FREEZE FRAME
Cinematographer and scientist Frederique Olivier ventures to the wild outposts of the planet to capture amazing images and expand our understanding
Cinematographer and scientist Frederique Olivier travels to wild places to capture stunning images and to further our knowledge of our environment
Before I meet Frederique Olivier, I tell my daughter Lily I’m off to have coffee in Hobart with a French explorer. Her eyes widen as I describe Olivier’s diverse career, which spans marine science, environmental engineering, diving, wilderness photography, filming for natural history documentaries including BBC’s Planet Earth and Penguins: Spy in the
Huddle, and travelling to some of the most extraordinary environments, including the Antarctic, Greenland, Christmas Island, remote Western Australia, and the Solomon Islands. “She’ll probably be in the next edition of Good Night Stories for Rebel
Girls,” says Lily, in all seriousness. I wouldn’t be surprised. Olivier, who has been based in Hobart on and off since 2001, is a ribbon of energy. Vibrant, talkative, and brimming with passion for challenge and adventure, she’s just returned from an Easter hike along the South Coast Track, and is preparing to fly to Canada for a voyage across the North Atlantic with renowned Tasmanian yachtswoman Cathy Hawkins.
“At the moment, there’s ice in the harbour, so they can’t even put the boat in the water,” laughs Olivier. “But once it melts, we’ll be heading from Newfoundland to Norway which will take about three weeks. I’ve got a skipper’s ticket, sailed to Macquarie Island and around Tasmania, and I ran my own yacht commercially for the BBC in the Solomons, so I know challenging conditions. After the trip, I’ve got plans to go climbing in Utah and do some time-lapse photography of the red rocks and the starry skies out there. And then I’m hoping to go to Vanuatu for an environmental education project, before heading to South Georgia for some filming, and eventually Greenland for some dog sledding.”
She may be constantly on the move, but Olivier’s engagement with nature is wholly immersive, driven by a desire to reach far-flung places beyond the bounds of most human beings. Growing up in the agricultural landscape of a village just outside Paris, with intellectual, exercise-shy parents, she began yearning for the wild in early childhood when natural history documentaries, and characters like Jacques Cousteau, and David Attenborough, first fired her imagination.
“I used to watch the television at my grandma’s house. I must have only been about five, but I remember those images vividly, and thinking that I just wanted to go and do that. I wanted to go and see the albatross or whatever, and just go adventuring in a natural environment that had not been modified by humans. So that’s what I chose.”
While studying engineering in France during the late 1990s, Olivier had the chance to spend six months at the Australian Institute of Marine Science in Townsville, diving, fishing, and hanging out in the mangroves. Drawn by the vast expanse of
coast and desert, and the diverse social culture of Australia, with its positive attitude towards travelling, and volunteer opportunities, she eventually decided to emigrate, and returned to Townsville for her masters at James Cook University.
In 2001, she obtained a PhD scholarship at what used to be the Institute of Antarctic and Southern Ocean Studies at the University of Tasmania, researching the impact of microplastics on wildlife in Antarctica. But a funding crisis caused her to switch topics, and she ended up studying storm petrel populations.
“I had funding from fisheries around Australia, but sadly I had to give it back because the Antarctic component of my project was taken out from under me. I’d had the bad idea of writing a report on the waste from the research stations, and even though I wanted to focus on the solutions, I had to stop, due to the politics within the Division. In the end I studied bird populations, which I loved, because I acquired really good skills and spent all my time scrambling over rocks, but my heart had been set on microplastics.
“Luckily Denise Hardesty from CSIRO took on the project a few years later. It was heartbreaking for me, because the problem was already there when I was doing my research, and it’s taken this long for people to really take notice. I wanted to try and tackle it when it seemed possible, but now the solutions are going to have be extremely costly, so it’s a sore point.”
Before her PhD was finished, Olivier had realised the limitations of a purely scientific career, and began working alongside her then-partner, a cameraman, making documentaries for the BBC and SBS, including the memorable emperor penguins episode of Planet Earth in 2005.
“I wanted to try and be part of initiatives that promote awareness of the environment, so I moved away from science, because scientific papers are read by a very narrow community of specialists, and writing them has minimal impact.
“So I started working on the penguin shoots with my partner, and we went out in every single blizzard to film them. It required experience, because you have to measure yourself against the environment and work out how to meet those challenges, and the BBC employed us because we were both known to the Antarctic community, through the Division here.
