Production news

1^st December 2008:

We have returned from six weeks of filming in Uganda, Kenya and Madagascar and that's it for filming until the start of January. The next journey will be to New Zealand in search of the Kakapo, a fat flightless parrot, which should, at the very least, prove something of a contrast to chasing rhino, stalking tree-climbing lions and hacking into mountains in search of gorilla. Having said that, 20 years ago Mark and Douglas had to fly by helicopter and leap out onto a mountain ledge while one runner touched down. I have not yet mentioned this to Stephen Fry. Some things are best left to the last minute. So fat and flightless the Kakopo may be, but there will certainly be adventures and, as always with these films, the best bits are the bits that we couldn't have planned for anyway.

That being said, the time between shoots is busy. Every aspect of the next trip has to be planned. We need to decide who we want to meet, which animals we want to feature and, most importantly of all, how many nights we are going to have to make Stephen sleep in a tent this time. As we stepped onto Nosy Mangabe, an island in the north east of Madagascar, it came as a complete surprise to me that his last camping trip had been at the age of 15 and had been aborted after one night in favour of the local pub, so horrendous was the experience. Escaping to the local pub is harder on Nosy Mangabe as there isn't one. In fact there isn't anything much except trees and the odd tent. So respect was most certainly due to Stephen for not only surviving his first night camping for 35 years, but for actually getting up, smiling and going for a swim in the sea. Several days later they told us that the area was riddled with sharks, but we didn't know that then and no-one was eaten, so all's well that ends well.

Photo by Mark Carwardine

The other major task is the edit. We have landed back with 70-odd tapes. Each tape is about 40 minutes long and they need to be reduced down to two one-hour films. Today the first job is to look at the tapes, make sure they haven't been destroyed by airport scanning devices, damp, mites etc., and then to set about finding the bits that make up the adventure. Telling the story is a fine balance. We want the films to be engaging and entertaining, but we also hope they will carry enough information to surprise people and, hopefully, make them want to find out more. In a way it is like looking back on a holiday video - there's that terrible hotel - there's that lemur that wouldn't sit still - that was the day Stephen had the runs. My lasting impression of the trip is one of relief that we were so lucky. Not only did we see all of the animals we had hoped to see, but they romped up and performed right on cue for us. We couldn't have hoped it would have gone so well. At least that is how I remember it, now we have to look back at the tapes and see how it comes across and start building the film with whatever is there...