by Ben Southwell, Producer/Director, Jungles and 

Jo Manley, Production Coordinator, Oceans & Jungles 

I have never sweated so much in my life.  Just sitting still I’d be dripping.  Within minutes of leaving camp each day I’d be drenched as much as if I’d jumped in the river.  It wasn’t the heat, it was the cloying humidity that made it so hard to move around. 

 We were filming the British Army Jungle Warfare Advisers’ Course in Brunei, one of the toughest courses the army runs.  After a week of trekking after ‘students’ up and down steep tree-covered slopes, I fully understood why the army choose this terrain for their course.  It doesn’t so much sap your energy as rip it out of you and stamp all over it.  There were soldiers putting battered boots on over feet almost stripped of skin in order to complete this first stage of their training.   

Ben suffering from the humidity!

   The Instructors on the course deserve immense credit.  Many of them have spent years working in the jungle and their knowledge of this environment and their care for it was clear for all to see.  The army have a no cutting policy here – they don’t want this primary forest becoming a wasteland because of their actions. They have a deep respect for the jungle. 

 For me the hardest thing was remembering to drink, drink again, and drink some more.  We were advised that we would be sweating so much that we should be drinking 10 litres a day.  This after leaving Britain in snow!  Our production co-ordinator Jo Manley had never filmed in the jungle which presented her with a unique set of challenges…

Toby (camera), Jo (PC), Mihali (sound) and Ben (director)

  …..and a ‘worry list’ as long as my arm!   

 Having been on Human Planet for over two years and sent off countless crews to all over the world, I had never actually been on a foreign trip myself.  However, with the rest of the Jungle team filming in Brazil and Tom the Producer awaiting a new baby in Bristol, this time I was sent on location!  I went with Ben the Director (my blog co-writer) , Toby the cameraman and Mihali sound/camera assistant to experience first hand the difficulties of operating in the field and how annoying it is trying to get Sat Phone reception from a Jungle!  

 I was quite nervous about a number of things before I left the UK.  Ben joked that I would be transformed from pink-loving Jo to  Rambette, the jungle ninja, never seen without a knife between her teeth!   I wasn’t convinced.…  

Rambette?

 Before I left, my ‘worry list’ was pretty comprehensive: here’s a taster…

 I had an irrational fear of moths and was told they would be every-where and as big as dinner plates (thanks for that Dale – Series Producer!) 

I didn’t like the thought of bugs in my breakfast or bugs having me for breakfast including leeches sucking my blood 

Getting out of my hammock for a wee in the night and not being able to find my way back (as it turns out this did happen to one of the students but thankfully not to me!) 

Being the only girl amongst 60 men 

Being told off by the Sergeant Major for not having the correct boots (I did have a few comments but it wasn’t my fault I couldn’t get Jungle boots in a size 3!!) 

I could go on…

Jo, Toby, Mihali and Ben in the helicopter

 We flew in to the jungle by helicopter, which was amazing.  I’d never been in a helicopter before and I loved it!  I thought the jungle below looked just like broccoli, the tops of trees were packed together and looked totally impenetrable to anything, including light.  I thought about how dark it would be under the canopy and it made me think about all the creepy crawlies hiding down there waiting to get me! 

When we arrived at the LP (Landing point) we had to walk down a hill to our camp and my eyes were on constant bug watch looking out for leeches and anything else trying to crawl up my trouser leg!  Brunei has a pristine primary jungle and I’d been told it was a ‘clean’ jungle but I still didn’t really appreciate how beautiful and bug free it would be until we got there.  The longer I was there the shorter my worry list became and I started to really like being in the Jungle, sleeping in a hammock and being woken up by the gibbons singing to each other.   I even let a moth land on my hand!   The first night I had to get Mihali to escort me to the toilet but by the end of the week I was happily walking there on my own in the dark so I could see the glowing fungi.  Rambette was in the making! 

 Towards the end of the week we went on the Close Target Recognisance (CTR) part of the course and we stayed in the enemy camp overnight whilst the students observed what was going on.  The next morning Sally the tracker dog took us to find the students, who had spent a long night sitting on the jungle floor in the moonless night getting eaten alive by bugs and leeches.  One of the students said to me ‘was it my imagination or were you walking around the enemy camp in a pair of pink pyjamas last night?’  it seems my transformation into Rambette was still a way off….

