INTERVIEW. Serengeti director John Downer on the catastrophic event shaping season 2 of the BBC Earth natural history series: 'The animals’ world is turned upside down'.

by Thinus Ferreira

A dry river bed is turned into a raging torrent of water that elephants still attempt to cross, when a small elephant calf suddenly loses his footing and is swept downriver. His desperate mother goes after him and just as she reaches him, he's swept away further, and further. Can she save him? 

These are other heartstopping scenes are part of the striking second season of Serengeti starting on Sunday 14 November on BBC Earth (DStv 184) at 16:10, with Lupita Nyong'o back as the narrator for 5 new episodes.

DStv subscribers meet up again with Bakari, the jilted baboon from the first season struggling with family life, while Kali - the "exiled single mom" lioness - makes a difficult decision. There are also new animal stars entering the story as a family of leopards arrive with their cubs.

Serengeti's second season marks the launch of BBC Earth's "Eco Season" of programming, which aims to provide viewers with a deeper understanding and appreciation of the world we live in.

Like the first season TVwithThinus sat down again with the Emmy-winning wildlife filmmaker John Downer who is the series director and executive producer of Serengeti who shares behind-the-scenes insights from the making of the spectacular new season.

Lupita Nyong'o says in the narration of the second season that it's "the next chapter" in the Serengeti adventure. I'm wondering, how is the second season different from the first and how does it propel the story forward?

John Downer: We continue a lot of the stories that we've started in the previous season and we're following some of the same characters. 

We're following Bakari, we're following Kali but we've got a lot of new ones as well. We're sort of meshing the two. We pick up on some of the old stories and they go in directions that you would never ever expect. We're also introducing some other characters and you'll find out more about them. There are continuing surprises.

The amazing thing about Serengeti is it never tells the same story twice. We're driven by what the animals do and the animals are totally unpredictable. So the story is unpredictable and it's continually refreshing.

The scene with the baby elephant - swept away and the mother goes after it. As filmmakers you don't intervene as observers but I'm wondering as the producer and director how you feel when you witness those scenes?

John Downer: Well, there are heartbreaking things that you are moved by, as the audience is moved by. We as filmmakers can't intervene  - that's the golden rule. 

If you start doing that you're messing with the ecosystem, you have to let things play out and very often there's nothing you can do anyway.

But when you're filming you get so attached to these animals. It is a very emotional time as a filmmaker when witness these things. So it is upsetting. 

We include those scenes into the drama because that's what drama is and that's the reality of these animals' lives but we also make sure we have the fun side and the humorous side and the other things that make the Serengeti such a special place.

There's a tendency to think that nature is all about aggression and fighting and killing and we've tried to get under the skin of these animals and show that most of the time they're just getting on with life.

 They're having a lovely time and those shocking events are rare but they are part of the reality of life out there. It's tough. We try and put a balance within the storylines to make sure that you see both sides.

With the Serengeti cinematography you literally bring the viewer camera-to-eye with the animals whether it's a bird in flight or a tall giraffe's head - it means the camera is going right to their eye-level. What did the production learn from the first season to improve on filming techniques to capture these astounding scenes?

John Downer: When I made Serengeti the first time, it was the first time that I had ever felt that I had at my disposal all the kit that I needed to make that - to get into the lives of these animals and to get under their skin and to film stuff from their perspective, in their world.

What you see - but don't think about hopefully - is the techniques that go into it. 

We normally have 3 crews, sometimes all together - they're filming from different angles - but they've all got the basic kits but they've also got a whole array of other filming techniques. 

Very often an event is being covered on multiple cameras with multiple purpose - whether it's the remote cam viewpoints or whether it's drones or whether it's tracking vehicles with stabilising cameras.

All of that comes together to create that Serengeti experience. 

You shouldn't see it when you view it because all you should be feeling is that you're right in there and that's what the aim is. What's so wonderful about Serengeti as a series is the techniques grow - they just get better.

I had what I wanted and some of the stuff I didn't know if I was ever going to get. And then you start saying "Wow, we could do this and we could do that". 

Suddenly it becomes even - I wouldn't say easier - but the ambition becomes bigger to be in there with them because we have the techniques to do that. And also the experience is growing among the crews and they're thinking "oh let's do this" as they're filming. It's an evolving thing.

It's so striking to me that you film while it rains heavily and you mentioned the drone shots. I'm wondering: There's not a drop of rain on the camera lens. You don't notice it as a viewer until you stop to think about what you're seeing. Can you give away the secret to these dark arts in your magical filmmaking or is it a trade secret?

John Downer: Well, there's no real secret. We do get water on the lens and all that, we do. But we're pretty good at protecting it and we also set out, saying - normally people don't film in the rainy season. For that very reason.

