October 1999. Against all odds, the remains of an extinct woolly mammoth encased in a 22 ton permafrost block were airlifted off the Siberian tundra and into history. The Franco-Russian expedition that had unearthed the mammoth, triumphing over time and the extreme conditions of the Arctic North, had opened a new door to the world of the late Pleistocene.
As a filmmaker on assignment for the U.S.-based Discovery Channel, it was my job to help usher a global audience over that threshold. The goal: to produce a documentary film that would be both entertaining and educational — that would promote adventurous science, and scientific adventure. A film that would separate truth from hype ñ the sensational (the exciting discovery of what appeared to be largely intact remains of the Ice Age behemoth) from, well, the sensational (the imminent resurrection of the species through cloning).
It was an irresistible and daunting challenge given a production deadline as severe as the Siberian autumn, and the expectations of television viewers in more than 150 countries, who would tune in to see Discovery’s heavily-promoted Watch with the World special “Raising the Mammoth.” Photos published in the wake of the mammoth’s helicopter ride out of extinction and into the 20th century captured global imagination - especially one almost surreal image, featuring French explorer Bernard Buigues gazing at a perfect pair of 3-meter-long ivory tusks against a backdrop of azure skies and Arctic mist.
Reporters were having a field day. Their writings ranged from the thoughtful to the bizarre. From Paris Match to The New York Times, from the screaming tabloids of London to more tempered articles by science writers throughout the world, in language ranging from excited “trust but verify” tones to downright skepticism, the event of this discovery was threatening to overshadow the science.
So how does a small film crew cover a science story the size of a woolly mammoth and maintain its integrity? The same way one would “eat an elephant” as the saying goes - bite by bite. The many “bites” that our production and post-production teams would eventually assemble into two feature-length documentary specials, that include Raising the Mammoth and its 2001 sequel, Land of the Mammoth, rely heavily on information gleaned from scientific advisors.
The high quality science programming broadcast on Discovery Channel, Britainís Channel 4 and other reputable networks almost always owes its success to close cooperation between filmmakers and scientists. Though these “partnerships” are frequently quite congenial, as a producer / writer, I sometimes get the impression that scientists view members of my industry as an enigmatic and unruly species - best left undisturbed in the wild. And, of course, we filmmakers also fall victim to stereotypes as we wonder what possible professional obsessions or private eccentricities could drive field scientists to some of the least hospitable places on Earth, year after year, to rummage through the fossil record.
This is the story of one such cooperative effort to marry science and entertainment in producing a documentary of which even our paleontologist film characters could be proud. To make sense of the life and death of one woolly mammoth twenty thousand years ago, as the vehicle for further insight into the demise of his species at the end of the last Ice Age.
working with scientists
While Raising the Mammoth focused primarily on the adventure of the Ice Age find, it was a logical step for me to fashion the sequel, Land of the Mammoth, as a portrait of the woolly mammothís world in the years before it vanished from history. How did it live? What was its environment like? And how did it die? Reconstructing the world of the late Pleistocene would require the assistance of scientific consultants from the earliest conceptual stages of pre-production to delivery of the finished film.
Building the team of experts who occupy these pivotal roles both on camera and behind the scenes is my job as the filmís producer. It is one of my favorite tasks in pre-production, involving a mix of journalistic skills (research, interview and editorial), a wide network of contacts, and a huge measure of intuition. Sometimes itís possible to tell whether a scientist will shine on-camera by the way he or she answers the phone.
What makes a scientist “mediagenic?” Itís simple: we look for dynamic personalities - people of action doing interesting things. Clearly, for a documentary to sustain over a two-hour period, there must be something to film. “Stars” in their fields can work for us, but only if they are not “overexposed.” We like “up-and-coming” scientists with new ideas and a measure of irreverence about the status quo. Or dedicated amateurs with a scientific track record. Although it is tempting to go after talent whose scientific theories are a bit on the fringe, credibility always prevails.