Sleeping in a hammock in pink pyjamas

 Jo rose to the occasion magnificently and I’m sure those pink pyjamas will become part of the course folklore for years to come. 

Metal pins are slowly spreading across the map of the world in our office – each one representing a trip, a recce, a shoot, and another sequence of Human Planet recorded onto what have now become many kilometres of magnetic video tape.   For each of us on the Human Planet team, each pin represents a different moment of time.  

For those who went on location, it may be a life changing adventure, a harrowing experience, or a drop in the ocean.   For those left in Bristol or Cardiff, it might be a sigh of relief as the crew depart, a moment of pause in a quiet office, or a stressful planning process which lingers long after the crew depart, when phone calls from the Jungle require a mortally wounded shoot to be remotely stitched back together.

So far I've been to Mongolia and Yap and I'm about to go to Australia!

 On many occasions the pin represents for me long days of getting a plethora of filming equipment squeezed into the smallest possible cases for transport to location.   So I was going to write a post about how the human desire to make order out of chaos can be summed up in the line ‘life is all about packing cases’ but I thought I’d just make a time-lapse video instead.

 Enjoy.

 Packing cases for a shoot to Algeria – timelapse video coming soon

 Only a handful of pins are left in the jar – who knows what each has in store.

The lead up to a shoot can be hectic – especially when one team is heading off to Dubai, another is getting ready for a frozen river trek in the Himalayas with 400kg of kit and another’s filming creepy crawlies in London all in the space of a month!  Things normally calm down for myself and the office team once the crew leaves for the airport.  We pack them into the van, wish them well and then breathe a sigh of relief as we watch them drive off into the sunset.  Apart from the regular check in calls, we don’t hear much from them until they get back.  This time was different – after 18 months sending my team all over the world, I found myself in the van with crew and kit, on the way to Heathrow on my first Human Planet shoot. Mark Flowers (director), the crew and I were heading for Dubai to film the story of a falconer for our Urban episode.

I couldn’t believe how easy they made it seem to get  18 cases of camera kit onto the plane, then off again at the other end – not to mention clearing customs with it.  I think I’ve got a tough time when I travel back home to Oz with 2 cases. The funny thing is, 18 cases is nothing compared to the 40 we sometimes travel with! The ability to steer two to three airport trolleys at a time should be a pre-requisite for anyone going on location – it’s quite a skill.   With all the kit safely at the hotel, our thoughts turned to the fun yet frightening part – the filming! We spent the next eight days with falconer David Stead and his amazing falcons at two of Dubai’s five star hotels. To get the full story you will need to watch the series.

Photographer Kieran Doherty took this picture of a falcon

Early on in the shoot, we were given permission to film from the helipad of the Burj Al Arab hotel – perched onto the front of the building over 200m up! As we walked up the red carpet and onto the helipad, we realised what a privilege it was to be able to film from such a great vantage point, where you could see the ever changing skyline of Dubai’s business district in all its glory – it’s lucky none of us were afraid of heights!

Here I am on the helipad

Speaking of heights, we were also lucky enough to travel to the 124^th floor observation deck of the recently opened Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest building. Being up that high gave us a different perspective of the city, and a perfect spot to film the sun rising over the desert. Looking at it now, it’s hard to believe that just 31 years ago Dubai’s business district had only one skyscraper, the World Trade Centre.

The view from the 124th floor of the Burj Khalifa

The most challenging day of the trip for me was the Aerial filming day, where I was on the ground coordinating David and his birds, while my producer Mark and our Cineflex (Aerial) cameraman Simon were up in the helicopter. We had arranged for David and his falcons to be on the roof of the hotel ready for filming at 7:45am, so you can imagine my surprise when I heard the unmistakable buzzing of the chopper flying over just before 7:30! Luckily they were just getting a feel for the location, but I must admit I got a little worried, as we were on the ground at the time with one lift, 6 flights of stairs and a 10 foot ladder standing between us and the rooftop! As the production coordinator I look after the budgets and know the considerable investment needed to commission a Cineflex aerial shoot. I certainly didn’t want to be the one to jeopardise it – luckily our characters, human and animal, we were ready on time and all went to plan, David and his falcons did a fantastic job and we ended up with some extremely exciting footage.

