The Human Planet mountains team filmed in the most extreme
and precarious locations imaginable.
With 4 1 active volcanoes, Java in Indonesia
is the most volcanic island on Earth.
And it's here on Kawah Ijen volcano they faced their toughest challenge.
The team have come to film miners who dig sulphur
from the heart of this active volcano.
Filled with a cocktail of noxious gases,
this is one of the most toxic places on the planet.
Keith Partridge is a specialist mountain cameraman
and he's taking this challenge very seriously.
Of all the years of filming all over the world
in some of...arguably the most spectacular places,
I've never seen anything like this. It's absolutely extraordinary.
It just feels like you're entering into the jaws of hell.
To capture the sulphur miners at work,
the crew must follow them deep into the gas-filled crater.
Halfway in, the team take a break.
Hartomo and Sulaiman, the miners they've come to film,
hand out a simple lunch.
OK, no problem.
But before their first bite, they get their first taste of things to come.
(WHOOPING CRY)
DINA MUFTI: Hold your breath everyone. (COUGHS)
Suddenly they're swamped by a cloud of toxic gas
belching out from the depths of the volcano.
DINA: Put gas masks on.
The crew have come prepared
but they didn't expect to use their gas masks this quickly.
This type of gas mask is normally reserved for warzones.
- All done? - Yup.
Phew!
You do not want to be in the middle of this stuff...
- (COUGHING) - ...when it comes in.
As soon as the air clears, the team press on deeper into the crater.
The sudden gas blast is a sign ofjust how unpredictable
Kawah Ijen is.
But the crew must continue
if they want close-up shots of the miners working in the gas,
digging for sulphur.
Scientist and researcher Dina Mufti assesses the situation
before the crew go in.
I'm just going to go in there,
a lot closer in with the gas meter, and see what it does.
(BEEPING)
So the alarm's going off.
It's reading...93 parts per million.
It's going up to 1 94 now.
So right in the middle of the cloud. Better get out.
She's discovered that the level of hydrogen sulphide gas
is 40 times the crew's safe working limit.
While the gas mask will protect them at these high levels,
the camera is extremely vulnerable.
But to capture Sulaiman and Hartomo's story,
they must take the camera into the gas.
But after just eight minutes, Keith's worst fears are realised.
The camera fails
and he has to get clear.
(COUGHS)
We got a thing called an ''RF warning'' on the camera,
which means that the signal's not actually getting onto...onto the tape.
It's usually a head clog.
So my guess is a lot of the sulphur dioxide stuff,
the fumes have got into the camera mechanism
and kind of gummed it up a wee bit.
So I've just ejected the tape. We'll clean the heads...
...and, er, see what happens.
Director Nic Brown has a serious problem.
He didn't expect the camera to be this sensitive to the gases.
- (INDISTINCT COMMENTS) - MAN: Good. Yeah. Yeah.
They abandon filming for the day
and make the two-hour trek back to base camp.
Keith and technical assistant Patrick Murray
perform open-heart surgery on the camera.
It's the first time they've ever done this in the field.
...Absolutely filthy...
And they have no idea if it will work.
(CLICKING, BUZZING, WHIRRING AND BEEPING)
- Hey! - Oho!
- (THEY CHUCKLE) - Nice!
- I love your work. - Right, OK.
0n day two, the crew is straight back into the thick of it.
This time they've taken two cameras.
But after a couple of hours one fails.
Wait for it to clear or something.
Or go down lower by the lake.
KEITH: We can clear out of the fumes a little bit.
We'll change the tape, see if that helps.
They swap to the second camera but the tape head gets clogged again.
No, it's still flashing a warning. It came up with RF
and it's now stopped again. So it's still the same old same old.
With both cameras down,
it's back to camp for more running repairs.
Time is running out and the crew still have many key shots to get.
But the constant threat of breakdown still looms over them.
We've blown away three VariCams now.
So we're being very cautious with our drill of slamming it in the bag
before the cloud hits us.
The crew gather setup shots of Sulaiman and Hartomo on the edge of the gas cloud.
But to film the full-on experience of the miners,
they must get back into the gas.
They've now decided the main cameras are too sensitive to take in.
So the crew decide to try using
the tapeless behind-the-scenes camera.
- (CHUCKLES) Give us your camera. - Give us your camera!
That one seems to be behaving itself.
The tapeless camera survives the gas
and the crew film first-hand what it's like to work in the sulphur mine.
But, as the gas thickens, the crew has to watch the miners they've come to know
in distress.
(GROANS)
(MUMBLES, IN TRANSLATION)
Sulaiman is especially badly hit.
(GROANS)
And the gas is so thick, cameraman Keith gets lost in the cloud.
(MUMBLING AND GROANING)
SULAIMAN: Away. Away.
KEITH: Oh, God...
- We go away? - Yeah, yeah.
(GROANS)
Incredibly, Hartomo and Sulaiman keep working.
They only come out of the mine once they have a full load of sulphur.
(COUGHS)
(SNIFFS AND MUTTERS)
(IN TRANSLATION)
It's a sobering experience for the crew to see what the miners have to do
to earn a good living.
That was pretty mad in there.
You just get these waves of, like, this super heat coming out.
And that ain't steam, either.
And the lens fogs over.
And these guys... There was four of them in there at one point,
and they all came out, all choking, and guys, like, coughing up.
Absolutely hideous.
It's like war.
Filming the sulphur miners
has been the toughest shoot in the crew's memory.
They've come away with huge respect
for the men who work in this unforgiving environment.
But despite the challenges of working inside an active volcano,
the crew have captured one of the most haunting and memorable stories
for the Human Planet.