Not a message for visiting aliens, ‘Welcome to Earth’ was a programme I worked on in 2019 with one William Smith in Tanzania. What seems like an eternity ago and delays on the release due to that Covid thing, it’s finally out and available for your viewing pleasure on Disney+ - here’s what I got up to…
These are not Wildebeest
The Mission
The aim was to capture the Wildebeest / Gnu migrating across the plains of the Serengeti. For me, I’d be looking at capturing patterns / trails of their movement as well as your standard timelapses - sunrise / set etc and any other shots I could squeeze in. I’d also be trying to capture a river crossing which as I found out, was tricky!
The Adventure
We headed over to Kilimanjaro then took a smaller flight over to what I can only describe as a small dirt track as a runway. Our first encounter with the wildlife was the plane flying super low to remove the animals that had gathered on it before turning around and landing.
One of the first things you’ll notice upon exiting the air-conditioned plane is the smell. Things that include the word ‘smell’ often have a reputation for being bad but not in this case. It’s very earthy - a million odd animals doing their thing will do that but it’s also similar to an old pine forest if you kick up the soil during peak mushroom season but much stronger - always tricky to describe but very unique and something that will last in my memory until I return again!
5* Camping
We then took a short drive to the base camp which had been setup for us. I’m used to sleeping on the floor outside on some shoots so this was a 5* camping equivalent for me! Showers were your standard hanging bag of cold water which did heat up during the day but my early sunrise outings were always accompanied by hand-over-mouth yelps at 4am so I didn’t wake up the rest of the crew!
Everything, as you’d expect from a large scale production and a large crew was provided. Breakfast, takeaway lunch whilst out shooting and a nice communal dinner in a separate covered area. I’m not used to such luxury as standard as I’m often out with just an assistant and we eat what we can find!
The following day (for me) was a day to unpack the kit (all 17 cases), rig my vehicle and prep the kit as well as heading out for a quick recce to explore the local area.
The Shoot
All the kit
With the vehicle all rigged, we headed out (myself and driver) to hunt down the Gnu. Easier said than done though - there’s just over a million of them migrating but the aim was to find the right angles to capture lots of them and to observe the patterns as they swarm. They were everywhere and they’re not the cleverest of beasts, often running in front of the truck as we were driving.
The opposite of this occurred frequently as well - we’d find a huge herd of them chowing on the grass but they’d be quite far away. ‘Creeping up’ on the animals proved pretty impossible when you spotted a gathering worthy of filming as the closer you got the quicker they’d move away so a lot of the time I was using long lenses.
One additional obstacle was that we’d been told to never leave the vehicles for obvious reasons - we were always near lions, hippos, crocs and a multitude of other things that were likely to kill you. Jumping out the front to get on the back was fine but lurking around wasn’t advised which meant I’d be shooting everything from the back of the truck.
Besides all these things, we slowly eased into a routine of heading out and grabbing shots. Any planning for the following day’s shoot was made whilst out and about, in particular sunrise and sets as they’d be location specific which made every day into a shoot and recce.
The Kit
Driver taking advantage of some shade
Having been fortunate enough to travel the world with work, experience has taught me that you can never have enough kit. Although there was a huge crew with the usual paraphernalia to hand, it’s unlikely that you’ll find any specialist supplies without taking a flight somewhere so it’s important to pack well and think of every scenario.
I took 8 cameras and 14 lenses out with me for this - not all used for filming but there as backups should the worse happen. Camera kit aside, it’s the little things that really helped me out. The portable soldering iron to fix a cable that got snagged, the extra laptop so I could leave one at base rendering shots and one with me to copy cards on the go. The mosquito net over my head for the eternal fly abuse 24/7 and a million other things that saw me through the day.
I also had my secret weapon - the telescopic mast. Not only did this allow me to get an additional 9m of height to my shots (not a lot of high terrain here, apart from the odd hill in Kenya but we weren’t allowed over the border), but I could also use it as a kind of fake drone.
This would involve me hand-cranking the mast manually over the course of an hour or two to capture an ‘upward’ shot. I was constantly on the search for small trees to use as foreground to go up and over! Yes - you could use a drone for this in timelapse mode but you wouldn’t get more than 30 minutes out of it so using the mast was quite unique for this kind of shot.
Standing in the blazing sun turning the winch handle one click at a time was painful but very worth it, as most good things are and after a bit of stabilisation, the shots were great!
Kit was a mixture of Canon 5DIVs, Canon and sigma glass, 3 Legged Thing tripods and heads and Dynamic Perception motion control and sliders.
The Conclusion
As usual, I put in some ridiculously long hours into this shoot as I do with most shoots! They were never demanded but I just can’t help myself - when your job is your passion it’s difficult not to have a strange addiction to what you do!
This shoot is most definitely in my top 5 - the crew, the location, the kindness and hard work of the local crew - all excellent and I often feel very grateful looking back at it all!
You can catch all of my shots on Ep.3 of Welcome to Earth - now streaming on Disney+
