own time spent in the Serengeti. They were able
to film on the Serengeti Reserve, a private area
next to the national park, away from tourists,
which helped them gain unfettered access to
the animals.
“The beautiful thing about some of these
reserves is that it could be one hundred years
ago it could be a thousand years ago. The time
doesn’t exist.. it’s suddenly their world not
ours,” he said.
Thousands of hours of animal interactions were
filmed over the course of two years and then
whittled down to six hours.
“The big thing was spending time with the
animals and letting them inform the story, so
we were always feeding off what happened,
when changing the story line as it happened,”
Downer said. “We have to start identifying
stories early; we have to abandon story lines
if they weren’t going to work. So it became a
process of actually thinning out the materials
that we had so we could tell the most dramatic
and true-to-life story that we could from the
materials that we have. ”
Drones were used to keep track of the animals
when regular cameras lost sight of them; Fuller
said a drone camera was used to capture a
devastating moment when one animal was
killed by a snake.
While there uplifting moments, there also were
tragedies on the Serengeti that may bring
tears to the eyes, as it did for one veteran crew
member, who witnessed the death of a young
member of a clan and wished he could have
been able to intervene.