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Capturing the landscape of the Serengeti
If most nature films are like fly- on-the-wall documentaries, then Savannah is a gigantic soap opera, complete with the requisite cast of thousands. Of course, the BBC film, one of six 50-minute documentaries in a series to be screened later this year called Wild Africa, maintains the high standards we have to come to expect from the corporation.
But instead of focusing on one animal and telling a story about their lives, Savannah looks at a whole land-
scape and attempts to convey a sense of how it is, how it got that way and what it might become.
Cameraman/producer Owen Newman – working in tandem with long time producer Amanda Barrett – shot the footage over the course of eleven months in the Serengeti, north- ern Tanzania. He explains their aims.
“We have a basic storyline in that we wanted to show how the savannah was born, how it’s maintained itself and how it’s changed. Up to 30 million years ago a lot of East Africa was rain- forest.
“Then there was some rifting, which pushed up volcanoes and escarpments that tended to leave something called a rain shadow
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behind it. There was also a climate drying phase as well, so a lot of the rainforest became very dry then.”
In this, the classic East African safari environment, a whole range of species live in a primal state of mutual dependence. The long rains make the grass lush, the herbivores eat the grass, and attract the carnivores.
Catching an animal stalking and killing its prey can be one of the defining images of such films, but these shots require as much patience – and nerve –
from the cameraman as the predator. “On a cheetah hunt you can be a
kilometre away from the cheetah,” Newman adds. “You have to move around animals so as not to disturb anything, so you’ve given both of them a chance. And you have to be pre- pared for changes of lenses and film. I’ve frequently got something really good on the last two feet in a roll, so you have to try and judge it.
“You’re watching that all the time, you make sure you’ve got spare maga-
zines lying where you can reach them. And while lens changing can be very quick, a lot can happen in that moment when you’ve got the one lens off and the other in mid air about to go onto the camera.”
Maintaining a position where you are poised, ready to strike as it were, is perhaps more natural for a creature like a cheetah or a leopard than a wildlife cameraman. There are moments too when a healthy sense of fear creeps in during these more visceral scenes.
Photos l-r: White Backed Vulture; charging Rhinoceros; mating Lions; Serengeti storm blowing up; Owen Newman on location (and on Contents); grazing Giraffe; relaxing Leopard
(All photos including Contents page courtesy of BBC Natural History Unit © 2001 Owen Newman and Amanda Barrett)
EXPOSURE • 16 & 17