The producer of Asian and Australian episodes of Stories Behind Stories, Emma Napper, elaborates on the research and preparation that go into capturing every small shot, the life-risking challenges while shooting wildlife and much more. By Team Viva
Several series on Natural History have shown us the world the way that we could’ve never imagine. While these moments captured on camera take us on a roller-coaster of emotions, the biggest question that perplexes everyone is, “How did they even shoot that?” The latest anthology, Stories Behind Stories, covers the making of the most celebrated shows of all times — each revolutionary in its own way. Filmed over years, each series reveals an unseen side of nature and wildlife. It includes the ‘making of’ of some of the landmark series — Seven Worlds, One Planet, Dynasties, The Hunt, Planet Earth II, uncovering the action on the other side of the camera, the dedicated crew who risk their life while filming, the kind of research and preparation that goes into capturing every small shot, the life-risking challenges they face, the cutting-edge technology that’s developed, especially for the shows and even the fun anecdotes.
Why did you choose Asia for shooting?
It is the largest continent on earth, covering one third of the world’s surface. It presents a lovely but massive challenge when it comes to finding stories. Right from the jungles of Indonesia to the high Arctic in Russia, you’ve got absolutely everything to choose from. What we wanted to focus on was how the animals coped with living in such vast landscapes. Asia’s geological history is also a key part of the story. Around 30 million years ago, India crashed into the rest of Asia, forming the Himalayas which changed the landscape entirely. As a result, Asia, today, is a world of extremes. It has the hottest deserts, the highest mountains and all of it stems from its geology. We made a real effort to look at those different environments and most importantly, to find stories that have never been done before. In addition, we wanted to show the impact that people are having on the environment and the wildlife living there today because that are a really important part of every continent’s story.
What was it like filming the golden snub-nosed monkeys in central China?
The high mountain ranges in central China are remote and have been largely inaccessible to film crews. Yet for hundreds of years, stories of the ‘Abominable Snowman’ have emanated from this region. This is where the story of the Yeti (strange, scary-looking people that nobody knew anything about) comes from. Actually, Yeti is a golden, snub-nosed monkey. They’re absolutely incredible because they walk upright like we do and the males have got ginormous feet. They like little people and they’ve got phenomenal colours on them. The monkeys are a little bit of a holy grail for sir David. It’s something that he had heard described in scientific papers in the early 60s but has never had the opportunity to see. So it was really cool to be able to come back and show him that footage because he was just blown away by how they looked and survived. They have these big, shaggy coats and cuddle to stay warm. The families are bonded and reliant on each other as without somebody to cuddle, the babies would die very quickly in the winter there. They were a joy to be able to film and a joy to be able to show David.
What did you find out about the Sumatran Rhino Serenade?
For me, the most important thing about making these films is where you see something in the natural world, and you just can’t believe it’s true. That’s where the joy comes from. One real highlight was our story about the Sumatran Rhino. The jungles of Indonesia are rich and dense, which means the animals there have a real problem finding each other. I’ve been to lots of jungles before, but here, while I was looking at the way animals talk to each other, I came across this sound, which sounded like a whale. I played it to the team and made everyone guess what it was. Nobody guessed it correctly. It turned out to be a Sumatran Rhino. We filmed them mostly because of their way of communicating but also because they are one of the rarest species on earth. The rhino we filmed was born in 2000. They used to be widespread across Southern Asia and now, there are only 300 left. The upper estimate is 70. The lower estimate is 30. The decline in the number is a combination of poaching and loss of habitat to timber and palm oil production.
We filmed them in a protected area, which is the only place you can possibly see them. All I had heard of the singing rhino was an old bit of sound footage that was recorded at a zoo in America. There’s almost nothing known about why they do it or the meaning of their vocalisations, other than that the females and the males use the song as part of their way of meeting up. So I wasn’t sure what we were going to experience when we went in the field but almost as soon as we got there, we could hear the female singing. It was quite loud.
What do you have to say about Australia?
Australia’s story across time is that it used to be attached to Antarctica. Then it split from Antarctica and it has been moving north. When it split, a raft of animals — marsupials, reptiles, birds — were separated off and marooned. As a result, most of the animals in Australia are found nowhere else. It’s a continent of weirdos, beautiful animals, things you haven’t seen in other places. What I loved at the beginning of this process is you ask a lot of people what lives in Australia and they’ll say kangaroos and koalas... and then they get stuck. Yet there’s this amazing array of animals that have been stranded there for millions and millions of years. Australia over time has been getting hotter and hotter. When it separated from Antarctica, it was basically all forest. Now it’s almost all desert. That’s quite a story to tell in itself.
Can you tell us more about cassowaries?
The cassowary is Australia’s ostrich. It’s the world’s deadliest bird and it lives in the deep jungle in the north of Australia, which is the oldest jungle on earth. That jungle was walked by dinosaurs and basically when dinosaurs became extinct, cassowaries took their place. We filmed a cassowary, but they are incredibly secretive and very hard to spot. You don’t see them until you’ve stood next to them and then they get cross. You wouldn’t accidentally walk up to a lion but you might accidentally walk up to cassowary. The females stand about six feet tall, the males more like five feet. But they rear up above head height and they have claws on their feet that are longer than velociraptor’s. They can run upto 30 mph, jump five feet in the air and can swim too. So if you surprise them, you’re done for. That’s why they’re the world’s deadliest bird. Two of our Australian cameramen staked out the forest for a long time until we worked out where this male cassowary was going to be. We had to put out camera traps and do our own fieldwork, but we managed to film this male looking after his chicks in this forest. I’ve wanted to film them for several years and that forest is just quite a magical place for me. The audience would be literally looking at what dinosaurs would have seen.
How did drone technology help you make Seven Worlds, One Planet?
On Planet Earth II, we were using drones, but even three or four years ago, they were quite heavy-duty things. Now the technology is so much better that we’re able to use the drones with almost all of the animals that we’ve filmed. It can make a big difference in the behaviour you can see. In the Australia episode, for example, we filmed a shark aggregation which only happens every 15 years. It’s sharks on a bait ball off the West coast of Australia on Ingle, and if you were filming that from the sea on about, you would just see a hell of a lot of splashing around and some fins. Get a drone up in the air and suddenly you can see the shark’s tactics, what they are doing and not just that, you can see the bait ball at one point got up to something like 15 kilometres. We have shots of thousands of sharks all at once coming together. For me, that’s the magic of drones.
(Tune in to Stories Behind Stories on June 8 at 9 pm on Sony BBC Earth.)