Mongolian Folk and Muddled Pop
By Jasper Montana, Technical Assistant
On a grassy hillside overlooking the undulating hills of central Mongolia, I grasp a unique insight into someone else’s world. In the valley below is the melee of a hundred charging horses kicking backlit dust into the still air. From high above, the action is distant – played out by toy farm animals and miniature horse herders in colourful robes – but the horses’ thundering hooves and the herder’s pounding hearts are loud in my ears. I am recording sound for a “Human Planet” sequence in the Mongolian steppe and have put radio mics on two of the young riders in the summer horse round-up. In my left ear is Orlana, a 17 year old boy; full of bravado and a fierce rider; in my right, Tungaa, a timid 16 year old; keen to give it all she’s got. Orlana’s voice is clear, bold and commanding. Tungaa’s voice is soft and she sings as she rides – the traditional songs of Mongolian folklore and the occasional muddled verse of an American pop song form the repertoire of my private concert. I shut my eyes, listen and smile.
Chu! Chu! The horse round-up
As I watch the riders charge around the horses like tunas attacking a bait ball, Orlana’s breathing quickens pace. ‘Chu! Chu!’ he shouts encouragingly. The horse tears forward through the herd. Orlana and Tungaa in many cultures would be considered to be just kids, but here in the grasslands of Mongolia, they are in control and are integral to keeping tradition alive.
In the global journey of the “Human Planet” series, the remarkable nature of the human condition will be revealed and as the teams come back from location I am continually fascinated by the amazingly diverse incarnations of the family unit around the world. It is often families that become the subject of our sequences and perhaps this is because, more broadly, it is the family unit that provides the framework for upholding tradition and passing knowledge from the elder to the youngster – the flow of knowledge that facilitates the successful relationship between man and nature in every environment.
Shure and her sisters
The youngest in our Mongolian family is Shure, who is just four years old. We are filming her as part of our spin-off sister series called “Little Human Planet” aimed at pre-school children. As we watch her go about her life, she watches her older siblings and mother intently. Within a few years she will have her own horse and will charge out across the plains with a commanding ‘chu, chu!’ and from her lips will come the recognisable Mongolian folk songs of the past and the muddled pop songs of the future.
Human Planet ruins wedding!
by Patrick Murray, Technical Assistant, Cardiff
When I started on Human Planet as the Technical assistant I didn’t know what I was getting myself into. Turns out it was Rivers, Urban, Arctic and Mountains. In the last seven months I have been involved in sequences ranging from Mud Mosques to Bats and the ever elusive Narwhal. It has been a fantastic experience being involved in the roller coaster that is HUMAN PLANET!
How much kit?!
But like anything this good, it has its price….WORK! And lots of it. From putting tissues into cleaning kits to debating physics with engineers, my role really does encompass everything and anything. My day consists of making sure the Human Planet kit is where it is meant to be, doing what it is meant to be doing.
The aspects of my job I most enjoy are coming up with ways to film difficult and often dangerous situations. We like to think big at Human Planet but we also like to think cheap! This can be a challenge when asked to come up with a Steadicam that attaches to the front of kayaks and then HD Pole cams that mysteriously turn into A1s (small cameras) on boom poles. All in all we manage to get the job done and to an incredible standard, thanks to the amazing crews we put together.
Recently I was given the opportunity to go on a shoot to Austin, Texas filming 1.5 million Mexican Free-Tail Bats that live under the Congress Bridge. I guess I was in the right place at the right time because I got to go by myself to direct part of a sequence. My mission was BAT FEST! A once a year extravaganza that encompasses two stages, several bands and lots of Austinites celebrating the day the bats move in and turn the agriculture around Austin into a moth-free organic wonderland.
After frantically getting permits and a local crew together, I flew out on a Friday evening, thanks to the help of Andrea Jones and Kate Borde. Once in Austin I had a morning to recce the location and meet the local organiser. Then it was straight down to a pontoon raft we had arranged, through city officials, to stand on to film the emergence of the bats. We had just set up the jib and practised some moves when to my disbelief, and then horror, I saw a full wedding party standing behind me wondering what we were doing ruining their special day! After a brief discussion with the bride, her party very kindly moved a mile downriver. I felt a bit guilty but very pleased to get the shot!
Ready for anything the bats can send
With my soul scarred, we got some great shots of the bats heading out to feed and then headed up to the bridge to take in the Texas air and to get some bat fanatics -. while avoiding annoyed looking men in tuxedos! By midnight I was spent and we called it a night, no beer for me, straight back to the hotel and to bed. Sunday I was up packed and off to the airport to fly back to London. 36 hours in Austin Texas, that’s what I call a weekend!
Snake Hell
by Cecilia Hue, Assistant Producer, Deserts and Grasslands team
I have a confession to make. I find snakes repulsive. They freak me out. Let’s put it this way …you wouldn’t get me posing like Cindy Crawford with a snake around my naked body. Not if you paid me a million dollars!
So when I was asked to direct a sequence about the biggest snake harvest in the world, the thought filled me with dread. How would I cope with millions of snakes slithering around me? As I walked out of the plane into the sauna that is Cambodia I told myself I would have to be brave and get on with it.
