of frame rate possible.

And they're moving towards the herd. Perfect.

Let's go get 'em.

Okay, that's good, that's good.

And then she sits down.

[flies buzzing]

lt's getting hot in here and there's lots of flies, these [bleep] flies...

She's got to eat sometime.

Let's see what she can do today.

There's a whole line of wildebeest lining up on one side of her

and a small herd of zebra on the other.

This is her fourth day hunting and she still hasn't made a kill.

She has got to eat, and so do her cubs.

NARRATOR: Whether it's inexperience or fear of injury,

this cheetah seems to give up all too easily.

CASAGRANDE: And the cheetah is sitting down again.

You know, l've just realized that l don't think

l have changed or washed

the trousers that l'm wearing right now

for the past 17 days.

NARRATOR: Casagrande's patience is wearing thin.

CASAGRANDE: You know, you grow quite attached to these animals

while you're filming them.

Sometimes you give them names,

sometimes you give them swear words for names.

MAN: Good morning.

CASAGRANDE: Good morning. l feel good; l think we will be fine.

Let's do it.

We are heading out on the plains for some action.

lt's been slow, but today is the day.

We are going to get the kill, it's gonna be today.

lt better be.

Today may be the day we get...

[radio chatter]

...lucky.

[singing] lf l was a cheetah, l would run super fast,

chasing all the animals around the grass.

So we've got a situation here.

The three cubs are underneath our car

and the cheetah is hunting in front of our car.

We have no angle on the shot.

We could go to the roof, but it's way too windy

and the camera is all over the place.

We can't move the car to get in position

and the cheetah is about to hunt.

lsn't that [bleep] up?

lf she makes a kill and we can't shoot it,

l think l'm gonna find myself working at the bank

or a supermarket or maybe...

maybe l'll just...

yeah, l'm not sure what l'll do.

l'm going to check on those little cubs.

lt's been almost... almost an hour.

They're still sitting under our car.

The mother is still at the front, where we can't get an angle,

and she is still hunting.

So the mother is coming back now

to retrieve her cubs from underneath our vehicle.

NARRATOR: The next day, Casagrande finds the cheetah mother

stalking near a zebra herd.

CASAGRANDE: Maybe she's going to go for one of those little zebra.

Here we go again.

NARRATOR: But instead of the mother on the prowl,

it's the cubs that are practicing their skills, mock-hunting huge zebras.

lt seems like innocent fun.

But in an instant, the tables are turned.

CASAGRANDE: You won't believe this.

We just filmed, one of the three cubs gets stamped by a zebra.

During a hunt the mother, one of the cubs just got stamped by a zebra.

lt's dead.

MAN: She's alive! She's alive.

CASAGRANDE: The cub?

MAN: Yeah, she's alive!

CASAGRANDE: Where is she?

MAN: She is there. l can see her.

CASAGRANDE: Where?

Turn around, turn the car...

Holy [bleep], she's alive, the cub is alive.

Oh, my God, oh, my God.

That was horrible.

She's there!

NARRATOR: When Casagrande reviews the ultra slow-motion shot,

he sees what his naked eye had missed.

CASAGRANDE: After reviewing the phantom footage,

it was quite evident that the cub escaped.

l can't believe that cub's alive. l can't believe that cub's alive.

NARRATOR: The great migration of wildebeest and zebra

tracks north to Kenya.

250 miles and five months later, they arrive at this legendary river.

Cameramen John Benam and Bob Poole are waiting.

POOLE: Holy-moly.

Oh, man. Look at that.

[wildebeest lowing]

NARRATOR: Everything is in place

for perhaps the most iconic migration spectacle on Earth.

BENAM: About to cross.

lt was absolute chaos, just massive hooves,

just going, going, going, running, running, running, crossing.

As soon as they saw that calf, man, they beelined right in there.

And the bloodshed, the just overall carnage

was something to behold.

lt was just kill after kill after kill.

NARRATOR: Mothers try to shield their young.

But not all succeed.

John Benam trains his lens on a scene he will remember forever.

BENAM: We heard this calling from a calf, kind of over through the bushes.

[calf bellowing]

And this massive, you know, 12-foot croc is just attached to its backside.

He kept pulling the croc, literally out of the water with him.

He was so strong, he was like pulling himself up on the bank.

[calf bellowing]

lt was extremely emotional.

Everyone who was watching, including myself, were moved to tears.

NARRATOR: The death of any calf is heart wrenching,

the end of an all-too-brief life.

But for every calf that dies here, thousands make it across.

lt is these individual moments of tragedy and triumph

that the Great Migrations crew set out to film...

CASAGRANDE: Oh, my God, l can't believe this.

MAN: How'd it go?

MAN: Good.

MAN: Thanks.

MAN: My pleasure.

WOMAN: There's one.

WOMAN: lt's gonna be awesome; l'm gonna be flying with the monarchs.

NARRATOR: ...to put a face to one among millions...

MAN: And that's what it's like to feel like a walrus.

NARRATOR: ...to tell the most moving stories on Earth...

the stories of the great migrations.