So we went there knowing that we were going to have to. The raining season could be amazing because animals have to do different things. What we didn't know it is would be the biggest raining season ever - it went on and on and on. Huge floods and everything. 

We were prepared for it and we had the camera techniques to do it. That doesn't mean we never get splashes on lenses, you know, we do. Ha ha. But we have ways to clean them very quickly. It's all geared towards capturing events in any weather conditions. 

The animals are anthropomorphized so viewers get to related to the various animals and I'm wondering who gives them their names and how are the names chosen?

John Downer: Well, they are anthropomorphized but that's the whole point. The thing is, we're not that separate from them and I've always hated that word because it kind of takes humans out of the animal world. We are animals. We're all part of this incredible ecosystem. 

We're trying to give an equality between "us" and "them". 

One of the way to empathise and to get close to them is to give them names. The names are based on Swahili word because that's the language of that geographical area - spoken by humans. But it gives a certain authenticity to that place. 

They're based either the names of the animals themselves like Duma is a cheetah, Tembo is an elephant - and sometimes it's about their character.

There's always a reason behind the name. You get closer to a subject if you have something to call it. Bakari becomes character because he's Bakari. If he's just a baboon it's not the same. 

Serengeti shows the changing of the seasons but as I watched this new season it also alludes to, if you listen closely, to the animals' environment that is changing. I'm wondering whether this denotes mankind encroaching, I'm thinking climate change, poaching. What's maybe the subliminal message of Serengeti?

John Downer: What we set out to do is to make people empathise and care for those animals. 

We take viewers into this world and relate to them that you would to humans, and you then have an equality with those animals and you have an investment in them.

When you hear about climate change it's kind of a big abstract thing. What we have in Serengeti's second season is an event that was absolutely caused by climate change which is the most rains that I have ever seen in that place and it became flooded. 

The animals have to cope with climate change writ large, as they're trying to cope with their world being turned upside down by this catastrophic event that's being caused by humans that they have no awareness of.

That was quite a big turning point. It was so real and it really added to the understanding of those films are which is to make people care about these animals and see the bigger picture and where we fit in with them. That was then writ large in terms of what happened. 

It's very powerful and I'm pleased that you picked up on that underlying thing - we're not banging a drum and saying "this is conservation and this is a human disaster" but it's there. It is reality what you're seeing in those events. 

Serengeti season 2 is on BBC Earth (DStv 184) on Sundays at 16:10, starting on 14 November.

INTERVIEW. Serengeti director John Downer on how the new BBC Earth documentary series with John Boyega as narrator tells the real lion king story: 'One mother's success is another mother's failure.'

The Serengeti wildlife documentary series on BBC Earth (DStv 184) is a departure from any natural history show you've watched before, with John Boyega as the narrator of a much more emotional and dramatic nature series.

The 6-episode Serengeti explores the family relationships between different animals on Africa's savannah much more closer and intimate than ever before.

Produced by American Idol's Simon Fuller, TVwithThinus spoke to John Downer, the Emmy-winning wildlife filmmaker and the series director about the technology used to film animals so up close and personal, the challenges of filming in the Serengeti and why this series is important in terms of how it presents the natural world in a new way for the BBC. 

 What is special and different about Serengeti compared to other natural history series?
John: I've been making wildlife films for over 30 years and a lot in Africa, but this story is one I felt I really wanted to tell and all those years of experience allowed me to tell it in a way that is different. 

What we tried to capture here is the animals' stories from inside their world, the connections they have inside that world, but also families fortunes and misfortunes, and how the lives of all of the animals from the Serengeti interconnect in this incredible web that makes the Serengeti such a special place. 

Can you talk about the filming techniques? The camera gets really extremely up close to everything from an eagle to a lion cub while hunting. How is it possible to get up so close to the animals especially when they're actually moving?
John: That was my dream because I thought if we're going to tell the stories of these animals we don't want to see them from a distance, we want to be there, in their world. 

It's all techniques we've developed at getting our cameras quite close and with making Serengeti we managed to take those camera techniques even closer. What's been so wonderful for me in my career is that the technology has caught up with what I want to do. 

We could move with the animals, travel with them, and we have quite a few different camera systems. We have from ground-level just skimming the ground, we have hovers that could capture an event and keep travelling towards it; we were just bristling with a whole load of camera techniques which we've developed and changed and made more sophisticated. 

When you look at a sequence it's very often made up of 5, 6 or 7 different camera techniques all merged into that one sequence. 

We have 3 camera vehicles and a range of different camera techniques which we deployed to get those different angles. We have the coverage to tell drama but very intimate drama.

The other thing that was important was that because we spent so long with these animals we and our cameras essentially became invisible to them. We were so much part of the landscape. A few years ago it would have been impossible.

