There are reasons the Arctic has never become a popular summer tourist destination. Temperatures can dip below zero in June, and ice and wind storms could rip the bark off a tree, if there were trees.
The most interesting part of the Arctic is where the polar ice cap meets the ocean. It is also the most difficult to reach, as National Geographic Television producer Lisa Truitt can testify. Truitt and her five-person crew spent two summers there filming Arctic Kingdom: Life at the Edge , an hourlong special that aired on NBC in May. The two-day snowmobile journey from the town of Resolute, in the Northwest Territories of Canada, to the edge of a boulder-strewn icefield is a trip so bruising, Truitt says, "that one of my crew compared it to getting dragged downstairs by your feet in a wooden box."
In the two summers she spent perched atop a vast slab of cracking, shifting, crumbling ice, Truitt never saw a sunset, didn't take a bath and packed a shotgun to ward off polar bears. She subsisted mostly on a diet of caribou, seal, Arctic char and potatoes -- all cooked on a propane camp stove. Some ice and wind storms were so severe "you'd ration your drinking so you wouldn't have to venture outside," she says. She endured days at a time trapped in a 16-by-18 foot kitchen tent or a smaller one-person rig. And every so often, an Inuit guide alerted her to a crack in the ice that was about to set the crew adrift in the Arctic ocean if they didn't pack up and move within five minutes. "When I was picking my crew," Truitt says, " 'sense of humor' and 'ability to withstand discomfort' were right up there with 'artistic talent.' "
In her 12 years with National Geographic, Truitt has produced 16 documentaries, ranging from a look at how earthquakes affect peoples' lives to a study of dinosaurs in the Gobi desert -- a special set to air on TBS in October. But Arctic Kingdom was her first pure wildlife film. "You have to take what the environment gives you," Truitt says, adding that she also put a lot of trust in her staff. "She put together the right group of people and then gave us artistic free reign," says cinematographer Neil Rettig.
Truitt's two years of Arctic fieldwork and two additional years of research and editing actually yielded two films, the second of which, Freeze Frame , will air October 20, on TBS. Truitt says that the crew shot Freeze Frame , which documents the making of Arctic Kingdom , "to keep us from going insane." The film is about survival in a beautiful but harsh environment. "It is a rare place that hasn't been changed by man. I hope it can stay that way."
--Kelli Anderson, '84