It was great to get out on location and get a taste for some of the  challenges the team has to deal with every time they go away.  We were lucky , working in a fully functioning stunning city with a great subject in David and his birds, coupled with our talented crew.  The alchemy  that is television production all came together and we left with another stunning sequence for the series.

As an anthropologist, most of my television work has been with remote indigenous communities rather than filming with or looking at wildlife. This is where the Human Planet series has stretched my experiences hugely.  When I found out about the Samburu story and their relationship with elephants, it seemed a dream come true– the Samburu, one of Kenya’s most traditional and colourful tribal groups; and elephants –one of the world’s most majestic and beautiful animals. 

The Human Planet team often find ourselves wide eyed while filming on location, but the Samburu shoot in one of the least accessible parts of an inaccessible region in northern Kenya was an assault on all the senses.  We had the usual logistical fun and games of getting a crew and kit to a remote corner of the world and setting up camp but this shoot also presented new challenges.  The elephants in the area are at their most active in the riverbed at night time – so, without waving spotlights around like an intimidating laser show, how do we film them in the dark?  The answer was an image intensifier camera, a sky brimming with stars, and the light of a full heavy moon.  Problem one solved.

Samburu country at sunset

The Samburu District covers just over 20,000 square kms.  There are no real roads, just miles of raw, unexplored Africa.  Transport is by foot, camel or, where sandy soils allow and you can get enough fuel, 4X4.  It is Samburu tribal land, no fences, no private game reserves, few if any tourists – man and beast are wonderfully free to roam wherever and whenever they wish.

Thankfully we had the help of the Milgis Trust and their local scouts who sustain and protect the wildlife in the area.  Out on foot patrol on the silver sand of the Milgis River bed, the scouts track elephants – reading the landscape for a snapped twig or fresh dung which give clues to when elephants have passed and where they might be headed next.  Using these skills, the Milgis scouts are able to map out with amazing precision where we will get our best chances of being in the right spot at the right time to film the elephants.

As soon as the sun sets, hush is enforced.  Sitting for eight hours in a hide under the cover of moonlit acacia branches has to be a still and quiet time.  Any break in the silence, any sudden movement and the elephants you hope and pray are heading your way, may hear and run, for fear there might be men with guns as opposed to men with camera lenses.

Waiting for darkness

So we sit and wait downwind in our hide, in the black of the night, listening for breaking branches as elephants walk through the bush or the padding of big feet on sand.  The riverbed below is an opera stage and we sit above in the Gods, waiting for the performance to begin.  The moon aches with light as it casts shadows that play tricks on your eyes. Suddenly and silently, from nowhere, a herd of 18 elephants arrive on stage; babies, mothers, brothers all dance under the moonlight.  White faces and whiter teeth smile, and we try to breathe and blink as quietly as we can.  Mark Deeble, the cameraman, changes lenses on the camera as if carrying out a Tai Chi routine – every move thought through and with slow, silent grace so as to keep the elephants unaware of our existence.

The elephants move underneath us, babies playing with each other and running around gangly legged and trunked, trying to copy the behaviour of their elegant peers.  We are captivated, camera rolling. Trunks touch trunks and tusks gleam brilliantly, irridescent under Nature’s spotlight, until the sound of a distant trumpeting call from deep within the bush breaks the silence and lifts every hair on my body. Another herd are on their way – tonight’s performance is far from coming to an end.

Unexpectedly the evening breeze drops and a light wind blows from our hide down into the riverbed.  Within seconds, the herd of elephants below us run off in total silence, back into the acacias.  The wind picks up and we realise our human scent will now be drifting up the riverbed and the wise elephants will be heading far away from us.  Exhausted but invigorated by what we have just witnessed, it’s time for bed on our mattresses under the blanket of stars.  If the wind changes they could come back – this time the elephants would be the ones aware of our existence… while we dream and snore the rest of the night away.