What is the approach with Serengeti?
John: What we've tried to do is to tell a story that will engage people in a different way. 

We took a more dramatic approach. Serengeti tells an engaging story but also one that speaks to the emotions and the family life of these animals. 

How are the animals we see in Serengeti different from elsewhere? 
John: With the Serengeti it is on a bigger scale but it is still filled with the most charismatic animals that people are familiar with. 

What you have is a high concentration of animals that you know but people don't know the in's and out's of their family life. And those lives are intercrossing all the time. The actions of one animal profoundly affect everyone else and it's a chain reaction.

We were trying to capture these very intimate stories but seeing how they're all trying to do the best for their young ones. So there are no goodies or baddies in Serengeti - you can root for any of them because they all have needs, they all try to get by and survive. One mother's success is another mother's failure.

We're not judgemental - let people see their world and the problems these animals face in their own lives and relate that to our lives because there's a lot of commonality between what you see in their lives and our own lives. 

How did you end up working with Simon Fuller?
John: It came about because he loves Africa and I didn't know him before but he went on a safari holiday and he was just amazed by the stories - he had a really experienced guide with him. 

So he came back with this idea of "why aren't we telling these amazing stories?" 

He knows nothing about natural history. He's coming from the point of someone who's interested in the natural world and then experienced it and related to it. 

So he phoned me up and we met and we just had a shared dream coming from totally different viewpoints. It has been a perfect relationship because he's got a different view in terms of the experience for him but we have a shared vision for this production.

He comes from a totally different viewpoint of a TV producer who connects with global audiences. 

So he was saying "why can't we have a song in natural history?" and there's no real answer for that. And nobody thinks about it. 

So that then became, okay how would that work and what could that bring? Well, it could bring a different level of emotion. It could express things that you wouldn't say in the commentary. He's a musical genius and he worked brilliantly with our composer Will Gregory and the BBC Concert Orchestra.

The other was about the language being used because we thought why always use the scientific terms you always use in a documentary. You can say the same with more relatable language and that helps us connect again. So those are the things he did and he's a real visionary and a perfect partner for me.

For how long did you film and what were some of the challenges filming there?
John: We filmed for nearly two years. The series takes place over a year but because of the cyclical drama we went back for some of the shots we missed to fill in the gaps.

So we allowed ourselves nearly two years to film. The challenges are immense. I mean, trying to find the animals! And we decided to film where the grass is 8 feet high and you can't see into it. 

We were filming in the rainy season, you can hardly get around, all the plains are flooded but you still need to get the stories.

There were times when the flies were so unbearable that you spend all your tie trying to get away from them but again you have to film the animals. So we're filming lions covered with flies where even for them the only way to get away from them is to climb up trees. So you get a whole pride up in the trees.

At one point there's nine lions up in a tree which I've never seen before and wouldn't have filmed if we weren't there at that time because it's the only time it happens.

The challenging times were often the times that would turn up something really fresh and that we've never seen before.

The narration of John Boyega, it's interesting how it builds up to certain points. When he reads it does it terms of inflection and pacing and pauses, does he see what happens or is he reading it cold and then you match his words to the visuals? How does the process works?
John: What we tried to do there is use the voice almost like as part of the music and soundtrack.

It's very carefully scripted and he is absolutely brilliant. He does it to picture. We play the whole scene. So he gets an idea of it. And then he will do it several times to picture with the inflection and the understanding. He was so into the storylines so he absolutely understood the sense of every line.

Two or three takes later you get that perfect rendition of storytelling that totally matches the picture. It is done to picture and I don't think you can get that level of performance with a cold read, it just does not work. You have to understand it and he wanted to understand it.

There would be two minutes within an episode where nothing is being said. But he would watch that whole two minutes before he would pick up the next line. He wouldn't be disconnected because the previous scene and the mood changes the performance. So it worked brilliantly.


How did you decide the "language" style of the series?
John: We always had to listen to what the animals were telling us, and from their behaviour and the drama from their lives.

It was their story it was not stories. We're not imposing a story on them. They are telling us their stories. We then thought that needs to be reflected in the narration and we call John Boyega the storyteller. He is speaking for the animals because what we wanted to capture was what the animals had to say.

Underneath that there is also "what are they telling us?" If you look at Serengeti and its 6 episodes, there are so many take-aways for us as humans, in terms of our relationship with wildlife and our connection we have with them. It's the story of their lives, so we took that narration style which immediately makes you look at it in a different way.

It makes it different from the normal documentary of "I'm telling you this fact, I'm telling you that fact". We wanted it to be an emotional experience that connects you with nature rather than us as scientists telling you "this happened or this happened".


Serengeti starts on BBC Earth (DStv 184) on Sunday 4 August 2019 at 16:00.