Strapping a Helicopter Camera Rig onto an Elephant

It can be hard enough to get human actors to perform properly on camera. For producers of nature documentaries, there are even greater challenges.
How do they do it? To find out, TechCrunch talked to Huw Cordley, a producer for many of the BBC's nature programs. The task requires a lot of creative problem solving:

“People are always developing new equipment,” Cordey says, half grinning, half sighing, as I imagine him waving at an enormous pile of Peli cases stacked in the corner of his no doubt stacked-to-the-rafters office, “which is perfect for us. If you think about it, wildlife hasn’t really changed what they have been doing since we started filming nature documentaries. Instead, we have to come up with new ways of telling their stories.”

Photographed above is one of those solutions. It's an 85-pound gyroscopically stabilized camera rig known as a helicopter rig because that's what it's commonly attached to. This time, though, Cordley and his team attached it to an elephant.