“Plus, I already had a science background and five years’ worth of experience in Antarctica. So I finished my PhD during the winter, in a hut, at minus 50C. It was really amazing, but no, I didn’t get to meet David Attenborough!”
Since then, Olivier has returned to the Antarctic many times, filming, and operating watercraft. In 2012, she spent the entire year there, again filming emperor penguins, with the help of spybot cameras. Given the extreme conditions, and the massive demands on mind, body and soul, how does she manage it?
“There are ways to do it,” she smiles, almost convincing me. “You have to be very aware of all the hazards, and work out how not to get lost, and make sure you don’t do anything stupid. But your survival mode kicks in, and your adrenalin, and it’s actually really amazing, and almost subconscious. You become much more alert and have a lot more clarity, and it’s great to know the human body has that level of reserve. I really like working in that mode, because you put yourself out of your comfort zone, and you figure out, ‘wow, I can do this’!
“People are always telling me I’m so lucky to have such an amazing life, but the reality is, I work really hard and I’m prepared to take risks. Luck has got nothing to do with it.”
In all her endeavours, as a woman, Olivier has found herself to be in a minority and, from what she says, this kind of all-pervasive challenge sounds harder than the mental and physical struggle of dealing with extreme climates and weather conditions. Despite all her knowledge and experience, her accomplishments and achievements, she is still fighting to be treated equally and fairly by the men in her various fields.
“All of the environments I work in are male dominated, including academia, marine, camera, everything,” she says. “Film work is very competitive, and while my tolerance for bad jokes and that kind of thing is high, it’s all very draining. I spent two months in a managerial role on the Antarctic ship, and I was criticised more for being a woman. The average Aussie male finds it intimidating to have a woman in these situations. It’s not even a conscious thing, and I don’t have a solution for it.
“I was talking with Madeleine Habib, who’s been a captain on Greenpeace ships, and the Aurora, about what we can do as women now, and at first I was reluctant because I don’t want people thinking I’m amazing for what I do because I’m a woman. I’m a person, and it’s all about my capability regardless. So it’s tricky, and there’s a risk of getting the wrong message across if you don’t word it carefully.
“But I do want to show other women that they can do it, so I always tell women, just hang in there. There’s a strong movement for women now, and we just have to ride it. I’m nothing fancy, or super-big, but I can inspire other women and girls. It’s all about the mindset. You just have to go and do it, whether you’re a teenager or a 40-year-old mum.”
Ironically, one of Olivier’s most demanding experiences as a woman, was filming Melbourne teenager Jade Hameister, as she crossed Greenland on foot, for part of her three ice caps triumph. Olivier skiied fast and efficiently every day, pulling 100kg of camera gear on a sled, staying up front to film, but the trip was not a particularly happy one.
“The whole thing was so against my ethics,” says Olivier. “Jade was really thrown into the situation, with media training and everything, and her father came along, carried by guides, but I don’t think either of them genuinely engaged with the challenge. By the end of the trip, they still weren’t pitching their own tents.”
Now taking a break from the pressurised world of commercial assignments, Olivier is figuring out a creative and effective means of using film and imagery to raise awareness about the environment. In 2008, she worked on the ABC documentary
Whatever Happened to Brenda Hean? about the Lake Pedder campaigner who disappeared in 1972, and last year she contributed to the Vanishing Point exhibition at the Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies in Salamanca, which addressed the issue of marine debris.
Over the decades, she has witnessed profound changes in the climate, and is determined to find a way to share her stories with maximum visual impact.
“Twenty years ago, Australia was second only to Germany in terms of environmental policy, but the Howard Government set everything back. I am so disappointed in the lack of positive environmental attitude in Australia these days, and in some ways I don’t recognise the country anymore.
“Sometimes I feel a bit cynical about it all. People are so desensitised by all the beautiful imagery on social media, but I’ve seen huge changes on the Great Barrier Reef, and in Antarctica. There aren’t many places left in the world where you don’t see the human footprint and the erosive impact.
“But we have a duty to educate our kids, and here in Tasmania, you can still be part of a good green community, which is great.
“Hobart truly is the best capital city you could live in. When I first came here, I thought it’d be great to be one of those artists with a studio in Salamanca – what a fantastic life! Tasmania is an amazing place.” Watch out for more of Frederique Olivier’s amazing adventures on Brand Tasmania’s video available soon for Mercury subscribers at themercury.com.au or visit her vimeo blog which showcases footage of everything from getting up close and personal with whale sharks on Ningaloo Reef to collecting debris on Macquarie Island.