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For Netflix’s Life on Our Planet, cinematographer Jamie McPherson had to capture action that simply wasn’t there.

In the eighth episode, titled “Age of Ice and Fire,” McPherson framed this shot of cave lions facing off against woolly mammoths. Some creatures from the series went extinct millions or even hundreds of years ago, but not the woolly mammoth — they went extinct 12,000 years ago.

“They’re essentially elephants and lions, so we have a sense of how they move,” explains the Dp, who notes that VFX supervisor Jonathan Privett of Industrial Light & Magic supplied him with early mockups of how these long-gone creatures would interact. “We do walk and run cycles, so you can get a feel for how fast a mammoth walks,” notes Privett, who used studies of the animals’ modern evolutionary descendants to understand these ancient beasts.

Since all that remains are their bones, Privett’s team...

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“Such a weird habit that I’ve got into today,” says Dan Tapster, the showrunner for Life on Our Planet. “I’ll say, ‘Yeah, we were there to film mammoths. Yeah, people, we’re here to film a T-Rex.’”

And yet, there isn’t really a better way to describe what the team of Life on Our Planet had to do for years to create the footage that makes up the documentary series. Of course, being CGI VFX, the prehistoric stars of the series are a good deal more compliant than the stars of your average nature documentary. But it also required much more planning.

“More so than with our normal series, there was a lot more pre-production,” says Sophie Lanfear, the producer-director and writer of episodes three and eight. “This had an extended phase of research and development before we even went into the field and shot stuff.

They scale deadly cliffs, swim among sharks in a feeding frenzy and capture shots on a boat rocked by some of the world’s roughest seas. It’s all in a day’s work for the Emmy-nominated reality and nonfiction cinematographers, who must regularly find solutions to some of the most impossible situations imaginable.

“One hundred percent, the most challenging shot of the ’Coastal Seas’ episode was filming in a shark feeding frenzy at night in the middle of French Polynesia,” says Doug Anderson, Dp on the “Coastal Seas” episode of the series “Our Planet” and nommed for nonfiction program. “We overcame the challenge through a massive amount of preparation. We ended up making it safe by wearing chain mail shark suits, by using underwater communications, by being certain with other details of our diving equipment, so that if we did get bitten by sharks or any part of our equipment got bitten,...

Over recent months, Gold Derby has hosted fascinating interviews with 194 of this year’s Emmy Awards contenders. And now with Tuesday’s announcement of 2019 nominations, we’re proud that 65 of these people are now officially nominees. Visit our Emmy Awards nominees video folder to watch these exclusive 15-20 minute chats.

And be watching over the next month as we add many more nominee interviews. Several are already being scheduled.

SEE2019 Emmy nominations complete list: All the nominees for the 71st Emmy Awards

Here is the full list of 65 nominee interviews you can now watch:

The Act — Joey King (actress)

The Amazing Race — Phil Keoghan (producer)

Barry — Anthony Carrigan (actor)

Beto Breaks The Internet — Jimmy Fallon (actor)

Better Call Saul — Giancarlo Esposito (actor), Bob Odenkirk

The Big Bang Theory — Mark Cendrowski (director)

Black-ish — Michelle Cole (costume designer)

Bodyguard — Jed Mercurio (producer)

Broad City — Ilana Glazer and Abbi Jacobson (actresses)

Chernobyl — Jared Harris...

Veteran nature cinematographer Jamie McPherson “couldn’t not be involved” with “Our Planet.” Netflix‘s eight-part documentary series narrated by David Attenborough takes viewers through some of nature’s greatest wonders, so he was intrigued by the “huge scope” of the series and “the stories they wanted to tell,” which had “conservation at the heart of it.” Watch our exclusive video interview with McPherson above.

See Sophie Lanfear interview: ‘Our Planet’

McPherson traveled around the globe for the show, and everywhere he went he was tasked with capturing the native wildlife in a unique way. For instance, in the opening episode, “One Planet,” he shot wild dogs and wildebeests in the African Serengeti and “wanted to show people what it was like to be on the hunt with a pack of wild dogs,” he explains. It’s “an amazing thing in itself. You see them running, they’re so fast...