The technology

Mike Craven-Todd, cameraman for Extreme Archaeology, explains how the archaeologists' personal camera and sound systems worked.

Getting in close

My brief for Extreme Archaeology was to try to take archaeology documentary-making to a new level, giving the viewer the opportunity to follow an often dangerous story close up. The locations for the eight programmes were all chosen for their inaccessibility as well as for their archaeological significance. The remoteness of the sites and the desire to give the audience a fresh look at archaeology meant that new techniques had to be developed to achieve the programmes' objectives.

The three members of the team, Kate, Alice and Meg, needed to be followed at close quarters wherever the archaeological trail took them. This involved hiking, climbing, potholing, caving and diving. With the help of the three members of our access team, I was to follow them, shooting with a Digibeta camera as far as possible.

But to really get in there with them and see and experience their exploration of these sites meant that a comprehensive personal camera and sound system had to be designed for each of them. I contacted Andrew Schaale of Extreme Facilities to help me design them.

The camera and sound systems

The packs that Andrew finally built consisted of a small camera mounted at eye level on the right-hand side of a climbing helmet, with a microphone on an arm also attached to the helmet. The pictures and sound were then fed by cable to a small DV recorder, which was protected in a watertight Pelican Case inside a small rucksack. The whole system was shock and waterproofed. This meant that the team could now go anywhere and the audience could travel with them.

The helmet camera was attached at eye level so that the viewer had the same perspective as the team member wearing it. It meant, for example, that if the archaeologist was walking along an arete (a sharp, narrow ridge) to a sea stack with 65-metre drops onto rocks on either side, or squeezing through an S-bend 30 metres underground in a pothole system, then the audience had exactly the same view. The fact that every sound they made, whether words or just grunts of exertion, were also recorded helped to increase the feeling of sharing the experience.

The archaeologists as camera crew

The way we used this system meant that the three archaeologists had to be trained to act as a three-camera unit. When they were off on their own, without the main camera unit, and involved in a discussion, they were the only source of recorded material.

This meant that the two team members who were having the main discussion had to be no more than two metres apart and looking directly at each other, giving 'single shots'. At the same time, the third person had to back off to provide a 'two shot' to put them in context. Head movements had to be smooth; and cut-away shots of what they were talking about also had to be provided. The system worked really well, giving good coverage until such time as the main unit could catch up with them, where possible.

Involving other experts

The camera packs also gave us the opportunity to involve other experts, who could not get to these extreme locations, in the investigations. By transmitting the images from the head cameras back to base and using two-way communication systems, it enabled other archaeologists to see exactly what our team could see. The real-time discussions that this technique permitted gave the programme a new edge.