A National Geographic Assignment in Support of International Animal Rescue:
A Yellow Square Hangs on My Wall!
I just returned from my first filming assignment for NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC! A solo mission, producing, directing and shooting in the wilds of Northern Sumatra and Indonesian Borneo; Filming Orang-utans, and the hero’s working to save them and their habitat… here’s the resulting promo…
Like most adventurous filmmaker types, its always been a dream to someday be a National Geographic kind-a-guy. Of all brands, it’s one of very few I’d proudly sign up to… Full Film / Production Still & Rushes below:
Solo film making, at this level of expectation, is daunting. I lost 9 kilos in 16 days! Here are a few productions still… Scroll for the full film
I spent the first few days in shock, spinning as fast as I could, meeting and making friends with characters, shooting from the hip. With my body clock in a different timezone and no time for food, it was all I could do to stay upright.
Heres some RAW rushes, a simple shot selection I put together for the editor, its a sequence on the SOCP teams in Sumatra. offered here as insight into the area and how I approached filming.
Update: The promo I shot won a commission, we returned to film, it aired and amazingly was Nominated for an Emmy Award!!!
Ultimately the hard-line stories that I discovered and wanted to tell within the documentary proved a little too hard for Nat Geo Wilds remit… As a result, it’s a bit fluffy and anthropomorphic, cutesy even but hey… it helped focus on the work of the tireless work of Dr Karmele Llano Sanchez and International Animal Rescue, and as a result, drew much-needed attention to the ongoing fight to help the Old Man of The Forest.
here’s the film:
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