Of the three months that I’ve been on location for Human Planet Oceans shoots, over half of this time has been spent waiting for fish to appear.  Off the shores of three continents, from sunrise to sunset, we’ve searched the open seas desperately hoping for some ‘sign’ that they are on their way.

Fisherman Taba waiting for mullet in Mauritania

First it was waiting for migrating mullet in Mauritania. The idea was to film with the Imraguen people who inhabit the Bank D’Arguin National Park and fish the huge numbers of mullet that pass through their waters each year.  Every day for two weeks we optimistically headed out to sea in the fishermen’s dhows, but the mullet never arrived.  Was it the moon, the wind or the water temperature?  We will probably never know but after much debate we reluctantly decided to call off the shoot.

Fishermen waiting for the fish migration in Brazil

Then we moved on to Laguna on the coast of southern Brazil to try again to film a similar story.  It was hard to decide when was the best time to go as the local fishermen seemed to have wildly conflicting ideas of when the mullet season actually occurred. In the end we embarked on our trip in mid May and although at first it looked as if we were going to be unlucky for a second time, after spending three weeks on location we finally managed to film fishermen hauling in impressive numbers of fish.

Here I am heading out to sea in the Philippines

OK, so we were successful, but it was touch and go for quite a while and I swore I would never go on another shoot that depended on fish turning up.  But what do you know, this October I was off again on another wild fish chase. This time it was off the coast of Palawan in the Philippines, sailing for fourteen hours a day for seven days with deep sea diving fishermen desperate to land a big catch.  Sitting out at sea on a boat in the tropics, overlooking palm tree fringed sandy beaches, is not the worst place in the world to be left in limbo, but after days on end of no filming opportunities and burning our budget, even paradise can lose its appeal.  But as so often seems to be the case on Human Planet shoots, on the very last day we finally managed to net something spectacular enough to make the cut.

A catch at last!

We had what we needed, but I was dismayed to hear that even this catch was half the size of those that the fishermen said they used to get. The problem was not that the people had been lying to us about when and where the fish come in, nor that they had lost their traditional skills, but that there are no longer plenty of fish in the sea.  Although newspapers and documentaries such as End of the Line tell us that global fish stocks are declining, as we still see plenty of fish on our supermarket shelves, it is all too easy to ignore the warnings.

Celebrating a catch with new friends

I myself was aware of the problem, but it was really brought home to me by witnessing first hand how barren the seas of the world have become.  At first the persistent lack of fish on our shoots seemed little more than the annoying bad luck that can plague any film shoot, but talking to people whose lives and livelihoods depend on maritime resources, I have become increasingly aware that diminishing fish stocks are becoming a huge problem affecting millions, if not billions, of people around the world.  Having seen just how hard the lives of some of these people are already, I hate to think how they will survive if the fish disappear altogether.

Dale Templar – Series Producer – Human Planet

Heartache for Haiti

About six months ago, I sent assistant producer Willow off to do a recce in Haiti.  We were looking for a place to show the huge destructive force of hurricanes and Haiti is regularly caught in the path of the worst storms that sweep through the Caribbean.  Ironically, we never filmed in Haiti; in the 2009 season the hurricanes chose other paths.  It was a bitter-sweet failure for the series.  Willow and I were both aware we’d wasted time and money but also felt secretly pleased that the people of Haiti had escaped yet more devastation and destruction for another year.  We could never have imagined  the cruel twist of fate that would hit them just months later.   Of all the places on Earth for a earthquake of this magnitude to hit.   On her trip , Willow was given an insight into the desperation, poverty and hopelessness faced by the  majority of the Haitian population.   Hours after the earthquake, she and I talked on the phone, both unable to take in the enormity of the disaster.   She had been there, I had made films after the Kobe Earthquake in Japan and in Banda Ache following the Boxing Day Tsunami.   The hearts of the Human Planet team go out to the people of Haiti.   Maybe, just maybe, something good will come from this.

