Combining blue-chip natural history footage and ‘in the moment’ observational documentary, independent Botswana based Natural History Film Unit (NHFU) is pioneering a fresh approach to wildlife programming. Operating from a private ‘film camp’ in the breath-taking Okavango Delta, the NHFU sends elite nature cinematographers into the field almost every day of the year to record raw, unfiltered and unique animal behavior which it then makes into cinematic award-winning films and series.
“We’ve kind of reverse-engineered the commissioning process,” says Brad Bestelink, the Emmy nominated filmmaker who co-founded NHFU in 2008 and whose extensive credits include The Flood, Living With Leopards, Okavango: A Flood of Life and many others. “Myself and up to five cinematographers are permanently in the field following all the big cats and animals regardless of whether we are commissioned or not.
“We live with the wildlife and wait for the stories to reveal themselves to us. As soon as we recognize the story, we start drilling down into that particular character or that particular circumstance.”
Bestelink will typically have shot 70 to 80 percent of the content needed to make a film before approaching a broadcaster.
“If I pitch an idea of a story, I join the line of everybody else pitching stories. It's also just a paper treatment and with that comes expectations about what the commissioning producer wants to achieve and that can be a straitjacket when you’re out filming.
“Instead, we go in with material already shot. We've already got a strong sense of what the story is. We've captured a lot of the key behavior. That gives the broadcaster a much clearer idea of the look and feel of what the film can be. There's a lot less risk involved for the broadcaster in making a decision to commission because they're more secure in what they what they're getting. The flip side is there's a lot more commitment and risk on our side, initially at least, but that's long been my approach to the majority of the films that we've made.”
NHFU is currently filming a second series of Big Cats 24/7, a six-hour documentary for BBC Studios Natural History Unit co-produced by PBS that follows the dramatic lives of lions, leopards, and cheetahs in the Delta. Bestelink’s team are following individual big cats around the clock, capturing their behaviour day and night.
“All of my camera operators are committed to working in the field. It’s their lifestyle and their passion. They will spend probably 275 days a year behind a camera in the field, following these predators all the time and gaining a deep understanding of their dynamics. Because we’ve invested so much time with them, we’ve already established biographies for many of the cats. The BBC is coming into something that is active and running instead of going into an area and trying to hire guides.
He stresses, “We know the individual characters, we know their territories, we know the terrain. There's a lot of experience and depth to our knowledge of these cats which just makes producing films a lot easier.”
Over the years, NHFU has amassed a 2 Petabyte archive of material that the company can exclusively draw on when producing new films.
“It's an enormous library that no one other than us has access to and because it’s all original material that we’ve been building since 2010 it has huge value,” he says.
A key reason for that is that Bestelink had the foresight to record virtually everything on RED. “It's the codec that is so exciting for me. We’ve invested in every iteration of RED camera but it’s the consistency and excellence of the codec that means everything we capture will have a very long lifespan. Our media doesn’t age.”
In 2010 Bestelink shot his first independent film on a popular professional camera, but when it came to deliver later that year the commissioner had moved onto requesting different formats.
“I thought, if I'm investing my life into making these films, I need to make sure that the format is going to be sustainable over time. At that point RED was not really utilized in Natural History but I had a friend working in commercials with an EPIC. On his invitation I went over to Australia for a month and tested the camera out. After that, I put my order in for one of the first RED cameras and have not looked back.”
Today, NHFU has one of the biggest fleets of RED cameras on the continent. “The compact ergonomics and the ease of the workflow are fantastic but more than anything being able to record at 6K and beyond has future proofed the media.”
His camera team go out solo into the bush and spend three to four days there filming wildlife before returning to film camp.
“A single person in the field is more wide awake, much more aware and much more in tune with the bush,” Bestelink explains. “As soon as you put two people in a jeep they will talk to each other and then that becomes their world, whereas a person on their own means it’s entirely up to them. They are listening and looking outwards all the time.”
Their camera kit consists of a HELIUM, WEAPON or V-RAPTOR and either Fujinon Cabrio 25-300mm or a Canon 50-1000mm which Bestelink calls “the ultimate wildlife lens”.
They also carry portable drives onto which they download the 4-6TB of media they are likely to generate on each field trip.
Back in camp their first job will be hand the drives to a colleague who will ensure it’s all backed up with the masters stored onto LTO tape.
“If the operator come across an incident in the field where there's a lot of action they'll radio in and one of the other cameramen will join them. Often, we'll have two or three photographers on one sequence, all cross-shooting on RED and in the same format. That’s quite an efficient way of working.”
The cinematographers rotate in shifts and are now able to shoot around midnight using military grade thermal imaging cameras. “You don't need any lights whatsoever and you can get great images without disturbing animal behavior,” he says.
The basic kit is complemented by a variety of specialist film equipment, including Phantom 4K FLEX, Shotover F1 Gimbal, DJI drones and even underwater housings and a submersible remotely operated vehicle.
The NHFU’s bespoke ‘film camp’ deep in the Okavango Delta houses a complete postproduction infrastructure with offices, suites and equipment for media management and processing. Edit teams prep proxies, tag and select media.
“I’ve brought several projects to a rough cut in the field right here,” Bestelink says. “It’s a one-stop shop. We've got multiple cameras with accessories and spares to prepare and repair them. We’ve got a full complement of editing software and we run eight customized filming vehicles out of this area.”
“There is safari tourism that is permitted in the area, but NHFU has exclusive rights for filming in this private area. We support that photographic tourism pays to keep the Delta as wild as it is and we work closely with operators to maintain this precedent”. We don't facilitate crews or operate as an agent for third party productions. Any production that we're working on, like Big Cat 24/7, is a partnership between us and the broadcaster so we’re very much entrenched in the production.”
Bestelink, who has lived in the Delta since he was four days old, also operates camera and spends almost as much time in the field as his camera team.
“I balance that with being at film camp producing and with my family. You know, I'm not a young cameraman whose heart is solely in the bush but I do live here with my family out in the middle of the bush.”
His work is increasingly focused on projects that have a conservation and environmental message. To do that, he also shows on-screen the experiences and relationships his cinematographers have with the cats as their stories unfold.
“Natural History filmmaking has experienced a boom but there’s some audience fatigue setting in because of the number of shows with the same glossy, high-end presentation.
“Incorporating people into the stories is a way to make it more accessible. The primary focus remains on the wildlife but the cinematographers are our primary storytellers. It’s through their relationships with the big cats that we learn so much more about them.”
He says, “We have to make people care about animals and the big cats in particular. If people don't emotionally connect with individual characters they're not going to develop in interest and passion for the wellbeing and future in their species in the wild.”
Visible from space, the Okavango is the world’s largest in-land delta. A combination of marshland and seasonal flood plains, it is rich in biodiversity and is often described as one of Africa’s last wildernesses. Yet the combination of population pressure and climate change is putting the whole biome at risk.
“The Okavango lives and dies by its annual flood and the amount of water that flows into the Delta. I just hope that we can protect it for long enough for the wet cycle to return. I am very concerned about its future.”
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