This Māori creation story talks about how Aoraki Mount Cook was created by the sky father’s children. The waka they were travelling in formed the South Island of New Zealand, Aoraki and his brothers climbed to one side of the waka to become the highest mountains in the Southern Alps. The extra-terrestrial imagery comes from NASA, most of the mountain shots were actually filmed well after sunset, and the last shot in this sequence came to a natural end when we were enveloped by a wall of sea mist.

This clip is part of the Aotearoa – Earth & Sky project.