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Frank Vilaca on location

In the third of our series explaining how top professionals achieve the results they do, we examine techniques for filming in cold or freezing conditions...

Frank Vilaca has built a reputation for being the guy to send filming to God-forsaken places and is probably one of Canada's busiest freelance cameramen.

As Director of Photography on the series Forbidden Places for the Discovery Channel, Frank has lived rough in igloos with the Inuit in freezing Arctic temperatures. He’s sledged across Baffin Island, shot copper mining in the Andes at 18,000 feet, cleared mines in Bosnia, and been sent on other equally challenging assignments. Plus, he’s even been in the Canadian military for ten years.

"I started out shooting news for local television and then joined the Canadian military in the infantry," Frank told TVnewsweb. "I then moved into the Phototech unit to film for them. I was in Rwanda in 1994, then in Bosnia and Croatia, documenting evidence for war crimes tribunals for the United Nations."

"Part of my military training was in preparation for extreme, wild conditions and it was through this I first started shooting in cold temperatures. Canada is huge and the military do a lot of routine sovereignty training exercises up in the Arctic, where there is a lot of real estate. I would say the military have a lot to do with how I survive out in the wilderness, as I spent a lot of time under canvas. This helped immensely later on in civilian life and with shooting in my freelance career."

The average person cannot even begin to imagine finding themselves in temperatures of well below minus 25C – let alone film in them. Frank’s military training and his work have taken him there many times.

"The cold is tough on you mentally. You are taught how to combat this by always keeping your mind focused on a task and keeping active, therefore warm. All your body wants to do is quit. Many people who have joined me filming up in the Arctic have suffered from lethargy caused by the cold and have almost shut down on me. The elements can play games on your mind and change your thought patterns very quickly," Frank explained.

Filming was completed just last year on the fifth and last season of the series, Forbidden Places. Frank documented the traditional Inuit way of life which, sadly, is rapidly disappearing as the Western world changes their culture with modern technology. Most people know the Inuit as Eskimos but this is not the correct term for them.

"They are Inuit. To call them an Eskimo would be an insult. I have filmed them hunting on the land and other aspects of their lifestyle. They hunt caribou (reindeer) and seal, go fishing and basically live off the land. A lot of stress is being put on these daily functions by the ease of modern technology, such as snowmobiles, television and the Internet which the younger generation are being exposed to. Many of the elders are very well-versed in how to live off the land but the kids are losing such basic survival skills."

Out on the land

"Unfortunately, up in the Arctic you have to be fairly resilient and self-reliant because the communities are isolated. All it takes is four or five days of bad storms and the planes do not land. When the planes stop, so do the supplies. So, the elders are realising what is happening and have started to take action by taking the youngsters out on the land to show them traditional skills."

These traditional skills are vital for any human facing such harsh conditions. When shooting in freezing climates the operator has to combine the skills of survival with having a thorough knowledge of his or her equipment.

When going "out on the land" as the Inuit say, Frank can be away on location for an average of 10 to 12 days. "There are two types of shelter used out on the land. If we are to be in one place for any length of time, we set up a base camp and build an igloo. This provides the best shelter from the wind. We would operate out of that while the Inuit hunt and fish. Every time we move on we build another igloo. This sounds stereotypical but is not always the case."

"The other type of shelter the Inuit travel with is a canvas tent which we will use for a day or two," Frank adds. "Eating and drinking a lot of fluids is essential. I have eaten raw caribou, Arctic Char (a fish) and seal. Seal is the worst tasting thing – bland and rubbery. However, in freezing conditions you do not feel like eating, drinking, or doing anything. You have to make yourself. Keep your bodily equipment warm! This maintains your ability to shoot."

Military duty

Frank films with a Sony BVP 550 and uses the Canon 5.2mm and 8x20mm lenses. "My camera is always covered and kept sealed by a Porta Brace Polar Bear bag. I find this is absolutely essential when filming in the Arctic," stresses Frank.

