Films for The One Show
When you don’t have Davidd Attenborough’s budget, you need to be extra creative, as The One Show’s wildlife producer reveals.
How the BBC Natural History Unit manages to make 50 wildlife segments a year for evening TV
Good news: we can get the drone up,” says Louis. “An aerial shot will show just how close the birds are to the dualcarriageway. I can’t believe it! It’s such a strange place to nest.” Louis Rummer-Downing is director of this sequence and, importantly, also a drone pilot. The nest in question belongs to a family of oystercatchers that, remarkably, have made Rheged Centre services on the busy A66 their home for the past 16 years.
Getting this far has been a long journey. Permission to fly the drone has been the final piece of the jigsaw, and I’m hoping that the actual filming – famous last words – will be relatively straightforward. The oystercatcher chicks are cute and fluffy – a good start – and they’re just bold enough to take the odd wander on the services’ forecourt. Everyone loves seeing wildlife in weird places, after all, and our plan is to intercut the chicks being fed with holidaymakers on a busy bank holiday feeding their human offspring in the cafe. What’s not to love?
The BBC’s Natural History Unit (NHU), just up the road from the BBC Wildlife Magazine offices in Bristol, typically supplies around 50 films a year to The One Show, whose main team is based in London. As this prime-time early-evening show has a magazine format, we’re in the rather unique position of making wildlife TV for people who might not actually appreciate animals and plants.
Know your audience
People don’t generally tune into The One Show for its wildlife… or for its science, history or arts films for that matter. That’s not to say that its (huge) audienceudience doesn’t like wildlife films – they re ally do. But as producers we have to reme ember that the typical teatime viewer migh ht not be as interested in, say, oystercatchers as the people e filming them. This is crucial to the way we shape e our films. Not everyone like es a particular animal but everyone likes a story, which is why we leapt at the chance to film the unusual guests at a service station.
So we’re good to go. Except we’re not. It turns out that there is something else that likes cute, fluffy oystercatcher chicks – hungry black-backed gulls. While my first thought is obviously concern for the poor bereaved oystercatchers, if I’m totally honest, this is swiftly eclipsed by my second thought, which is: “Aaarghh! My budget.”
It is fair to say we operate at the opposite end of the budgetary spectrum from much of the NHU’s output, but we still strive to deliver the gloss our viewers expect. To do so on a One Show budget requires meticulous planning and a tight schedule. On my desk sits a crude, homemade ‘schedule-o-meter’. An arrow attached with a paperclip to a piece of card can swing left or o right depending on the state of the schedul le. The oystercatchershaped hole in the sche edule has caused the arrow to nu dge from ‘schedule of destiny’ ( straight up) towards ‘schedule of f doom’ (left).
Still, out of f adversity come great things, as some eone probably once
said. The beauty of having a team that is so passionate and knowledgeable about UK wildlife (I’m an enthusiast rather than an expert, but fortunately my colleagues make up for the holes in my knowledge) is that they all rally round to find a replacement story to fill the sudden gap. A flurry of activity and a number of phone calls reveals it is potentially the right time of year to witness a critical piece of peregrine falcon behaviour – the food pass.
Taking off
When recently fledged peregrines – which you can recognise by their browner plumage – have to learn to hunt for themselves, their parents will drop a kill midair, allowing the youngsters to swoop in and catch it before it hits the ground. In so doing they need to master acceleration and acrobatics: essential life skills. This behaviour is often seen from late June in the UK, including over many city and town centres, thanks to the resurgence of urban-breeding peregrines in recent years. There are even pairs breeding near the NHU and BBC Wildlife Magazine offices. It’s a dramatic spectacle, and one that The One Show has never before attempted to film. Planet Earth II filmed their epic peregrine hunt sequence in Manhattan over a period of time, we’re going to film them in, um, Woking – in a day. Ace presenter-cameraman Richard TaylorJones ( below) is on board, as are the people at the Woking Peregrine Project, who monitor the nest. If our researcher records the sound and our director self-shoots the interview, we should be able to get back on track. “What are the chances of seeing the food pass in a day?” I ask Craig Denford from the Project. “Basically, very slim,” is his farfrom-reassuring response. Craig has been obsessively following these peregrines for years and has only once witnessed food passing. He happened to have his camera with him and captured some spectacular shots, but he doesn’t fancy our chances of being in just the right place at just the right time. At least the forecast is good and the peregrines are very active. But (whisper it) The One Show is an unusually lucky production when it comes to capturing wildlife behaviour. We decide to go for it: the worst-case scenario is that we can use Craig’s photos to show viewers the passing behaviour.
Armed with a long lens, a hastily soundtrained researcher and sun cream, the team heads to Woking town centre ready for a dawn start and an all-day stake-out on top of a multi-storey car park. After a couple of hours I get my first update from the location. There has been some peregrine activity, but no exciting behaviour. My advice is to stick with it. “I’m sure you’ll get something to film,” I say (trying to convince myself as much as director Louis).
As much by lucklu as by design, it transpires that wew have picked the perfect ct day. The next message from m the location reports that two juve veniles have been putting on an aerialae display and sparring with eachh other. Louis is feeling quietly confident. Whilee I’m relieved that we have bagged enough behaviourhaviour to mmake our film work, I’ve never witnessedes food passing and I’m assuming many of our viewers won’t have either. So I’d love to capture it on film.
Chasing the action
It turns out I don’t have to wait too long. The next message arrives in the form of a video clip: a stunning slow-motion shot of the female peregrine dropping a kill as two of her offspring attempt to catch it. Phew! The schedule-o-meter can cautiously edge away from ‘doom’ for another day.
In retrospect, I think we rode our luck a bit on the peregrine film. It was a big ask for a day’s filming, but I’m glad we did. Part of what makes our job so fun is the constant hustle for ideas; the need to fill gaps in the schedule. It means our researchers have to be finely tuned in to the British wildlife calendar, and we also have a network of contacts to provide stories that continue to surprise even our most knowledgeable team members.
We may lack the profile and the budgets of much of the NHU’s output – and that’s absolutely right because we are but one cog in the machine that makes up The One Show – but we are in the very privileged position of having a veryery large and loyal audience. It meanns we can show someone
with no prior interest in wildlife the bizarrzarre life-cycle of a violet oill beetbeetle, whose larvae hitch a lift onn the bback of a solitary bee, to infiltrate its nestn and predate its offspring. We’re able to send a crew to film an Asian hornet nest in Devon the same day it is discovered and make a great news piece. And we’re able to film the wonderful behaviour of a peregrine passing food to her young in that most relatable of locations, a town centre.
We aren’t aiming to film behaviour that is new to science. Instead, we try to make the wildlife on our doorstep accessible, beautiful and engaging, whether that be the underpants-stealing red kites of the Scottish Highlands, the prehistoric sturgeon that lurk at the bottom of a quarry in Lancashire, or the white sika deer of RSPB’s Arne reserve.
As for the oystercatchers? Well, they returned to their unconventional nest-site again this year. Unfortunately, the blackbacked gulls seem to have got there first, as we saw the adults but no chicks, just a pile of feathers. Here’s hoping the birds succeed in 2019 – if they do, we’ll be there.