It’s a balancing act — the creative equivalent of a tightrope walk — exhilarating and risky business for filmmakers, because the scientific talent we choose can “make or break” a production. The addition of scientific advisors to a team tends to infuse what was initially just a good idea with a burst of “kinetic” energy, as everyone weighs in on the elements that “must” be covered in the film, and strategically makes his or her point of view known.
Though they might wish they could, our scientific film characters donít define the production agenda. In fact, when shooting days are “tight,” it’s our film schedule that often determines how much fieldwork scientists may actually get to do on location. This is one of the greatest potential areas of conflict between film producers and scientists, who have all traveled thousands of miles to pursue personal and shared goals. Itís the ultimate give and take situation in a production and, some might say, the price that scientists pay for their exposure.
Unpredictability is the norm in any Siberian adventure. As filmmakers, we move forward, knowing that our “wish list” film structure will be continuously altered by circumstances. It is rarely the conflicting professional agendas of our film subjects who, despite sometimes major differences of opinion, tend to be too polite with each other ñ or perhaps less confrontational — with the cameras rolling.
Rather, the circumstances tend to be logistical snafus such as false leads in the field, weather (especially storms) or the lack of a helicopter ñ the taxi of the tundra ñ when it is most needed. I was disappointed to realize near the outset of our production that several studies of “evidence” recovered from the new mammoth find (such as insect remains and hair) would not even begin before our airdate. Like other members of the expedition, we would have to be resilient - with plans B and C at the ready.
We were not starting from scratch in searching out a scientific team. Bernard Buigues, the explorer whose two- year quest culminated in the extraction of the woolly mammoth (known as Jarkov) from the Taimyr Peninsula in 1999, had already attracted a vast network of experts in a variety of fields. Most were interested in fieldwork or samples of mammoth tissue for laboratory analysis.
The charismatic Buigues, who came down with Arctic fever more than a decade ago, and who has led private expeditions to the North Pole ever since, makes his home-away-from-home in the tiny Siberian town of Khatanga ñ possibly the least Parisian environment on Earth.
It was his longstanding relationships with the nomadic Dolgans ñ a people of Turko-Mongolian descent with an encyclopedic knowledge of the tundra, which made him aware that well-preserved tusks of long extinct mammoths periodically melted out of the permafrost. He was fascinated by the idea that where there were tusks, there might also be frozen carcasses. And if so, might not these animals ñ carved out of the tundra in autumn and preserved in their frozen state — afford scientists more precise clues to the mysterious demise of their species? His unwavering vision in the pursuit of this idea, his friendship with the Dolgans, and his growing interest in paleontology ultimately culminated in the spectacular raising of the Jarkov mammoth.
Early on, Buigues was joined in his quest by Dutch mammoth expert Dick Mol. Mol, an amateur paleontologist who has co-authored numerous scientific papers, has been collecting woolly mammoth fossils from the North Sea for 30 years. For the past several, he has also been the scientific coordinator of the Siberian expeditions mounted by Bernard Buigues. Mol became one of our primary advisors.
From floor to ceiling, his home on the outskirts of Amsterdam is a treasure trove of Pleistocene finds (including a giant woolly mammoth femur, lower leg and foot skeleton that stands sentinel over the dining area). He is passionate, and tireless in his quest to acquire and disseminate information. By the time we met, his “hands-on” approach to paleontology had earned him the respect of colleagues affiliated with museums and universities in the Netherlands. To have on-going access to the expertise of Dick Mol and other key consultants would be critical to making a complex film on a tight deadline.
From day one of the film project, Mol and others made every effort to steer us in the “right” direction in our research and to fill in the gaps in our knowledge (as non-scientists). By the end of the production, every member of our film team understood the basics of paleontological detective work and why it was important to differentiate between grazers and browsers in the Siberian ecosystem. We were attuned to the latest advances in ground-penetrating radar. And we learned why the mammoth steppe 20,000 years ago was probably not a snowy landscape - though for dramatic reasons, we exercised poetic license, and a dusting of white did appear in our Pleistocene animation.
poetic licence?