"Know your equipment inside out when it is sealed up. Never take the camera out of the Porta Brace bag, unless you have to remove, say, a head clog. If you do you are introducing it to all sorts of problems. Being good with manual dexterity is so essential as you no longer have visual access to all the camera switches and functions. Having a very tactile sense of your own camera is a challenge when it's cold."

His equipment handles fine in temperatures down to -25C. The rest of his kit also includes a Sachtler video 20 tripod, ND filter, tape stock, and camera battery belts.

"Standard camera batteries, such as NP1s, are absolutely useless in these conditions. Leave them at home! A brand new NP1 battery will last 10 minutes tops. A battery belt is the only piece of equipment to power a camera in Arctic conditions even though they are cumbersome. When the battery belt is on and it’s around your body, the belt stays warm from the radiant heat from your body, therefore it doesn't die from the cold. You can actually get good life out of it. Normally, a good battery belt will last two to three hours in normal temperatures. Up in the Arctic, if you are wearing well-insulated clothes, you might get an hour to an hour-and-a-half out of one," Frank reported.

"One time I did a 700km snowmobile run from Pond Inlet to Clyde River, on the tip of Baffin Island. I took about six battery belts," recalls Frank. "You have to give a battery belt to everyone travelling with you to wear, but sometimes this takes a lot of persuasion! When night falls you throw one in your sleeping bag with you - oh yeah, we sleep with our battery belts in the cold! Leave it out for any length of time and it will go flat. I tend to travel with a little portable Honda generator, about the size of a microwave. This is usually on extended trips of 10 days or so. I use it for charging as there are only so many battery belts a person can take."

Another of Frank’s tips is to use body heat to keep tape stock warm. Place a tape you plan to use a couple of hours later next to your body. Any operator experienced in shooting in cold weather knows not to use cold tape stock straight from the box, as this affects filming in a whole host of different ways. "The danger in temperatures of –40C or –50C is the oxide on the tape can shed on to the heads of the camera while you are recording. This causes a head clog every two to three minutes. When it is –40C cleaning a head on your camera is extremely painful because you're having to expose your hands to the elements where your skin can freeze in two to three minutes. Normally, cleaning a head clog takes several minutes. Times that by three in the Arctic as everything just takes that much longer."

"In conditions of –50C you are well exceeding the operational capabilities of the camera. Something as simple as starting and stopping the tape will damage the camera. The idea is to plan carefully what you are going to shoot. Know what you want and then get it. The problems come when travelling overland with the Inuit. No one can plan when a caribou comes over the side of a hill and the Inuit decide to shoot. You have to anticipate that something is going to happen and be ready for it - at the same time be conserving your battery power, and keeping yourself warm. So, know what you want to shoot – shoot it and let it roll."

Frank favours wearing a really tight polypropylene glove, almost like nylon. Operating a camera with thick gloves is impossible. However, when temperatures fall below –25C, he is sacrificing the tips of his fingers and they will freeze quite quickly and become useless. So his advice, once again, is to plan well, shoot, and then get your hands out of the cold!

Inuit feast

Another tip - never bring a camera in from the cold into the warmth of a building halfway through a day’s filming. Franks warns us: "All kinds of problems will arise, such as condensation on the lens and the video head. Introduce warmth to the lens and it will fog up. Once the fog condenses, it condenses to a very tight, bright, white spot right in the centre of the lens so you and your camera are going nowhere. This is very hard to get rid of up in the Arctic. You have to leave the camera 'outside' (in an igloo or tent) for quite a few hours for the spot to dissipate. So, leave it outside with the lens covered with the lens cap. Don't let the glass actually be exposed to warmth."

Radiant heat from the face causes the viewfinder to ice up. To prevent this, Frank tells us, keep your face away from the viewfinder. This is trial and error but with experience the operator will learn to focus and film in this manner. "On my first experience of filming in the Arctic I tried to cup my eye around the viewfinder and it iced over instantly," Frank recalled nonchalantly.

