River Road Films

Field diary from director Chelsea Turner: "Filming nature means documenting things that are ephemeral and short-lived - unique events in time and space that will never be replicated. It also means showcasing environments and natural cycles that are ancient. We got to do both those things on a recent trip to the spectacular Cody Caves in Ainsworth, British Columbia. Here, majestic underground ice spires grow anew every year and last for just a few magical months before melti...ng away in the spring. They never grow in quite the same place twice! The ancient limestone cave in which the ice grows however, was formed well over 100 million years ago. It was a privilege to explore such a unique place and enjoy the dazzling beauty of the ice spires. It was also a challenge to maneuver around the ice formations and set up our camera equipment and lights without damaging or breaking any! We had to be very delicate and slow in our every movement. One wrong step and I feared a number of the fragile formations would have toppled like dominoes. We owe a big thank-you to Cody Cave Tours, Kaslo Search and Rescue and Cody Caves Provincial Park for making this film trip such a big success! Cody Caves is an amazing environment and the ice spires are truly a very unique cold-weather spectacle."

High drama in Vancouver's Stanley Park. Two moms are trying to protect and provide for their babes. Everyone has to eat and the stakes are high. Send us your scenes of spring from all over Canada at #HelloSpringCBC

Cherry blossoms only peak a few days a year. Enjoy this stunning display captured this year in Vancouver. Share your spring moments with us at #HelloSpringCBC: bit.ly/showusyourspring

Today is World Wildlife Day! The United Nations Development Programme and CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna) has teamed up with Jackson Wild to showcase films from around the world promoting biodiversity. We are very pleased to announce that our film "Grasslands: North America's Hidden Wilderness" has won!... We are honoured to be included among such incredible films. Check out the trailer below for the festival and let's let 2020 be a banner year for protecting biodiversity! https://vimeo.com/394052878

Field diary from director Chelsea Turner: "Filming nature means documenting things that are ephemeral and short-lived - unique events in time and space that will never be replicated. It also means showcasing environments and natural cycles that are ancient. We got to do both those things on a recent trip to the spectacular Cody Caves in Ainsworth, British Columbia. Here, majestic underground ice spires grow anew every year and last for just a few magical months before melti...ng away in the spring. They never grow in quite the same place twice! The ancient limestone cave in which the ice grows however, was formed well over 100 million years ago. It was a privilege to explore such a unique place and enjoy the dazzling beauty of the ice spires. It was also a challenge to maneuver around the ice formations and set up our camera equipment and lights without damaging or breaking any! We had to be very delicate and slow in our every movement. One wrong step and I feared a number of the fragile formations would have toppled like dominoes. We owe a big thank-you to Cody Cave Tours, Kaslo Search and Rescue and Cody Caves Provincial Park for making this film trip such a big success! Cody Caves is an amazing environment and the ice spires are truly a very unique cold-weather spectacle."

The River Road Films team was lucky enough to film at the WindEEE Research Institude's Tornado Lab in London, Ontario the only lab in the world that studies these incredibly-powerful spinning winds. Our host was the charismatic Professor Horia Hangan, director of the Institute, who ran an experiment especially designed for our "Wild Canadian Weather" documentary to explore how trees are distorted by tornadoes. We await the analyses of the data and the results, but here’s a preview of our cinematographer Matt Hood rollerblading next to the tornado in the lab! By using rollerblades and hand-holding the camera using a stabilization system, Matt was able to achieve smooth, gliding shots as he moved around the tornado. But he didn't get quite as close as the expert, Professor Hangan!

Ever get a haircut by a turkey vulture? This past fall, series producer and cinematographer Jeff Turner enjoyed a visit to the The Raptors wildlife centre on Vancouver Island, to film close-up images of turkey vultures in flight. As one of the vultures flew towards her handler's outstreched arm, she came very close indeed to the camera - and her tail feathers brushed Jeff's head! "It was amazing getting to spend time so close to this majestic birds," Jeff says. "Vultures do...n't necessarily have the best public image - say, compared to the eagle, which we associate with being majestic and regal - but I thought these turkey vulures were actually really beautiful and impressive. And they also play a key role in keeping ecosystems healthy by eating carrion. So it's a wonderful thing that we have them around! They're nature's clean-up team." The Raptors centre is run by a group of caring, knowledgeable biologists and raptor enthusiasts dedicated to the conservation of birds of prey, and is open for public visits. See more