Poetic license is by definition an unscientific concept, and our consultants werenít always thrilled about the choices we filmmakers had to make to hold an audience. Case in point: the production decision that inadvertently became “the great snow debate.” At the time, we had no scientific consensus about the presence of snow on the ancient mammoth steppe, and decided to use it in an animation sequence to punctuate the death of the Jarkov mammoth. Dick Mol, who firmly opposed this decision, now has the corroboration of several pollen experts who have analyzed sediment from the mammoth tomb. The verdict: that the Taimyr Peninsula was snowless in the final days of the woolly mammoth. Itís convincing, but whatever the ultimate scientific outcome here, I know we will be discussing that footage for years.
American Museum of Natural History curator, Ross MacPhee, another key advisor, with media savvy and wit puts situations like this in perspective: “It was a little bit like chalk and cheese. We had different priorities and they didnít necessarily pair up well from time to time.” But statistics are a common denominator for scientists and television programmers. Television ratings measure a filmís success by the number of households tuned in and in viewership fluctuations in quarter hour increments. And there are other significant numbers: the higher the profile of a film, the more important the ad sales. Fortunately, our science advisors knew that to get their message across, we would have to keep the audience in their seats.
“For event tv, a paleontological expedition is hard to make continually interesting,” quipped MacPhee, a specialist in vertebrate zoology / mammology, who came to Siberia to “hunt for pathogens” and to take DNA tissue samples from mammoth and other Pleistocene fauna, “— even if you’re dealing with something huge and iconic like a mammoth. You wanted nice decisive tv minutes - something interesting that can be found and described fully in seconds. But the way fieldwork really works - you keep casting about and most of the time itís somewhat like gardening. It has its intrinsic interests if youíre interested in gardening to begin with. Otherwise, itís hard to understand why grown men would be stooped over looking for bits of bone in the beach.”
Time and again at home and in the field, MacPhee, Mol, and other scientists patiently handled our inquiries, showing us how to ëreadí the fossil record, by pointing out markings and colorations on tusks and bones that he and his colleagues must literally dig up to do their work. As Mol puts it, “There are no stupid questions. You have to explain everything again and again ñ even for scientists.”
But there are benefits to having a film crew tagging along when your hunting grounds lie at the edge of the Earth. Wistfully recalling an ancient musk ox skull he found on the shore of Lake Taimyr a summer ago, Dick Mol says, “I was very excited about thisºto find a skull and have an eyewitness. Itís important to show how interesting paleontology isº (pausing) Pity that skull is in Khatanga (in the ice cave that holds the Jarkov mammoth remains) instead of my home.”
priorities of a good story
Myth #1 about the media: we never let the truth get in the way of a good story. Though it may be hard to believe, our film team was determined [ëaccording to my ability and my judgementí] to first do no harm, a little bit like physicians taking the Hippocratic Oath, though without the life and death consequences.
Nevertheless, the potential for running amok always lurks. Nowhere was this more evident than in the design of our 3-D computer animation. State-of-the-art graphics require months to create. It takes 180 hours to render the fur of just one woolly mammoth. Given our heart-stopping deadline and an inflexible global premiere airdate, much of the animation had to be completed while scientists were still in the field. This posed a number of filmmaking challenges. Some were resolved more successfully than others, according to Dick Mol, who worked hand in hand with our team from the British animation company Skaramoosh to create accurate models of the woolly mammoth, the woolly rhino and other Pleistocene megafauna in a flurry of faxes, e-mails, phone calls and trips across the English Channel.
One of our lesser moments according to the paleontologist: “They [the animators] created a wonderful model of the woolly mammoth - and then they started to work while we were off in Siberia. When I saw the results of the models they made, all the mammoths had the same size tusk no matter male or female. Based on the tusk size, it looks like a male was giving birth to the Jarkov mammoth!” Without enough time to render the appropriate corrections, we had to do some creative editing.