Another part of his kit is a white card for white balancing. Less experienced operators may mistake the snow as a suitable white 'object' for getting a correct reading. "Never white balance on snow as it is usually blue in the light," warns Frank. He also uses a lot of ND filter. "On a bright, sunny day you cannot stop down the camera enough. It’s amazing just how much ND filter you can use up in the Arctic."

When it gets to the point of -30C and below, it's a whole different world of shooting. Frank has been in situations where the temperature has been –50C for four or five days at a time, during shoots for Forbidden Places. He tells us it was bitter, bitter cold and, with the wind chill factor, it was down to around –80C. At that point nothing really wants to work. It doesn't matter where the battery belt is on your body - you are not going to get a lot of life out of it.

Frank’s final tip is using what are known in Canada as Hot Shots - little chemical hand warmers. You tear open the plastic package and there is what looks like a little teabag that you shake. This then produces a chemical reaction that in turn produces heat.

Meet the crew

"I line the inside of my Porta Brace bag with them. It won’t keep the camera warm but will keep it from freezing. The trick is to keep the ambient temperature inside the bag at around –10C then the camera will operate. At any one time when I am travelling in the Arctic, I carry a duffel bag full of them – around a thousand. Every hour-and-a-half or so, I recycle five or six Hot Shots through the Porta Brace," he said.

Frank also told us of the times he has filmed polar bears in the polar bear capital of Churchill. They seemed unfazed by the presence of a helicopter but are afraid of the Inuit, who hunt them. However, remain in one place for any length of time and the bears soon gain confidence - and see a human as a tasty snack.

He also recalls how he suffered from altitude sickness up in the copper mines of the Andes, some 18,000 feet up. The pressure builds behind the eyes, the vision blurs and a person feels lethargic – similar to filming in freezing temperatures.

Frank has prayed for his life a few times, too . . .

"A few years ago, in January, we were in an incredibly bad blizzard. I was assigned to follow and document a Canadian military patrol in the Keewatin District, in the territory of Nunavut, situated at the lower end of the high Arctic. As there is no water mass to moderate the temperatures this open-planed area is bitterly cold, even though it’s not situated in the high Arctic. When the wind picks up, the temperatures are some of the lowest ever for this region. The way I’d describe it would be like having a thousand razor blades flying at your face."

All our possessions in one cold world

"Anyway, we had a little break in a four- or five-day blizzard and we were on about two hours of daylight a day. We were trying to make our way back to the local Inuit hamlet of Whale Cove, which was about 80km away. The journey was estimated to take two hours. The weather appeared to be improving. Then, suddenly, turned bad again. By this time it was dark. I was following a snowmobile that was three or four metres in front of me and it just disappeared from sight. I never found it again. Fortunately, there were a couple of people behind me. We decided to stop."

"The weather was howling and about –80C with 60 or 70 kilometre an hour wind. The snowmobile we had lost just kept on going and we didn’t have any idea where they had gone. We were just hoping they would double back. It took several hours before they eventually did. They found us by doing big loops around our area, closing down the circle every time. If ever you get separated from a group up in the Arctic – stay put. Experts will know roughly the area where to find you."

"For several hours we thought, 'this is not good'. In temperatures of –80C several hours feels like an eternity because you are out in the open and just trying to keep warm. We decided the only way to do this was to circle our snowmobiles as some shelter around us. We took out a tarpaulin and put it over us, attaching it to our snowmobiles and keeping their engines running. It came to the point where we were starting to think about building a proper shelter as we thought that nobody was going to come for us that day. It took every effort of my survival training."

"Eventually, they did rescue us. It was Inuit who found us. These people are amazing. They know where they are, even in a serious blizzard. We were brought back to Whale Cove safe and sound."

Brrrrrrrr, somebody turn that heater up.

After all this excitement, what could possibly be next on Frank's agenda?

Well, it turns out that Frank's next assignment is likely to be just as exciting as his previous ones - he's off to join a group of bounty hunters, chasing fugitives across Alaska.

Frank Vilaca and Stonehouse Films are based in Toronto, Canada. Frank can be contacted at stonehouse@georgian.net