Field Diary from director Lou Ferguson: "We turned up at Western University’s Avian Wind tunnel excited, but a little worried. Filming birds in the wind tunnel was going to be the most technical shoot we had for Wild Canadian Weather's ‘Wind’ episode and our first attempt at using the Phantom Flex high-speed camera. Cinematographer Matthew Hood and I had received one day of training, but this was the first time either of us was using it for real, and in a really tricky sit...uation. The birds we were going to film were tiny little warblers that weigh just 20 or so grams. And the wind tunnel was considerably larger. And we had no way of knowing if the birds would fly straight. This was going to be tricky! Once we set up our worries were confirmed the first little warbler flew like it was attached to a yo-yo impossible to focus on. We’d been told by the AFAR Director, Chris Guglielmo, that the birds tend to fly in the wind tunnel fairly easily the wind in their face naturally inspires them to take off and fly - but they all have different personalities. Some are easily distracted and some are focussed fliers, so the hunt was on for the Star of the Show. It has to be said, we couldn’t even have attempted this shoot without the help of the incredible staff at the AFAR wind tunnel Alex, our amazing bird handler, Francis who efficiently operated the wind tunnel, and Chris, usually found in the blast of the wind tunnel, ears protected by mufflers, seemingly even more motivated to get the shots than we were. We worked steadily away for 3 days, rotating the birds every 10-20 minutes to ensure we didn’t exhaust any. And as often happens on nature shoots, on the final day, just before we were going to de-rig and head off we decided to try one last bird and a star was born. Matilda (as Chris called her after cameraman Matt) was born to fly. Even more, she just loved it! She flew and flew, we were literally walking around her in the wind tunnel and she kept going. It turned out Matilda was a blackpoll warbler, the very birds who had inspired us to film this story in the first place as we read articles about their epic migration flights. It had all come full circle back to Matilda and we’d got our shots. Later Chris and Alex released Matilda and all her co-stars to finish the final bit of their migration to the Canadian Boreal, and me and Matt (original) headed to Long Point to film the rest of this story in the wild at Long Point Bird Observatory."

Field Diary from Louise Ferguson: "It was a really strange spring in Eastern Canada this past year. I bet everyone has stories of how usually cold and late it was. We experienced it when we travelled to Long Point, Ontario, on the north shore of Lake Erie to film songbirds arrive on their epic migration north using prevailing winds.... We timed it perfectly for peak numbers, but like everything else, the birds were thrown off by the unusual cold and were just trickling in, definitely behind schedule. Still, the Western University scientists and all the Long Point staff and volunteers weren’t deterred, so neither were we. At 4.45am we collected at the Long Point Bird Observatory, the mist nets were set out and the quarter hourly laps round the bird nets began. The birds caught in the nets are processed weighed, measured, ringed and released within minutes of capture. This data is vital in tracking how these migrating songbirds are doing. With songbird number is North America now 20% of what they were just a few years ago, it’s vital that this difficult part of their yearly movement is studied and understood. A fun highlight of the filming trip was gathering as many birders as we could out by the lookout point for our drone shots, meant to be the birds eye view as they first arrive at Long Point. Even though we were asking people to stand in one spot, they made the most of it and got down to some serious bird watching especially when a flock of sandhill cranes headed south (the wrong way) out over lake Erie. It was a real a pleasure to work with such a bunch of dedicated and passionate folk. And we left with everything we came for, despite the uncooperative weather!

Happy Holidays!

The minuscule *money spider* - just a few millimetres in length - might take the prize for being the toughest little critter to film. Partly because of their size roughly that of a pinhead but also because of their spidey superpowers and very determined personalities. Director Lou Ferguson joined wildlife cinematographer Robin Smith to film these spiders in a cutting-edge research laboratory. As Robin framed up with the scope lens (he had his own problems trying to focus... with barely a millimetre depth of field) it was Lou's job to retrieve the money spiders out of the vials that were their temporary homes and drop them into position in front of the camera. That’s when the trouble started. Many refused to leave the paintbrush that Lou used to delicately pick them up; "As hard as I tried they would often stay attached to the paintbrush or my finger, like sticky gum. Others had more escapologist ambitions and when I tried to drop them into the scene they fired invisible webs into the air and whisked away!" Lou: "I hate to think how many spiders we populated that university lab with but I like to think if you go back in 100 years there will be a whole new species of money spiders living amongst the test tubes constantly at war with the strain of tiny geckos that escaped there in the 1950’s... Now there’s a film idea!"

Summer in Toronto: Urban Peregrines & The Raptors ~ Update from director Louise Ferguson ~ This past summer, our team headed out to Toronto to film wild peregrine falcons that live right in the heart of the city, making their nests on the sides of skyscrapers. Most wildlife filming takes place in wilderness areas, so filming in downtown Toronto was unusual for our team. To make logistics even trickier the Toronto Raptors had just won the NBA championship and the victory p...arade was planned to go straight past the downtown location where we were filming the peregrines. At 8 AM we headed out to start filming, and by 8:45 we were gridlocked and the parade wasn’t even due till 1 PM! Clearly we’re not so good at this urban filming. So while Sparky, our sound recordist, guarded the production vehicle, I decided to record the exciting scene with my camera as people climbed buses and whatever else they could to get a view of their heroes. The atmosphere was electric. While the noise and bustle of the parade unfolded below, the peregrines looked down from above. It was a memorable moment as the world of the peregrines and the world of the Raptors collided."