Before the start of the
BBC's new Dynasties, with Sir David Attenborough as narrator, starting this Sunday on BBC Earth (DStv 184) for 5 episodes,
Rose Thomas, the director and producer of the first episode, sat down to talk about this
Game of Thrones-like new natural history series and following chimpanzees in Africa in the first episode, saying that what the camera crew captured, nobody could have foreseen ...
How is it possible for the camera to get so close to the animals and them not appearing to be aware or perturbed?
Rose Thomas: We filmed with long lenses. For our chimpanzee episode we had a new kind of long lens so we could zoom in quite a lot, but also with this troop we worked alongside scientists.
The scientists studying this troop of chimps have been there for nearly 20 years and so have habituated them to the human presence, and we followed their protocols. That allowed us to get very close and to follow them. We would find them in the morning and then follow them through the day.
How close is close?
Rose Thomas: About 12 metres. Unless when we were filming and they came towards us. Then you don't move. You stay still. They're walk past you or sit down. But you don't want to let them think that they're displacing you.
So they sit down; you wait 30 seconds or so, and then you get up and move. But most of the time it was about 12 metres.
What was a typical day like for you?
Rose Thomas: It was probably the most physically and mentally tough project I've ever done.
Out get-up time was 4:15am if we were lucky, 3:30am if we were unlucky and we would travel out, and get out the car and be on foot. And the territory of these chimps are 92 square kilometres, so we would walk anywhere between 5 and 15 miles per day, and we'd have to carry all our own equipment - just 3 people filming the chimps.
So we had to carry about 80 kg between three people. The temperatures were often in the 40 degrees Celcius, so it was physically incredibly demanding but we became quite passionate and obsessive about it. We just really wanted to tell the story. It was just such a unique position to be in.
And the story - we just would never have been able to do it - because it's so unlike the other landmark series that have come before it. It's a very different type of film. We just hunkered down and got on with it.
You're obviously not going to give the ending away of your chimpanzee episode, but if you could allude or expand a little: When you started you yourself didn't know how things would turn out. How did it meet your expectation, did something happen that you didn't expect or couldn't have foreseen?
Rose Thomas: The first thing to note was that it was incredibly high-risk.
I'm surprised the BBC commissioned it actually because all 5 of us producers set off into our own countries and we just had no idea what was going to happen.
We had a sense of what might happen, but we really didn't know how that was going to unfold. Because we were all able to work with scientists, they could give us some insight. For the chimps for example we knew the individuals and their personalities, and we knew who was the alpha male, and we knew who were potential rivals. We knew the hierarchy.
We had an idea of what might happen. What actually did happen ... it definitely was unexpected - and not just in the chimp film but across the board we were able to capture new behaviours.
I hope viewers come away from this one really better understanding chimp society, and just what it takes to be a leader, and to continue to grow your dynasty.
When you work so closely with these animals for such a long period of time, you must become emotionally involved. How as a person do you cope with that?
Rose Thomas: I think that all of the producers on this series are quite obsessive and passionate and that that comes out in our films.
I think you just can't help but to become emotionally attach. For me, in order to tell David the chimpanzee's story, from David's perspective, I just had to understand - in the best possible way I could - what he was experiencing every single day.
So you do become emotionally attached, and I felt as if I went on a real emotional roller-coaster with him but I think that was the only way to bring these real stories to screen.
What would you say is a must-see moment?
Rose Thomas: Because they're all stories that develop over the whole hour, each one is much more like a drama in that way. It's much more
Game of Thrones type of story-telling.
I'm thinking like in Blue Planet II the whale carrying her dead baby, and the plastic. I'm sure there's going to be such moments in Dynasties?
Rose Thomas: There are some extraordinary moments of behaviour that are unique and that have never been seen and that will surprise every single viewer during the course of the series.
I think that telling you what they are would be massive spoilers. When you see it you will understand. There are just some extraordinary scenes in every single episode.
What went into the decision of choosing these 5 animals as the subjects?
Rose Thomas: We chose them because they're iconic animals but we tried to find endangered animals to show and help people to understand these animals and why we should work to protect and try to save them.
Did you ever feel in danger?
Rose Thomas: Overall we felt really safe. But the chimps can get quite aggressive when they're having fights within their own troop.
There's nothing aimed at you at all, but you've suddenly got a group of screaming chimps around you. These chimps in Senegal - they throw rocks, and they're pretty heavy. And when they get into a fight and they start hurling those, that was probably the only time I felt let's just go back a little bit.
Other than that I never felt any threat and to be honest I just felt so privileged just to be in that position and get to know them and to get an insight into their different world.
What did you learn from the chimps?
Rose Thomas: I always thought that for the alpha male, life was pretty good you know.
You're at the top and you get the best of everything; life's great. But actually I realised that it's an incredibly difficult position to be in.
David as the alpha male was always in the centre of everything even when he would try to sneak off to the side. The pressure on him was just always immense and I don't think I ever really appreciated that before.
Also chimp society is incredibly intriguing to watch. It's incredibly political. I knew it was complex but I didn't realise just how complex it was.
What makes Dynasties different?
Rose Thomas: With a lot of the other big series you see snapshots and we as filmmakers would go to those locations and spend maybe a month there, maybe 6 weeks,to capture the key piece of behaviour that we want to show.
Dynasties allowed us to go and show what happens the rest of the time and what it actually really takes to be a chimp in this troop in Senegal, or be a lion in the middle of the Masai Mara, and what it takes to stay leader and to keep your family alive and survive in whatever threats are posed to their habitat.
Dynasties on BBC Earth is a very different offering. It's a very different way of making a film as well. It was so high-risk. We started and we had absolutely no idea what was going to happen. Just the whole process was different.
And the camera equipment?
Rose Thomas: We used a RED camera with a 50 to 1 000 lens which allowed us to get a lot of the really stunning close-ups of the chimps that you will see.
We used a Phantom Flex for a lot of the high-speed stuff, and we also used a "movvie" stabilisation gimbal system for a lot of the tracking shots.
I think I maybe killed my cameraman in the process because it's quite tough on your back but I felt that it would be the best way to really give the audience an idea of moving with the troop and what it was like travelling with that troop and I think that's what the movvie brought to it.
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