Our Oceansis a new nature documentary that tells brand new stories of life beneath the waves. Following global ocean currents,Our Oceansdevotes its five episodes to different seas and regions, giving audiences a glimpse of how animals endure and thrive across the Atlantic, Pacific, Indian, Southern, and Arctic Oceans. The series was narrated by former United States President Barack Obama, who previously narratedOur Great National Parksfrom many of the same filmmakers.
Key to bringingOur Oceansto the screen wasseries researcher Inka Cresswell, who last spoke withScreen Rantat a specialOur Oceansscreening. Cresswell joined the team ofOur Oceansfresh out of graduate school and began a journey that would take roughly five years. The scientist and filmmaker began as a researcher for the series and eventually went into the field to try and help capture never-before-documented behavior firsthand, spending weeks on, and in, the water in service of compelling storytelling.
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Screen Rantspoke with Inka Cresswell about her work onOur Oceans. Cresswell dove deep into the process of putting together such a large-scale series and shared how the best-laid plans may go to waste. Cresswell also shared her favorite animal stories found while filming the Netflixnature documentaryand offered her perspective on the seismic ecological shift that is climate change.
Inka Cresswell Talks Being One Of The First People To Join Our Oceans
“It Was One Of Those Absolute Dream Jobs”
Screen Rant: You were the series researcher on this, and I saw you were an associate producer as well. Can you talk about how this all came together and how your job kind of changed throughout the process?
Inka Cresswell: I was really lucky in the sense that it was my first big TV series coming out of grad school. I did a master’s in wildlife filmmaking, and before that I did a Bachelor of Science in marine biology. I went to a fantastic film festival called Jackson Wild, which was having a big focus on oceans that year, and I met James (Honeyborne, Our Oceans executive producer). [I] was basically talking all about how passionate I was about ocean conservation, and it was just one of those moments of serendipity where he was also in the process of querying up for this project. I was one of the very first people to join the team, and it was one of those absolute dream jobs.
The first year or so was very much speaking to marine biologists, divers, fisherman, and all sorts of people from all around the world that have that connection with the ocean, basically trying to find stories. It was a really exciting starting phase because no story was off the table. You could come up with the wildest ideas, [chase] behaviors that people had only ever seen once, and talk about new innovations for technology. And throughout that first year of research, we were also developing technology, so it meant that you could come up with these really insane ideas about filming a new behavior and go, “What is the equipment that we would need to actually execute that?”
As I progressed into that second year, I started going out on my first shoots. I was able to direct some of the shoots and also work behind the scenes on the camera. Previous to working on this project, I did bits of camera work, so I was able to go down in the submarine and film using the cameras in the deep sea, which was absolutely epic, and then do some work in the high Arctic working with ROVs and using their cameras to document some of the most northern hydrothermal vent fields ever discovered. By the end of it, I was being sent out to Zavodovski, which is a tiny island in Antarctica, to camp with a million plus penguins with two incredibly talented camera operators and direct that sequence.
[For] the final year of actually working on the project, my focus shifted much more towards the script writing and making sure that all of that science fact carries across into that final script. It was a really fun process because I was involved at the very start all the way to the end. You get to find these new behaviors, come up with ideas as to what those stories could be, execute them in the field, and then actually [write] those final script lines as well, which was really exciting.
In terms of going from researcher to assistant producer, I think that was just the natural evolution of my role on the projects. As I was directing more and more sequences, it made sense for me to gain that credit for the Pacific film, but because I was so kind of heavily involved across all the different episodes, it was decided that I would keep a series researcher credit across [those] as well.
Cresswell Reveals The Process Behind Capturing Rare Animal Behavior On Camera
“It’s All About Research”
I spoke to your producers, who said when it comes to finding and researching this behavior, you have the storyboards and scripts, and then nature doesn’t care about any of that. I would love to ask about both sides of this. Do you have an example of a behavior you were really excited to hear about [where] everything went off without a hitch and you just went out and found it in the wild?
Inka Cresswell: I think the signal blennies are a great example of that. It was a really simple behavior, which is the way that they do this fantastic dancing on the sea floor to attract a mate. We had all of the biology mapped out and the research, and we knew that they did this dancing behavior, but our biggest challenge was, “How on earth do you find a fish that is that small?”
We knew that if we could find them then we’d get the behavior, but it was a matter of trying to find them. We worked with the local dive guide and he taught me the right areas to really look at. Once you’re really dialed into the world, they’re literally everywhere. It was amazing. You could just put the camera down and film them doing their thing, and they took off like a chain reaction across the reef. Once one starts dancing, they all start coming out of their holes from all over the place, so that was just fantastic.
But yeah, it doesn’t always go that way. There was another sequence that I was working on, which was our manta ray and bull shark sequence in the Indian Ocean about these incredible manta rays that regrow their wings. We were able to capture the behavior, but it was so much more challenging than we expected because of the way that the weather had shifted. I think as a result of climate change, the warm tides just didn’t arrive when they normally did, and as a result, the seasonality of the behavior just didn’t occur when you expected it to occur. We were working with Dr. Andrea Marshall, who’s been studying these manta rays for 30 plus years. She knew that these mantas and these sharks arrive at the same time every single year, [but] when we got there, there wasn’t a single manta ray. It was a matter of sitting and waiting for these mantas to finally start to trickle in, and it meant that it was one of those much more challenging shoots. We were there for five or six weeks in the end to film these manta rays at these cleaning stations. It was one of those behaviors that should have been a really easy shoot, and ended up being the complete opposite because the ocean just changes so quickly.
