Dress Rehearsal And The Real Deal

Hello there, You. The last two days have been exhausting but enlightening. Under the watchful eye of cinematographer Paul Donovan, we’ve been learning all about filming wildlife. Thursday was a dress rehearsal in class, with Peter Rabbit graciously loaned by Denise from The Pet Warehouse. Friday was a field trip to Victory beach. Poor Katie had conjunctivitis, so she couldn't come, but the rest of the crew was there. We hoped to see Hookers Sea Lions and Yellow-Eyed Penguins. Aside from an old bull sunning himself in the grass, I was disappointing to see so few sea lions. Getting up at the butt-crack of dawn and slogging through miles of sand for a big view of a cold, empty ocean is a bit frustrating. Hard to make a sequence, let alone a story, out of nothing. But this is the nature of wildlife filmmaking, Paul says, you never know what you are going to get. Patience is a virtue. Then we did see something very rare: a fearsome Leopard Seal. Their territory is usually Antarctic waters, but occasionally they have been spotted around the South Island. This one seemed to be a sick juvenile, gauging by its size, lethargy and the bites on its back. It was being annoyed by a thick cloud of flies, and had viscous slime pouring out of both nostrils. Once in a while it would crack open a whiskery muzzle to bare sharp teeth. Jinty, my classmate from Moeraki, said she knew someone who had lost a leg to one of these monsters. I left a voice mail for Jim Fyfe, Programme Manager of the Coastal Otago Area Office, over at DoC to let him know the animal was there. He’d had a report of a Leopard Seal the previous week, and I wondered if it was the same one. Maybe I’ll find out next time I visit DoC.
Observation pays dividends in wildlife filmmaking. Alastair noticed a well-worn penguin path and suggested we build our hide strategically facing it. Of course, he ended up with the National Geographic shots. The penguins basically parked in front of him and preened for about nine hundred hours. Talk about making your own luck! There are great benefits of being under the tutelage of someone with as much experience as Paul. He constantly gives you tips on how to accomplish the best images while putting the welfare of your animal first. For example, he made sure we got our hides built well before the Yellow-Eyed Penguins made their way from the surf to their sleeping grounds in the knotty grass. He also made us wait until after dark, when the penguins would be settled in, before packing up and leaving. Hopefully, by respecting Paul’s golden rules, the penguins won’t remember us, we’ll have great images in the can, and our footprints will be washed away by the next tide.