YLE, a Finnish Broadcasting company, were on a mission to attract a younger audience. They needed to make a change to their strategy and get some new programs produced. They knew these shows had to tell stories that were going to speak to a younger audience. Stories that would captivate the senses - and get people excited about the outdoors, to travel and explore.
So a team of five pitched an idea for a travel and photography TV series. The client, the broadcaster, liked it. It got signed off on six to eight episodes. Their mission? To travel into the unknown, off the beaten track, and then document their experience.
Valtteri Hirvonen was in control of getting the aerial shots for the show, but also captured great images of the trip and the two members who lead the show as talent, Konsta and Mikko. The team further consisted of two producers in Finland, two DPs who did the filming, a producer and editor who joined on the trip and then Valtteri, which made for a small team, especially for TV. This documentation of the Chilean trip will be the pilot episode.
A lot of planning before hand.
They headed to Patagonia. During the trip they had a refuge base-camp for the gear and spent most of their days in a van, hiking around when they found a spot of interest. They were offline for two weeks in Torres Del Paine, Chile. There was no mobile reception and the did not even have power. When they needed to charge gear they had a portable generator to run for a couple of hours per day. During our talk he told me how liberating it was to be offline for that amount of time. They got to see Pumas and some Guanaco Lamas too. And they spent two weeks in the wild Patagonia mountain range.
Valtteri used the Sony RX100 IV because it fit in his pocket and could be discreet when he wanted it to be. He got his ordered DJI Mavic a couple of hours before his flight departing from Finland and as backup he took his Nikon D810 and DJI Phantom but didn’t use them at all.
The show was shot using the Sony FS7, the DJI Mavic and a DJI Osmo. The presenters both used Nikon D810's as their main cameras to shoot stills. The lens used on the Sony FS7 was a Canon 50mm f/1.2 and the Nikon lenses they had were Nikon 50mm f/1.4, Nikon 14-24mm f/2.8, and Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8.
This surely inspired me to get out more, to actually pitch these types of ideas to people I think can make it happen and to not just think about it, but to actually do it and document it as the trip unfolds. The trailer captures what amazing space you can find yourself in and what wildlife you might see. I am looking forward to seeing what these guys do for the tv show, although it might not be done in English, so lets hope for subtitles. In my opinion great images, just like great music, is a global language.
Valtteri currently lives in Helsinki, Finland. He's loves the outdoors and any project involving shooting the wilderness If you want to follow the guys who made the show here are their social links.
- Valtteri Hirvonen on Instagram and his website.
- Konsta Punkka with almost one million followers
- Mikko Lagerstedt with a following of 170k people on Instagram
You can check out part of the actual show here.
What show will you like to pitch to a TV production company if you could choose a theme?
Interesting! Yes, a lesson. As Photographers we must open our eyes!!!