by Brian Leith, Executive Producer

and Dale Templar, Series Producer

************************************************************

Well, 8 months to go now until we deliver the series. For many programmes, and most producers, this might seem like an eternity… But for us it seems like the day after tomorrow…

Correction….It actually feels like tomorrow!
When you start working on what we in TV land call a “landmark series”, a three year production cycle does feel like an eternity.  For the first year it feels as if you are pushing a snowball up to the top of a hill.  Year two and it starts rolling down, gradually building momentum and growing in size and now in year three the snowball is huge and rolling at speed with us all trying to keep it in control as it hurtles towards the finishing post! (I’ve used this metaphor because there are huge flakes of snow falling here in Cardiff and we’ve been working on the first edits of the Arctic episode).  Over to you, Brian..

It feels like the Arctic here in Bristol too… it’s started snowing here as well, and the forecast is for heavy (ie traffic-stopping) snow today and tomorrow all over SW England and South Wales (several of us on the HP team were brought up in North America and we find it mildly pathetic, if amusing, how little snow seems to bring this mighty empire to its knees… in Montreal when I was a boy we’d get 6 inches of snow overnight and the snowploughs would be out clearing the roads before the sun rose. True!)

Gosh – apologies for that diversion!
Back to post-production, please, Dale: when do our edits start?

We go into edit in just a few weeks.  Each hour of television takes ten or eleven weeks to cut.  That includes the 10 minute “Making of”, where you get to see some of what goes on behind the cameras.  After that we have several weeks of final post production or finishing which includes dubbing, mixing and voice-over plus the grade where the HD pictures really come to life.  Many people get involved during this process, don’t they, Brian …..?.

Ahem, cough splutter, yes indeed…
(Gee thanks Dale).  Don’t get me wrong: we do need fresh eyes – to keep us pointing in the right direction, to make sure we’re making the programmes as strong as they can be.  And it is easy to get so close to a programme that you can’t see the wood for the trees – so regular and constructive editorial feedback and guidance from well-informed senior execs is crucial…

But the reality is that it can get difficult.  What if BBC wants a slightly different editorial angle from our other international co-production partners (who may have contributed just as much funding)?  Who should we obey?  What if someone new steps in to run the channel and they’re not as keen on the series as the previous controller?  It has been known for new controllers to ‘kill the babies’ of previous incumbents – like male lions taking over a pride – in order to give their own offspring a better chance.

The truth is that the final approach to landing the finished series can be fraught with delays, disagreements and tension.

Luckily this won’t happen on Human Planet.  We have total faith in all our esteemed editorial leaders from all our co-production partners.  Don’t we, Dale?

Totally!!  Got to go now – I’ve got a literal and metaphorical snowball to push!

Next week we have to present the series – a 20-minute Brian-and-Dale show – to the new Chief Creative Director of BBC Vision, then to BBC Worldwide’s Showcase – a three day jamboree of all the BBC’s potential international co-production partners – to try and rustle up as much interest as we can in the series.

These landmark series can be huge international best-sellers – Planet Earth is still selling like hotcakes as DVDs around the world – so the pressure’s on! It’s a weird time on one of these big series: on the surface we’re trying to exude calm certainty that it’s all going to be wonderful – the best series since sliced bread!  and meanwhile we’re frantically pedalling like mad below the water-line to make sure it all comes together on time and on budget…

Being the Production Coordinator on the Jungles and Oceans team means I’m responsible for sending Tom, Charlotte, Willow and Rachael to Jungles and Oceans all over the world.  I seem to be in a constant state of organised chaos and even though I get left behind with the damp life jackets and lingering smell of the Jungle whilst the team flies off to the next amazing destination, I love my job and my team. 

This is me testing out a poncho before it leaves on location

I have several time zones set on my phone which I continuously update as teams leave, come back, move on and go out again.  It’s sometimes difficult to keep track of where everyone is and invariably they all phone at the same time (usually just as I’m trying to get some lunch!) needing a new camera, flights changed or just someone back in reality to talk to when they’re in the middle of a wet jungle with broken kit and infected feet!

On Human Planet we’re often dependent on people and animals being the same place at the same time when the conditions are right.  This is how not to do it….