11-year old Vanei was completely at home among the snakes
You see, unlike the children I was about to film with, I didn’t grow up with snakes which may explain why I am not so relaxed around them. Vanei, aged 11, was so comfortable with snakes that he liked to wrap them around his neck. His two little sisters aged 6 and 3 were very happy to play with them too and make wriggly bracelets and necklaces of snakes. It would have been my idea of hell!
Vanei tried to get me used to them but soon realised it was much more fun trying to scare me. I was the laughing stock of the group. But I didn’t mind… I think it helped them relax around us.
I made the mistake of telling him I was scared of snakes
Later on, our little snake boy sat next to a big pile of live snakes to discover that one of the crawling creatures had made its way up his shorts! It was my turn to laugh…
Haiti and hurricanes
by Willow Murton, Assistant Producer, Oceans/Jungles team
Leaving Haiti I say my goodbyes and hope that I don’t visit the people that I have come to know again this year. For the first time after a recce, I really do hope that I don’t come back. Because if I do, it means the people of Haiti will have been hit yet again by a destructive storm.
The calm after the storm - Gonaives, Haiti
For many people, Haiti is synonymous with violence, gun fire cracking over destitute slums, the sound of voodoo drums, a dark mysticism. When I said that I was coming here, some friends looked at me with envy and said that they had always dreamt of going on holiday to Tahiti. Those who heard right looked at me with curious interest and concern. Their eyes were full of the preconceptions that spring from a country whose history begins for many with disease and exploitation. More recently, it has been written by the devastating statistics of its poverty and the language of disaster in the face of social unrest and tropical storms which have hit the country. And so I set off, with the envious gaze of the mistaken and the worried glances of the better informed.
Passenger on a bus in Port-au-Prince
Recces are one of the best parts of this job. You get to be professionally nosey and personally privileged in places that you would never visit otherwise. This is certainly one trip that I would not have imagined making and it still does not feel real until the doors of Port-au-Prince airport open. The tensions and aggressions that I expected to meet me in the Haitian capital are nowhere to be seen. I am struck by the apparent calm, masked in the chaotic bustle of the traffic and roadside. A bored UN policeman, a check point on a road dented with potholes, intercut with colourful tap-tap pick-ups crammed with people. Whilst I have a glimpse of the reality of life about me, I too am on the sidelines, looking out at the passing world. This feeling comes back to me time and time again on the trip. Perhaps it is the distance between the cool air-conditioned rooms of the hotels where we stay at night and the hot, dusty shacks that we visit in the day.
Boys standing on flooded salt ponds
The shoot however will be an immersion, literally. Following a family through a storm and following floods is not something that is easy to plan. I have become an amateur storm chaser, scouring weather charts and learning the grammar of waves and wind. For all the guidance that I am given, there is no way to predict the track of the storms with any certainty. Had there been a way, the people of Gonaives would surely not have found themselves so unprepared for the four storms that struck the town last year, bringing deadly floods and taking lives and homes.
Devastation in Gonaives after last year's floods
Mountains of dusty rubble dug from the houses still sit in the streets, flanked by blocked canals, lottery stalls and the wrecked shells of cars. At the edge of the ocean, a small group of fishermen gather, making boats and talking, as children and pigs run about amongst piles of empty conch shells. A little boy flies a kite, made from a plastic bag, over a cluster of ramshackle huts. On a door, the words “Site Ana” are sprayed. The settlement is new, named after the storm, Hurricane Hanna, that took the previous homes of the settlers. Children swim in the pools of water beyond, around the ruins of a building she flooded. Crude fishing boats sail out over former salt plots. Life continues in the remains of the storms.
A flooded house a year after last year's floods
There is an inevitability to the fate of the people who live here which is openly admitted. It is disarming. They have no choice but to stay, to adapt, to reclaim the small spaces of land, the snatches of life that they can. Last year, the families in some corners of Gonaives spent months living on roof tops. Neighbours who had houses with two storeys offered shelter to those without. Fear, loss and finally survival were shared under stormy skies. I still have no idea what story we will be able to tell this year but I hope that it is one which finds that same strength of humanity in the eye of a storm I pray never comes, even if the cold statistics say it will.
Dale Templar – Series Producer – Not so Natural Disasters
When Willow came back from Haiti last week and showed me the photos of Gonaives I was instantly transported back. I have location directed two films telling the stories of the aftermath of what we call a “natural disaster”. The first was the 1995 Kobe Earthquake in Japan. The second was the more recent tsunami, where I filmed in Banda Ache in northern Sumatra, the place where quarter of a million men, women and children perished. Like Haiti, Ache was already classed by the BBC as a “hostile environment” even before the disaster. As I travelled from the airport, which was inland and relatively untouched, we headed towards the coast. Soon the twin natural forces of both a powerful earthquake and the massive tsunami waves started to reveal themselves. I was prepared for the earthquake ruin, I’d seen so much in Kobe but I wasn’t prepared for the scene as I neared the coast. A few months earlier this had been a packed fishing community. Well over a kilometre from the sea shore, there was nothing, just nothing. The ocean had taken everything. When I saw Willow’s recce material the memories of Ache came back, I understood her confusion and disbelief.
It’s called a natural disaster for good reason but when you see it for yourself there is something so viscerally un-natural about it. Somehow it just isn’t right, isn’t possible. On both occasions I was telling the story of the people who had against the odds survived the very worst nature could throw at them. You come away with an insight into two of the great strengths on this Earth, the force of nature itself and the power of humanity.
