Beloved NatGeo explorer Bertie Gregory took the opportunity to enjoy the experience as well, remarking that it felt "very close to what it's like to actually be there." And he would know, having gone on several of his own adventures on behalf of National Geographic and Disney+. The British wildlife filmmaker, who is one of the youngest-ever recipients of BAFTA's cinematography award, has captured incredible footage from a number of dangerous and remote locations across the globe.

Related

15 Best Nature Documentaries, Ranked

The best nature documentaries offer the perfect balance of jaw-dropping footage and deep contemplative stories.

Posts

Screen Rant had the privilege of entering the National Geographic Hexadome Experience at D23, where we were treated to a 12-minute exploration of various parts of the world and the creatures that inhabit it. We then interviewed Gregory about his reaction to the activation, the exclusive footage of his docies Secrets of the Penguins found within it, and his reflections on Animals Up Close with Bertie Gregory.

Even Bertie Gregory Is Fascinated By The National Geographic Hexadome Experience

Screen Rant: D23's NatGeo Hexadome is a fascinating experience, and the footage of your work in there is incredible. Do you have any say in what goes in or how it's assembled?

Bertie Gregory: No, I actually had no idea that this project was going to be a thing at D23. When the concept was explained to me, I was like, "Okay, that's going to be cool."

As you saw, it's such an amazing hit on all the senses. I get pretty terrified walking around events like these - there's a lot of humans here, and it's pretty overwhelming - but when you go in there, you're transported around the world. In 12 minutes, how many different places did we go to?

I'm very fortunate to be the one who gets to go to these places, but that [Hexadome] is very close to what it's like to actually be there. With the penguins jumping off the cliff, you're seeing almost a life-size representation of the huge ice cliff that they were flying themselves off, and then that's intercut with all the windsuits? It was amazing. It's so cool.

You see all these different environments and climates quickly shifting from one to the other. How do you adjust when you go to a new place, or when you're in the freezing cold with the penguins? How do you prepare for that experience?

Bertie Gregory: It's all about trying to be as comfortable in an uncomfortable situation as possible. We've got a phrase that's, "Any idiot can suffer." There's another good one that's, "There's no such thing as bad weather, just inappropriate clothing." That's really the key; trying to get yourself as comfortable in an uncomfortable situation. And if it's a really cold place, that means wearing really amazing gear, but you are going to have to do some suffering. A lot of my job is what I describe as type two fun. So type one fun is fun at the time, type two fun is not fun at the time, but in retrospect, it's fun.

It's all about just doing a bit of suffering and trying to hang on. And I've specialized in filming in cold places. And the amazing thing about cold places is that if you can endure the conditions - because it's such a difficult place to just exist - the chances of you seeing something that no one's ever seen before are so much higher.

In the case of those emperor penguins, there were some records of that from scientists and a couple of still photographs on film, but so much had never been filmed before. So, to see that was really extraordinary.

Bertie Gregory Looks Back On Animals Up Close & Teases Secrets Of The Penguins

Do you have a recollection of a shoot that was most challenging and yet most rewarding because of that?

Bertie Gregory: The most challenging? For Animals Up Close, which came on Disney+ at the end of last year, we were filming what you call pumas in Chile, in Torres del Paine National Park or near it. We were filming an individual puma called Petacca, who I first met when she was a cub and about six months old. She's now grown up; she's about five years old now, and she's got cubs of her own. She's transformed into this powerful mother.

We followed her for a lot of time, well over a month, all day, every day. Wherever she went, we went - and that can be 10 or 15 miles in a day up and down, over the mountains, and you've just got to keep up with her. You know that the moment you let her out of sight, that's when she's going to do something extraordinary.

The golden rule of filming wildlife is you try not to get emotionally attached, but it's really hard when you've known an animal since it was a tiny cub and you see it in danger. When you spend that amount of time with a wild animal, you get an appreciation of just how challenging their lives are. Watching her defend her cubs from males who were trying to kill them, twice as heavy as her, or jumping on the back of a guanaco - this wild llama that is her main prey - It really goes to show how easy our lives are in comparison.

Speaking of Animals Up Close, you're filming that again currently. What have you seen that you have not seen before?

Bertie Gregory: We are. We're filming the new season, and we just did our first shoot in South Africa. It's very exciting, but I can't say why. Spoilers, spoilers! There are some goodies, and we're going to be flat out on that for a long time. That's very, very exciting.

Screen Rant: Your next National Geographic project is Secrets of the Penguins. What can you tease beyond the moments shown in the Hexadome?

Bertie Gregory: It will be out on Earth Day, so April next year. I'm excited. When I started on a project called Secrets of the Penguins, I was like, "Well, that's a really challenging title to live up to." They live in hard places to film, and they've been filmed a lot.

But to my amazement, every single shoot, we filmed something absolutely extraordinary that hadn't been filmed before. So, we delivered on the Secrets of the Penguins!