We had;

Jon in Indonesia trying to film a Whale Hunt close to two earthquakes

Charlotte trying to film a shark whilst there was a tsunami warning for the area

Willow in Bristol trying to track Hurricanes to film in the Caribbean and there weren’t any

Tom and Rachael leaving for the Philippines to live on a boat for 7 days in the midst of the worst typhoon season the Philippines have seen in years.

How typical!

Rolling up a thermarest bed roll amongst the pre-shoot chaos

With so many shoots going off and coming back and with heaps of kit needed, our office has got a reputation for a being a bit of a muddle.  Danny who delivers post to our office says he has nightmares about it and grumbles it’s like an assault course trying to get from one side of the room to the other.  To be honest he’s right, especially as there is a camouflage theme to a lot of the objects such as hammocks, tarps, tents and thermarests.  We’ve got wetsuits and life jackets hanging off the back of the door, waterproof bags and jungle ponchos in a heap behind my desk with a solar shower perched on top and on Tom’s desk at the moment is a pile of coconut shells used to call sharks in Papua New Guinea. 

My two sets of desk drawers are filled with all sorts of things not usually found in an office drawer…

 Muddy batteries from the jungle

Leaking bottles of anti mosquito repellent 

 Boxes of antibacterial hand wash  

A box of latex gloves for covering radio mics

Several dead Central African Republic bees 

A tangle of 4 way plug adaptors and extension leads

The contents of my drawers

 I’ve got a heap of tapes, gaffer tape and loose cable ties all over my desk and a pair of size 12 flippers along with three Mauritanian jilbabs the team wore whilst filming in Mauritania to the side of my drawers.

 Even though I don’t get to see the places we’re filming in person I get a good idea of what’s it like there even before I see the footage.  From the smells emerging from their kit bags when they get back, to the sound of pouring rain and bugs I hear in the background when I’m talking to them on the Satellite phone.

You need a sense of humour in this job! Here I'm wearing wooden goggles from Bajau divers and a lifejacket, next to some shark-calling coconuts

  Our next shoot is going off to Brazil on 8^th January so we’re battling through our Christmas party hangovers to get everything packed up and ready so we can take a much needed break before another crazy year on Human Planet starts!

I’ve recently returned from my last Arctic filming trip for Human Planet.   My amazing year and a bit in the North culminated with an encounter with a majestic animal known as the King of the Arctic. 

King of the Arctic

The shoot was in the town of Churchill which is also known as the “Polar bear capital of the World”.   The town is built near to an ancient polar bear migration route.  Each autumn polar bears gather nearby, waiting hungrily for the sea ice to reform so they can get back out to their hunting ground.  Forced onto land during summer due to the melting ice the bears have not eaten anything substantial for months.  So who can blame them when they wander into the town enticed by the lovely food smells that are produced by restaurants or even the bins and rubbish dump!

 We were there to film how people carry on their daily lives, when for several weeks of the year, there is a real possibility of coming face to face with the only land animal that is known to actively predate on humans!  Luckily there is a specialist protection team set up in Churchill called the Polar Bear Alert.   These guys work tirelessly, in the most unique way, to ensure that the both bears and people are safe and unharmed – watch the full story in Human Planet: Arctic programme next year! 

Human Planet team with the Polar Bear Patrol

The Polar Bear is an icon – a majestic animal that’s revered but also feared, a symbol of a lost wilderness.  I felt so privileged to have the opportunity to see these incredible animals.  So it was a shock when it finally dawned on me that my first chance to see a Polar Bear in the wild might also be my last.   I’m so used to seeing images of the Polar Bear whether it be in Hollywood films, marketing campaigns for soft drinks or even Christmas cards.  They somehow make these Arctic dwellers seem abundant but of course the sad fact is they’re not.  

 Climate change is causing a vast reduction in sea ice and therefore a loss of natural habitat for the polar bears which, in time, will lead to their demise in the wild.   With this realisation I began to think of all the different Arctic people I have met on my Human Planet journey.  If climate change continues at its current rate what will happen to them?  How will Amos the Greenlandic fisherman make a living from fishing at winter ice holes when the ice isn’t thick enough to support him?  How will Lukasi and Mary go under the ice to collect mussels when they can no longer predict how the ice will behave? 

