Our Living World 

Netflix & Wild Space Productions 

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Director of Photography 

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One of my favourite locations for filming, Lope National Park in Gabon, offered an incredible opportunity to film forest elephants. Nestled deep within the Congo rainforest it is a very diverse ecosystem, with rainforest and savanna habitats. Our first filming spot was a clay mineral bank of a jungle stream, a hotspot for elephants, as they love eating the clay which provides minerals and aids their digestion.

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Each morning we would ascend to the tree platform and wait, often plagued by pesky insects, we had some great sightings of chimpanzees eating the clay minerals and gorillas climbing trees in the distance. A week passed, many hours of staring at jungle and no elephant sightings, undeterred we relocated our tree platform to a site teeming with ripe fruits. As we waited up in the trees, we could hear the fruits falling, apparently the elephants could hear them too. After a few hours of waiting a family of elephants emerged to feast, and thankfully unaware of our presence high above. The next day we set up a cable dolly system, enabling us to capture dynamic tracking shots as the elephants foraged below. 

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Our most ambitious shot involved filming a towering Moabi tree, a colossal 500-year-old giant. The Moabi tree is a keystone species in the African rainforest and elephants are the main seed dispersers of the tree. This relationship ensures the regeneration of the forest and plenty of food in return for the elephants. Our expert climber, Waldo Etherington, scaled the giant tree and meticulously installed the cable dolly system, allowing the camera to glide from the canopy to the forest floor. It was a scary experience operating the cabler dolly and watching the camera go so high up.

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