Even at 97, Attenborough will crawl on his belly for the best shot – he’s quite extraordinary
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I grew up in Calcutta with my father, who was a barrister, my mother, who was a teacher, and my younger sister. We had a black and white TV, but television in India was still in its infancy at the time and there wasn’t any natural history to watch. When I was about 15, I saw a screening of David Attenborough’s Life on Earth series at the British Council, and it completely changed my life. I didn’t know anything about this extraordinary world of nature and animals – I had never even heard of evolution. And here was this man telling me the incredible story about how life on Earth evolved. From that point on, I knew what I wanted to do.
I moved to England in 1985, aged 20, to study biology at Bristol University. I loved learning about animals, so it felt natural to do a PhD at Oxford University. My specialist field was the behaviour of birds, and this led to my first job as a research scientist at the Wildfowl and Wetlands Centre in Slimbridge, Gloucestershire.
One day I happened to see an advertisement: the BBC Natural History Unit was looking for a researcher to help with its next big TV series – The Life of Birds, presented by David Attenborough. It was a dream job, and it appeared I might have the right qualifications and skill set for it. So I applied. I had so many ideas for the birds and stories we could film.
David was my hero, so it was an honour to be able to work on one of his documentaries straight away. Our first meeting was at the Natural History Unit (NHU) in Bristol in 1995, with David and Alastair Fothergill, who was head of the NHU at the time. The three of us had an intense but stimulating brainstorm, thrashing out how we might structure the series and what sort of stories we might put into it. Alastair was a bird enthusiast, so he knew the most about exotic birds around the world, while David had a strong vision for the kind of stories he wanted to tell. I was simply the one bringing the latest scientific research to the table.
David and I worked well together on The Life of Birds, so I was delighted when I got the opportunity to work on his next series, The Life of Mammals. Most of these big landmark series take about three years to make, so by the time I started on The Life of Mammals I had gained the experience to move on to become an assistant producer. Each project with David was fascinating and memorable in its own right.
One of the things you notice immediately when working with David is how easily he connects with everyone from eminent scientists to local field assistants. He is a very good listener and gives people his full attention, no matter who they are. He is great fun and has a good sense of humour, often breaking the ice with a self-deprecating joke and entertaining us with stories in the evening. He is also incredibly kind and warm-hearted. He is very fond of children and will often take the trouble to write back to them in person and answer their questions.
In 2009, I left the BBC to join Humble Bee Films, an independent production company set up by one of my former colleagues at the BBC. We made a series called Attenborough’s Natural Curiosities (UKTV and BBC2) that was very different to the usual natural history films, looking at curious animals and why they had baffled scientists for centuries.
At Humble Bee Films we try to examine the natural world through a different lens, often using science and new technologies to uncover it. This is an approach that also appeals to David, which is why I think we have such a long-standing working relationship with him.
We then went on to make a film about the real Jumbo – Attenborough and the Giant Elephant – and a series about colour, which David had wanted to make for decades, called Attenborough’s Life in Colour.
Our latest series, Secret World of Sound with David Attenborough, looks at how animals produce and hear sounds, and why they make these sounds in the first place. Natural history films are known for their stunning visuals, but sounds have received very little attention in the past. They often only play a supporting role, overshadowed by dramatic orchestral music. In this series, we wanted to place the natural sound centre-stage.
We relied quite heavily on new camera technologies and recording equipment, which allow us to listen for the first time to sounds that our ears can’t normally pick up. It meant that we could tell stories that have never been told before.
We were surprised and very pleased that, at 97, David was still happy to come out on location to film with us. We took him to a bluebell wood and stream in the Wye Valley for a sequence on the dipper. Dippers have predictable rocks or boulders that they regularly perch on, so we had identified a spot that we thought would be suitable, but it was still a long shot to get a wild bird close enough to David.
Dippers are known for their unusual behaviour of diving in fast-flowing streams, searching for insects. But very few people have heard a dipper sing, because their song is usually masked by the sound of bubbling water. For this sequence we recorded the dipper song, then stripped back the sound of the water. What was revealed is a beautiful song that would rival any songbird; and no dipper sings the same song twice.
But the dipper is a really small bird – and to get that shot, David had to be on the ground to be at eye level with it. He was quite extraordinary – he was so determined to get a good shot that he crawled through the grass to get into the best position.
It was a dull, overcast day and we didn’t want to leave David sitting for hours in the wet grass waiting for a dipper. But then – and this often happens when David arrives on location – it was absolutely miraculous. He had just settled into position when the clouds parted, the sun came through, and a little dipper flew in. David smiled and delivered the line he wanted to say perfectly. It is one of his favourite stories in the series.
In my experience, David is up for doing anything that is required. Though he will invariably question why he should be on camera, he is not somebody who likes to put himself in the spotlight; he says that the subject matter should lead the story, and he should only appear if he has something relevant to say. In some ways, David was a reluctant presenter. He was a producer at the BBC in the early years, making some of the first natural history programmes, when the host of the show fell sick and David was asked to step in. So he effectively fell into presenting by chance. He certainly never wanted to be a celebrity; he is in fact a very private person.
David’s depth and breadth of knowledge, and his unique approach to everything, sets the bar very high for all of us. He is inspirational on so many levels, as he’s constantly reading books and scientific papers or watching documentaries that interest him. He always seems to be one step ahead of us.
David’s mind is so alive and active. He always wants to learn more and still works harder than most of us, usually seven days a week. He constantly questions our research, to ensure that the programmes are factually correct. And his enthusiasm for the subject matter is enormous.
There are frequent challenges when filming wildlife. Animals can be unpredictable and so can the weather. But in this series, our biggest challenge was climate change. And in the last year or two things have come to a head. When regular cycles of animal behaviour that should be happening at a particular time of year are disrupted by unusual weather patterns, as a filmmaker it makes it very hard to plan. Sometimes animals didn’t turn up at all, where previously they were predictable year after year.
It’s very disheartening. For the first time in my career, every single shoot of ours was affected by climate change. The most extreme example was our elephant sequence in Amboseli in Kenya.
The shoot took place in what was supposed to be the rainy season when everything is green and lush, and the elephants are healthy. They should have been breeding and socialising a lot – trumpeting and rumbling, communicating with each other. That’s what we wanted to film. But we didn’t hear a single rumble. The reason was the drought, which had been going on for years – and the elephants were starving. So every night they would walk out into the surrounding fields to try to find food.
In the morning, they would walk back in single file with their heads down. We had wanted to film sequences on their social behaviour but we couldn’t. I’ve never seen anything like the stress they were under. They weren’t talking to each other anymore.
There were lots of babies in those herds – conceived two years before when conditions were good – but many of them died that year. And this is happening everywhere in the world. Many animals aren’t breeding, they aren’t migrating. They’re really struggling.
It’s depressing that the human race has been desperately slow at accepting that this is a really dire situation. Yet you can’t give up hope. As David has always said, the natural world is actually surprisingly good at recovering if you give it a chance.
As told to Jessamy Calkin
Secret World of Sound with David Attenborough will launch on Sky Nature and stream on NOW from February 25