 The Arctic people I have met are incredibly adaptive – their way of life has changed drastically in the space of one generation.  Many people have the ability to take the best from western technology and adapt it to work with traditional knowledge.  However, Arctic peoples are inextricably connected to the landscape – a change in their environment impacts on every aspect of their lives.  This isn’t something that is going to happen in the future, it is happening right now. 

 The good news is that it’s not too late to slow down or prevent the negative impacts of climate change not only for Arctic Peoples and animals, but for all of us.  Small measures from you and me can make all the difference.   Take a look at these two BBC sites for more information http://www.bbc.co.uk/climate/ and http://www.bbc.co.uk/bloom/

Making this series has really raised my awareness of the incredible variety of cultures and wildlife that the Earth sustains. I hope that if I can change my ways the first time I see a polar bear won’t be my last and the environmental impact on Arctic peoples lives will be minimal.

by Willow Murton, Assistant Producer, Jungles/Oceans team

My journey as a “soundie” began in the hot, Sahara desert of Algeria. (For those of you who may be wondering, a “soundie”  is the job of a sound recordist.  On this shoot, Willow – who is our assistant producer on Oceans and Jungles – stepped in to help the Deserts team, who on this occasion were not able to take a professional recordist on location – from Dale Templar – Series Producer) In a melting frustration of entangled cables, dying batteries and conflicting noises, I remembered the words of a soundman from another trip some years ago.  Pete was, he admitted, on a perpetual quest for silence.  I understand now as I had not before.  Pete, I have joined you on your quest for silence: pure, empty silence. Even the quietest moments in the Sahara have been full of sound.

I have had to learn quickly on this journey. Firstly, as you might expect, the world of sound has nothing to do with the look of things – I am all about the noise. So there I stand, like some style-less parody of a desert cowboy with my cable lassoes, gun mic on hip, dark rim of a fading sun hat and the closest thing to a trusty steed being a stubborn donkey.  He looks at me with discernible mirth, flicks his long ears and lets out a bellow.  I re-set my levels.

The other lessons follow: that the boldest person on screen may not speak with the most confident or eloquent voice; the quietest voice may give the most melodious song and the softest whisper can echo noisily.  I learnt the hard way that children can scream very loudly on a football pitch when a goal is scored -  my mixer and I are still recovering.  I wouldn’t say I’ve come to love my cables but I appreciate velcro and cable ties more than I would ever have thought.  I’ve developed sympathy for the soundman’s plight of always being in the wrong place at the wrong time as I dodge my own shadow, the cameraman, my trailing cables and the football back on that pitch. The look is still not a good one but I have rediscovered headscarves – headphones bulge under that hat and I hold my boom at jaunty angles. I redefine myself – at times I am On Speed and dynamic and at the flip of a switch, I transform to Off Speed and phantom powered.

My soundie guise lends me a proximity and a pass into another world with the tune of water flowing freely from wells and the rasping breath of the wind on sand.  At times, you wish for greater distance. Roads many miles away rumble into uninhabited landscapes and people’s voices appear over an empty horizon.  There is also definitely something rather uncomfortable in the intimate sound of a stranger heavily breathing into your ears.

There may be times when I wish for silence but with my headphones on, I have discovered a secret world of unimaginable sound – the orchestra of the garden with its palm percussion and insect chatter, the varying pitches of a simple stringed instrument, waterfalls of pouring tea and the subtleties of the dawn song.

And by the way, whoever burped during morning prayers, you know who you are and so do I.

My love affair with the Sahara started last year when I was looking for the most impressive and beautiful place to film people searching for water in the desert.  Like any love affair, the last few months have seen me totally in love with the Sahara, telling everyone about it, then the next moment immensely frustrated, tearing my hair out and cursing it, never wanting to go back!

Here I am with our guide, Hamdi

 The story starts back in March when I started looking into desert wells. Essential to life in the desert, wells are found in every desert known to man, but one passionate Italian geologist whispered down the phone, ‘I can tell you the best place of all.’ As the UNESCO consultant on desert areas, he had seen more sand dunes than I could imagine, so I was keen to hear his words of wisdom. ‘Algeria’ he said.  Hmm.. not somewhere I had ever wanted to go, but who knows.. I might be surprised.

