Born in China, a Sino-US production directed by Lu Chuan, will be released on the Chinese mainland on Friday.[Photo provided to China Daily]

"That can get really difficult, capturing that level of footage, particularly with some of these animals who've never set eyes on a human being before. We weren't sure it was even possible," Chapman says.

Light conditions were sometimes not perfect for filming, for example, but the crew was told by people of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau that the place's weather changes frequently. When confronting hailstorms, the cinematographers eagerly awaited sunshine and rainbows, but were instead suddenly met with blizzards.

Filming was done simultaneously in five locations across China, each taking 18 months. One team even waited for nearly three months to capture footage of snow leopards, and the whole storyline was nearly abandoned at one point. Lu says the filming plan for some species like the Siberian tiger and the Yangtze River dolphin changed due to the difficulty in getting enough shots.

As the eighth production of Disneynature, Born in China is the first one in the series that fully focuses on one single country.