Whenever I have talked to nature filmmakers, they’ve talked about how much time they have to spend in the field to capture behavior. And that’s even on land—in the ocean, you’re also having to deal with currents, boats, [and things like] decompression stops if you’re diving. Can you talk about the amount of work and effort and planning that goes into getting anything on camera?
Inka Cresswell: Being out in the field is by far the funnest part of the job, but it is the smallest part of the job. It’s all about research and the logistics behind it. And sometimes the travel… we spent about three weeks traveling on the boat for our Zavodovski chinstrap penguin shoot just to end up having seven to eight days actually filming on the island, because you’re constantly having to wait for storms to pass through. And we had to do two weeks of isolation in the hotels ahead of time because of COVID. You end up having a week of filming for a three-month shoot. Those kinds of things are really common, I think, when you’re working in these really remote places.
[There’s] also just the time you spend sitting out in the field. With that shoot in Mozambique, because the weather patterns were just not what we expected, we spent half of our days in location sitting back waiting for the tide to calm down, because there was no way to get out in the rough seas. We were just waiting for those tiny little weather windows. So, it is really challenging, but I think that’s where having a really strong research team makes a massive difference. The more you can kind of focus that research at an early stage, the better you can prepare your team for success, and the less time they spend waiting.
Cresswell Shares Her Favorite Our Oceans Moments & Learning Experiences
Highlights Included Driving A Submarine & Witnessing Unique Dolphin Behavior
Like you said, you kind of did this right out of grad school. Is there something from this process that has felt like the biggest learning experience for you?
Inka Cresswell: I think the biggest learning experience was when my series producer called me and said, “How do you feel about driving a submarine?” That was an internal moment of flight, because the sub I was working in was actually almost like two submarines bolted together, which meant that I had to control my oxygen independently. I had to monitor my air pressure [and] I had to give all of my stats back to the system up on the surface, so it very much felt like I was in my own little private submarine. That was a huge learning curve.
I was given about three weeks to go through all of these manuals and learn how it works, and then about a two-day training course on the way out to Antarctica before being sent down to 540 meters, which is always a little bit nerve-wracking. But I think that was definitely one of those “pinch me” moments. I never realized that was quite what I was signing up for, but I’m so grateful that I was put in that situation.
Do you have a favorite behavior that you were able to witness?
Inka Cresswell: There’s so many. I think one of my favorites is actually featured in one of our impact films, and it was such a mad behavior that we’d never could have really planned for [it]. It was a dolphin that uses echolocation to hunt, which is common. Echolocation is the sound the dolphins fire out across the ocean and it hits their prey, then bounces off their prey back to them, allowing them to understand where it is in their environment. But instead of using it just to catch the fish, it was using it to make the fish feel so anxious that they vomited, and then the dolphin ate their vomit. It was such a ridiculous behavior, and it wasn’t one that made it into the final series because we only got it a few times. It was such a random thing to happen, but we made a great little impact film. That was one of those moments where I was like, “God, the ocean is such a weird place. Did anyone ever see this coming?”
Is there something that you are most excited for people to see when this is out?
Inka Cresswell: There’s a humpback whale sequence that opens up the Pacific episode that I absolutely adore. It’s one of those sequences that I think just delivers on so many different elements. It’s full of action and drama in the form of this heat run, but it also has these really beautiful, intimate moments of a mother and calf as a result of using CATS cams, which are cameras that are deployed on the backs of whales. There’s just something so special and intimate about being able to see these amazing sequences, but from an animal’s perspective. I loved that sequence, so I am really excited to see what people think of it.
Cresswell Reflects On How Climate Change Affects Her Work
It’s “Very Much The Reality Of The Industry”
You’ve mentioned climate change a few times and the way that that’s affected what you were doing. How are you grappling with that, and do you feel bleak about it as you’re experiencing it in real time?
Inka Cresswell: It’s a weird one. I think, for me, climate change is very much the reality of the industry that we’re working in at the moment. You have to just come up with ways to handle it. And as a result, you plan your shoots around it and it just becomes one of those things that you have to factor in.
In terms of bleakness, I am someone who feels really optimistic about our oceans as a whole. That comes as a result of not only seeing some of the most amazing protected areas and seeing how much they’re thriving, but having the opportunity to work with so many incredible scientists. That’s been probably the biggest highlight of working on the series—the amazing scientists we got to collaborate with. There are some amazing people who are doing absolutely incredible work to revive our oceans. Not just [to] conserve them, but to genuinely restore them. That, to me is really exciting. So, while I think climate change is just a part of our everyday life as filmmakers, it’s not something that I allow to get me down because I think there’s just as much hope.
About Our Oceans
Our planet’s five oceans are driven by a single, all-powerful engine: the “Global Ocean Current,” a thousand-year phenomenon that links their diverse ecosystems into one giant lifeforce, fueling existence as we know it. From the tiny, tenacious cuttlefish to the gracefully enormous blue whale, every ocean-dwelling creature relies on that current to provide the resources they require to survive. Narrated by President Barack Obama, this five-part documentary from Freeborne Media — the Emmy Award-winning team behind Our Great National Parks — takes viewers on a 75,000-mile cruise across and beneath the oceans as they are today, giving us unprecedented access to some of the most unexplored realms of our planet
Also check out our interview with Executive Producer James Honeyborne and Series Producer Jonathan Smith
Our Oceans
Cast
The oceans, crucial to Earth’s balance, remain largely unexplored, with “Our Oceans” revealing the wonders beneath their varying waters, from the warm Indian to the icy Arctic.
