by Julia Wellard, Production Team Assistant, Bristol

The photo below was taken after a jungle shoot in the Central African Republic. The tents came back damp and smelly and needed a good airing, so Rachael Kinley (the researcher) and I had the bright idea of draping them over every surface we could find, including the office of our Series Producer, who was away at the time. We were planning to dry them out so they’d be in better shape to send off to be cleaned. What we weren’t planning on was a large eight-legged hitchhiker crawling out of one of the tents and multi-legging it down the stairs!

Since then, we’ve had other uninvited guests from overseas dropping into the office – the best count came after another jungle shoot – this time to western Papua to shoot treehouses. Final count was five cockroaches, two earwigs and another large spider! A few more to add to the many legends about animals coming back from NHU shoots and flying, slithering or creeping away into the bushes round the BBC Bristol car park.

As Production Team Assistant, this is the nearest I get to experiencing the wildlife the teams meet and film on location. But there are other ways I share in the challenges and excitement of location filming. Like Jasper in an earlier blog, I’ve had a few calls in the middle of the night, usually reassuring me that crews have arrived at the right place at the right time, but occasionally explaining they’ve had to beat a rapid retreat because of suspected guerrillas in the area – or mentioning that a bomb has just gone off near their hotel.

It can be fascinating building a complicated schedule involving flights, boat rides, horses, camels, helicopters and having to rearrange everything when one of the links in the chain breaks down. But the one I remember best is the day a long and very complex travel chain to Borneo had to be completely rejigged because of snow at Bristol Airport!