Filming a dramatically changing landscape with the EOS R5

Canon Ambassador Evgenia Arbugaeva has had great success with still images. Her documentary work, which often focuses on isolated individuals in remote locations, has earned her accolades including a National Geographic Storytelling Fellowship and an Infinity Award from the International Center of Photography in New York.

However, for one particular project Evgenia decided photographs weren't enough to tell the full story. Instead, in collaboration with her brother, cinematographer Maxim Arbugaev, she made her first-ever film: a 25-minute documentary titled Haulout. Naturalistic and meditative, it focuses on the growing impact of climate change on the Arctic Ocean's walrus population.

Haulout was nominated for an Academy Award in the 2023 Best Documentary Short Film category and won accolades from both the American Film Institute and the International Documentary Association (IDA) – an extraordinary start to Evgenia's filmmaking career.

The initial idea for the film came while Evgenia was working on another project, documenting the indigenous Chukchi community on the shores of the Chukchi Sea in the Arctic Circle. While travelling with them on a hunting trip, she landed on a desolate beach where a small wooden hut stood.

"The sand was dark, almost like it had been burned, and there were lots of bones around," she explains. "The hunters said that every year, thousands of walruses haul out onto this beach and a scientist comes to study them. It sounded really interesting."

The next year, in 2019, she returned with her brother, met marine biologist Maxim Chakilev, and photographed the walruses.

Evgenia chose to make the film with her Canon EOS R5. "As I was completely new to the filmmaking process, I didn't want to have to familiarise myself with a different camera," she says. "I really appreciated the EOS R5's lightness and compact body, which allowed me to be more confident with my movements.

"I usually use autofocus when shooting still images, so working with the focusing ring as I shot was new to me. I found the camera's focus peaking feature [which outlines the in-focus parts of the scene in a colour of your choice] was a great tool."

Haulout includes a wide range of shots and to cover them all, Evgenia and her brother Maxim used several Canon lenses including the Canon RF 50mm F1.2L USM and the Canon RF 70-200mm F2.8L IS USM. However, for Evgenia, her usual go-to lens for photography is the Canon RF 24-70mm F2.8L IS USM lens and it was the same with video.

"In a small, confined place like the hut, I needed a wide-angle lens and 24mm is as wide as I go," she says. "The 70mm end of the lens is great for portraits and for filming the walruses, because we were so close to them – we just opened the door and there they were."

Apart from the obvious challenges of living in a small, remote hut for three months, one practical difficulty was keeping their respective batteries charged. "We had to use a generator which produced quite a bit of noise and smell, so we were limited in terms of powering up our batteries," says Evgenia. "We had to be really careful in selecting what to shoot, when we rolled and when we stopped."

The walruses themselves – which can grow up to 3.6 metres long and weigh up to 1,700kg – also presented challenges during filming. "Even though they can look aggressive, they're very vulnerable because they're not in their natural environment," she explains. "They're very alert and get scared by unusual smells or sounds, such as the noise from the generator. Once they're scared, they start to panic, which can cause a massive stampede. So we had to be careful not to worry them."

This meant it was impossible for Evgenia and Max to stand at full length at times, as walruses get scared of unknown upright objects due to their poor vision. "We had to be very careful filming from the roof, and get to the filming position by crawling very slowly and not standing up," she continues. "On the beach, when in close proximity to walruses, we had to stay very low."

After the shoot was completed, Evgenia and Maxim returned home with around 60 hours of footage, most of which was shot as 4K DCI RAW video files and in Canon Log. They chose to shoot in 4K and not a higher resolution partly to reduce the amount of storage space needed but also to avoid using the generator too often to power the equipment when uploading the files.

Although working with video was challenging, Evgenia enjoyed the learning process. "It was exciting for me to explore a different language for storytelling," she says. "I noticed that my mind was working completely differently when directing and using movement and sound. I was thinking more about the structure of the story and what we needed to film."

But what did Evgenia miss about shooting photography? "I missed the fragmented nature of photography; for a film, you need to capture an audience's attention for the full length and work carefully with the time the viewers give you," she says. "The biggest difference is that filmmaking gives you more layers in storytelling, like adding sound. But having said that, this experience made me appreciate photography even more.

"Now that I've made this film, it doesn't mean I'm going to be a filmmaker. Both mediums are just so beautiful and special on their own that I think I'll keep switching between the two."


Watch Evgenia Arbugaeva and Maxim Arbugaev's Academy Award-nominated Haulout.