On the other hand, a beautiful and complex animated sequence tracing the ancestry of the mammoth from the earliest Proboscidean - the pig-like Moeritherium - to the trunk and tusked Gomphotherium - the animal that would give rise to elephants and ultimately Mammuthus primigenius, the woolly mammoth - worked well for everyone.
Several stories below the streets of Khatanga - a town of 5,000 people, north of the Arctic Circle on Siberia’s Taimyr Peninsula - a permafrost cave has housed the Jarkov mammoth (along with alcoves of fish and reindeer stored for local use) since it was flown off the tundra almost two years ago. It is a crude laboratory for a modern scientist, kept at a bone-chilling temperature of minus 15 degrees Celsius. It is also a difficult filming location, requiring creative camerawork, superior lighting skills and imagination.
For hours at a time, we observed and filmed an international team of paleontologists roping the mammoth block into a grid and melting it down centimeter by centimeter with a dozen hairdryers (Bernard Buiguesí experiment in strategic melting initiated back in 1999) as the scent of ancient elephant wafted into the cavern. Ever so slowly, signs from the Ice Age emerged from the permafrost ñ long wiry hair, wool, and still green Pleistocene vegetation.
Sediment containing pollen and insects was set aside for analysis by experts in laboratories in Europe and across the globe. (I would later see some of these perfectly preserved microfossils under the microscope of University of Amsterdam paleobotanist Bas van Geel. It is impossible not to be enthralled by the explanations of a scientist so impassioned about microfossils that he can help you see a lost world in a grain of pollen.) By the end of the two month shoot, with less than three percent of the block melted, the field scientists would uncover flesh and displaced single vertebrae, suggesting that the carcass was not intact.
Spending more than 10 hours a day in a mammoth refrigerator inevitably creates a bond between scientist and film crew. There’s a mission to accomplish, a sense of teamwork, a pride in our collective endurance, and the reality of sharing an incredible adventure. Negotiations regarding the documentary filming, such as: where in the cave our tusk expert will gather his specimens, how many camera angles and “takes” we must film to get enough coverage for our editorial wizard to create visually exciting sequences in the cutting room, and whoís to work on what quadrant of the mammoth are finalized with ease, as we reach - through excitement and fatigue - toward a common goal. Emerging from the cave after midnight, the loners among us are treated to the ultimate prize. Time and space to collect oneís thoughts in the still of the Arctic night - and there is always the thrill of the aurora borealis.
who’s priorities?
A stone’s throw from the Khatanga airstrip, in a ramshackle building known as the bank, Ross MacPhee has been wielding a hand drill for a greater part of the day. He is taking bone samples for DNA analysis and radiocarbon dating of some fresh-looking specimens that he and colleagues Dick Mol and Alexei Tikhonov (zoologist and scientific secretary of Russiaís Mammoth Committee in St. Petersburg) believe lived at the end of the Pleistocene. Theyíre mammals ranging from the woolly mammoth and woolly musk ox to the wolf and cave bear. MacPheeís goal is to determine how hard the accepted dates of extinction (estimated at 9,600 years ago) are here on the Taimyr Peninsula and he knows that weíll be interested in the results.
Myth #2 about scientific experts: scientists feel that simple truths stated publicly carry more scientific weight than complex questions or outright uncertainties. From empirical evidence, I have no doubt that scientists revel in complex truths, though they may in fact fear that explanations thereof will fail to satisfy the media and their audience. Fears not unfounded given Hollywood’s proclivity for neatly sewn up story lines.
But it’s the uncertainties that make life, science, and documentary films interesting. There would be no point in adventuring if one could predict the outcome in advance. I can only hope that my films raise more interesting questions than can possibly be answered in a 90 minute exposr. “Truth” is comforting but it is rarely immutable.
