Page 16 - Fujifilm Exposure_8 Wildlife John Downer_ok

W inner of the Fujifilm Award for Best Cinematography at Wildscreen ‘98 for his breathtaking teleseries Eagles, top-flight natural history producer John Downer has scarcely had time to rest on his lau- rels before moving onto his next project. Following on, a decade later, from his groundbreaking series SuperSense, SuperNatural could well be the next award winner for the Bristol-based filmmaker. Comprising seven half hour shows, narrated by Andrew Sachs, the documentaries - once again shot on Fuji - are
scheduled for an April airing on BBC1.
“We investigate the sensory powers of different
animals,” Downer explains, “looking at things which to us appear near paranormal or supernatural. But in fact the whole thing is based on science, using the latest discoveries in the animal world.
“For example, dolphins have been imbued with lots of magical powers over the years. We know that they can look at a human and ‘see’ the living embryo inside a pregnant women because their sonar penetrates like ultrasound, so with their sensory powers they’re seeing something which to us seems near paranormal.
“They’re also rumoured to have healing pow- ers. People go to see dolphins a lot, to cure differ- ent illnesses. We’re now discovering that the ultra- sound has some amazing healing properties, and that dolphins possess ultrasound four times more powerful than we use.”
Two and a half years in the making, the process of planning, writing, then gathering footage from almost every continent, and then editing it together, was a challenging one even for so experienced a director and producer.
“We embark on all fronts simultaneously,” he explains. “We don’t film programmes sequentially, obviously, we may go to one area of the world and be shooting for four different programmes and stories.
“This series is very complex, and uses a lot of techniques that people will never have seen on television. Two years is a standard time to com- plete a series, but we were having to do a whole lot of other developments in terms of special effects and camera techniques, along with the scripting and the shooting.
“And we also had a whole extended editing period that actually started over a year ago, which is very unusual, with one editor working on all six programmes, which is pretty unique. So pre-pro- duction, filming and post production have over- lapped which became nightmarishly complicated. But it’s not so bad now we know what we’ve got and the programmes have been put to bed.”
In the middle of working on this series it must have been a boost to hear that Eagles had won its award. One, it turns out, of many.
“The Wildscreen award was for cinematogra- phy, but it also got three other nominations. And it won a prize at the Festival D’Oiseau for1998. It also got a cinematography nomination for a BAFTA. All of these awards have been prestigious and lovely to
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Photo: John Downer and Golden Eagle (Courtesy BBC/Rob Cousins)
EXPOSURE • 16 & 17