A large part of Des' success came from his meticulous planning, and he was also very thorough about documenting every piece of film that he shot. In fact, by the year 2000, Des had shot over two million feet of 16 mm Kodak film, with precise records all the way back to when he left Melbourne in May 1952. Des used to expose a vast amount of film from which the Survival library ultimately benefited. For the Emmy Award winning 1971 film
Flight of the Snow Geese (1972), Des shot over 120,000 feet of footage, which was edited down for the finished film, and also produced six half-hour programmes from the 'out-takes'.