Watching him work, I get the impression that Ross MacPhee enjoys confronting the unknown. MacPhee, a veteran of other Arctic expeditions, is on the scene primarily to investigate his hypothesis that disease (rather than climate change or hunting by man) may have killed the woolly mammoth. Itís an extinction theory I secretly and irrationally find enticing due to the staggering lack of evidence in Siberia to date, which MacPhee is the first to admit: “The whole issue is that you have to be humble before the evidence. The head can talk, but when it comes to drop-dead demonstration of an argument, it all gets attenuated in time ~ because lab tests and a lot of “futzing” have to be done before you can say much at all. How do you ever capture something like that in a documentary? At the end of the day, I’m conservative about what I can say to not incur derision of my colleagues by going out on a limb. (laughs) I’m already out on terminal branches.”
MacPhee is probably secretly relieved that we are not going after ratings by dangling the possibility of cloning the Jarkov mammoth ñ a notion MacPhee soundly rejects, but a subject that intrigues many Discovery viewers, according to an in-house survey. (With a mountain of evidence against mammoth cloning, it would be disingenuous of us ñ and some might argue irresponsible - to suggest that it was possible today, but we did take time to address the issue.)
For our cameras, MacPhee goes on to outline and argue the three prevailing extinction theories in a way I know will appeal to our audience. His answers are clear, and as irony-free as possible given my request that he limit his refreshingly large vocabulary for the consumption of a television audience. He is obviously wise to the advice an executive producer from Discovery Channel had given Dick Mol during the shooting of the first film: “Dick, an answer should never be longer than 17 seconds. A quick sound bite frequently conveys the correct impression more powerfully than a 10 minute answer.”
And herein lies the crux of most of the misunderstandings between scientists and filmmakers ñ the former searching for answers to age-old mysteries - such as the extinctions of the last Ice Age - and time to explain them. The latter seeking ways to effectively convey new ideas to an audience hungry for answers but travelling at high speed and on overload down the “information superhighway.” How do we get their attention without billboards and neon signs?
“People who are good on camera know what they want to say, have sorted it out, and make sure that they pick up on things that are most important,” says a reflective Ross MacPhee - and he’s absolutely accurate. “It’s not merely what you say - but also the emphasis and pauses. If you’re too close to the subject, you’re familiar with the material and feel you don’t need to underline the point. But you really need to say, “This is important - look at what I just said” and hook it back into your narrative. Itís a simple thing to do but it takes time. Because [scientists] have a lot to do, they don’t think it’s a good investment.”
“Scientists are interviewed, spend two or three days of their time and see one and a half minutes of themselves in the film,” adds Dick Mol. Some may be frustrated, he admits, unaware that the pearls of information, that make a memorable documentary usually rise out of a vast pool of footage.
We are all on a quest. Filmmakers are engaged in a creative process. In my case, to tell a story so compelling in both style and content that it will stop channel surfers in their tracks, ensure my future employment and - in a more personal and profound way - satisfy my own intellectual curiosity.
Scientists are looking for facts. Not facts in a void, but new, publishable insights that will help to fuel future research projects. The jury is still out on whether media exposure from high-profile television specials like ours is the quickest path to hefty scientific research grants, but it probably doesnít hurt the chances. Meanwhile, as of this writing, MacPhee, Mol, and four other participants in our last film, are in the final stages of co-authoring a paper on “extinction dynamics” of late Pleistocene megafauna on the Taimyr Peninsula.
Filmmakers and scientists are different animals, but we have a lot in common. We both have to raise a lot of questions, whether or not there are obvious answers or time enough in a programming hour to explore all the issues in depth. We both have to wrestle with the idea of how much information to share and what to “edit out.” In the end, we’re left with what is - and what isn’t. A conundrum for both scientist and documentarian - as well as the impetus to forge ahead with the next paleontological dig, Arctic expedition or documentary film.
Adrienne Ciuffo is an independent producer / writer of non-fiction films based in southern California. Her recent productions include Prehistoric Sharks, Diamonds of Russia, and the Emmy award winning specials Raising the Mammoth, and Land of the Mammoth. Ciuffo specializes in the making of science and adventure films and, whenever possible adventurous science. Among other venues, her work can be seen on Discovery Channel and National Geographic Television. To contact Ciuffo and her production company, please e-mail: adrienneciuffo@earthlink.net.