 So a few weeks later I was on a plane to Algeria, and then flying from the capital, Algiers, to a small town called Timimoun.  From the window of the nearly empty plane, all I could see was desert- golden dunes, then stretches of flat hard baked desert rock, big escarpments and dried out river beds snaking through the emptiness.  We flew for three golden hours and still the desert stretched on.  I hardly saw a soul down there, a few small towns in the middle of nowhere, but that was it.  How on earth do people live here?   And why? 

This was my recce, my first visit to Algeria and this extraordinary part of the Sahara.  From the moment I stepped into the heat and saw the dunes I was in love.  It was magical.  And when I saw the desert wells, I was astounded.    I had never seen anything like this.  There was not just one well or two here in the desert, but hundreds and thousands.  Individually they looked like huge mole hills, but in a long line this lunar landscape looked as if it had been blasted by a bomber plane.  Amazingly, some of these wells were 600 years old and the system they are based on dates back to 5000 years ago.  Incredibly, even today these wells and passages are still the only source of water for some people here.   

I took photos, recced other locations, met people who dig these wells, and others who farmed small gardens in the desert.  I wrote shot lists and planned how to reveal this incredible landscape and tell this story.  A week later I was back in the office and writing applications to Algerian officials to get permission to film and import a hot air balloon for aerials.  That was back in May.  Between then and my Algeria shoot I was filming in Kenya but Algeria was always on my mind.

But as the shoot got nearer, I was beginning to tear my hair out.  My Production Co-ordinator (the lovely Isabelle Corr) and I had written more letters and filled in more paperwork than I care to recall.  I was hoping that Algeria would welcome a filming project revealing its extraordinary natural heritage, but there were so many hurdles to cross, I wasn’t sure I wanted to go back! 

At the end of August we finally received our filming visas, and then the unimaginable happened.  The wonderful sound recordist I was hoping to go to Algeria with, died in a tragic accident. I could not believe it.  He was so full of life and energy.  Filming out there would not be the same without him.   And then a week later, the safety climber we were supposed to be taking also had a serious but not fatal accident; falling from a cliff while climbing.   With only three weeks to go until the shoot, we had to find new crew and get them visas in quick turn around time.

Then there was another blow.  Sadly, one very important bit of our kit was refused.  We were not allowed to bring in the hot air balloon.  I had hoped to film aerials over the Algerian desert, giving a spectacular bird’s eye view of these strange and ancient wells, and the beautiful villages and gardens but, despite providing every insurance document and licence, the authorities said No.  Dany, the hot air balloon pilot, who shot beautiful aerials of the Niger desert for us last year, was as disappointed as we were but so as not to risk the rest of the shoot, we  had to cancel that aspect of the filming project.

It is now November and I am back from Algeria.  After the rollercoaster summer preparing for the filming trip, I can say with huge relief that we did finally get ourselves and our kit into the desert.  Under the 45 degree heat of the Sahara, the team managed to build a climbing rig over the wells to lower our cameraman 15 metres into the desert rock, where it was cool, dark and quiet.  Our great cameraman (also an expert caver) Gavin Newman managed to squeeze through the tiny manmade passages to film Maformdi, a sweet 60 year old man, nimble as a 16 year old, as he descended to meet him in the darkness. 

From the surface I stared nervously into the dark hole.  I could hear tapping and rocks falling as more rock was drawn up in buckets.  Communicating by walkie talkies, I blindly suggested shots to the cameraman, as it was too tight for me to go down inside the wells too.   As I tried to focus on getting the shots to tell the story, I tried not to think of tales I’d been told about passages collapsing, trapping workers inside in dark desert graves.  Luckily this was not our fate.  You’ll have to watch the Deserts film to see the whole fascinating story but for now, all I can say is that thankfully this rollercoaster ride ended well, and give a huge thanks to the team – Isabelle, Gavin, Willow, Sam, Said and the Bamaar guys – for all their hard work!