A Wild Angle

The Telegraph , Sunday, January 16, 2011
Correspondent : Sushmita Biswas
It was a meaty story of a different kind for filmmakers Rita Banerji and Shilpi Sharma. For seven years the duo criss-crossed Northeast India filming animals and talking to villagers about hunting practices in the region. They trekked through thickly forested hills and visited remote villages and the result was their movie The Wild Meat Trail, which picked up a Panda Award at the prestigious Wildscreen Festival in Bristol, UK, three months ago.

Another pair of winners at the Wildscreen Festival 2010 — it’s perhaps the top festival in the field — was filmmakers B.S. Krupakar and Senani Hegde. You could say that Krupakar and Hegde are champions of the underdog — wild underdogs that is. For years they observed how tribals in the Mudumalai Forest area in south India would shoo off packs of wild dogs to steal their kill. The two filmmakers began to follow the animals and study their habits.

Says Hegde: “We used to feel bad for the wild dogs and somewhere along the line we had started liking them. They were the underdogs of the forest.” After two years of arduously following the animals they put together a 120-minute film The Pack, which has won the Panda Award in the Animal Behaviour Category.

It takes nerve to be a wildlife filmmaker. But that isn’t stopping a new generation of young filmmakers who have picked up their cameras and are willing to brave it out in uncontrolled jungle environments. “It’s love and passion for nature and the challenges that drive us,” says Banerji, who along with Sharma is now planning a film on the endangered Hoolock Gibbon, which is the only ape found in Northeast India. They’re also working on a second film on the Himalayan Black Bear.

Despite the hardships involved, this is a great era to be a wildlife filmmaker. The latest digital cameras are more affordable than the ones of an earlier age that filmmakers had to lug about and they can capture dramatic images in astonishing clarity. “Technology has become affordable and many filmmakers are using high-definition cameras to shoot their films,” says veteran filmmaker Naresh Bedi.

Naresh Bedi’s 31-year-old twins Ajay and Vijay are carrying on the family legacy of making cutting-edge wildlife and conservation films. The duo has slogged through rainforests and other rugged terrain covering an amazing range of subjects.

Their film Melting Para-dise is about climate change in the Kashmir Valley and its effects on the saffron crop while The Policing Langur documents how langurs are being used to curb the monkey menace in Indian cities. Their Cherub of the Mist, which involved arduously tracking the elusive Red Panda, won several awards.

Wildlife filmmaking is, obviously, an incredibly tough business in which nothing is guaranteed and you can waste days on end waiting for animals or to catch a rare shot. Banerji remembers how she and Sharma once waited for days starting from 5.30am till sunset when shooting a documentary on elephant deaths on the railway tracks at the Rajaji National Park. She says: “On the last day of the shoot, just 10 minutes before sunset, when we were about to leave the spot we saw the back of a tusker crossing the track. We took out our cameras and immediately started shooting.”

There is also the discomfort level. Vijay Bedi recalls how, when shooting the Red Panda in its mountainous habitat, their cameras stopped working because of extreme humidity. “Every now and then I’d go back to the nearby Border Security Force camp just to warm the cameras,” says Vijay.

Danger is obviously also a part of the game. The Bedi brothers were chased by rhinos at Kaziranga National Park and another time by a mother elephant in Corbett National Park. “There are scary moments but we must be prepared for everything,” he says coolly.

At a different level, wildlife filmmaking has unforgettable ‘wow’ moments that every moviemaker looks back on fondly. Chennai-based Shekar Dattatri, recalls the Olive Ridley Arribada in Orissa. He says: “I’ll never forget the sight of thousands of these ancient reptiles hauling themselves onto the beach to lay their eggs.”

Similarly, Sandesh Kadur, 34, who’s worked on animals and reptiles as varied as the King Cobras of the Western Ghats and endangered sea turtles in Mexico, has his own unforgettable moments. He once, in a heavy downpour, filmed one King Cobra eating another. The sequence appears in his one-hour film, Secrets of the King Cobra.

Currently back from Kaziranga National Park, Kadur is shooting a series of films on rhinos and tigers of Kaziranga. His Sahyadris: Mountains of the Monsoon has won several international awards and attempts to show the biodiversity of the Western Ghats. His last film Kaziranga, Land of the Rhino was nominated in the competitive section of the Wildscreen Festival 2010.

But the moviemakers of today’s world are inevitably, focusing their lenses on the broader environmental picture rather than just wildlife. Dattatri, for instance, is turning his attention to hard-hitting conservation films like Mindless Mining – The Tragedy of Kudremukh and The Killing Fields – Orissa’s Appalling Turtle Crisis. He says: “I was concerned about the environment but wasn’t sure how I could make a difference. That’s when I decided that I’d use my skills as a filmmaker to bring about change.”

In fact, all the filmmakers double as environmental ambassadors of sorts. Banerji and Sharma along with an NGO called Northeast Network run an eco-club in in Chizami, a remote village in Nagaland. Krupakar and Hegde run a low-profile conservation society called Namma Sangha along the boundary of the Bandipur Tiger Reserve.

But the technicalities of being a wildlife filmmaker are much easier today than in the past. The cameras have become smaller and easier to carry around in the wilds. Take, for instance, Banerji and Sharma’s latest film The Wild Meat Trail, which they shot on DV cam. The camera’s battery lasted for a full eight hours. Says Banerji: “The battery power of earlier cameras was low.” Adds Vijay Bedi: “Shooting a wildlife film requires a lot of trekking and modern cameras are a boon.”

And there are other money-saving changes too. Says Banerji: “Earlier lenses were very costly and filmmakers usually hired editing studios. Today, all the filmmakers have editing set-ups at home. Also, one can even shoot a wildlife film with a still camera which has in-built video in it.”

Of course, they still have to spend heavily on more advanced lenses. And specialised shoots require more sophisticated cameras. So for instance while shooting insects you require macro-lenses and for birds and mammals you need to shoot with 150 to 600mm zoom lenses. On the other hand, for filming snakes in their burrows you require what is called a borescope (these are special tubular lenses).

You can, of course, go it alone but many of these filmmakers do their work in teams of two. “It’s best to stick to two people while shooting because the smaller the team the lesser the disturbance on the field. As for us, both of us take decisions from time to time,” says Vijay Bedi. On the other hand, while Banerji does all the camerawork, her partner Sharma does all the editing.

How do you become a wildlife filmmaker? It all really depends on your commitment and interest levels. Ajay and Vijay Bedi had it easy. “Getting into this line was a natural decision. In school, when teachers asked what we did during our vacations we used to proudly tell stories about how we accompanied our father to the jungles,” says Ajay.

There’s also Chennai-based Dattatri whose fascination with wildlife began at the age of 13, when he joined the famous Madras Snake Park as a student-volunteer. This led to photography and subsequently to wildlife filmmaking. He recalls: “I was fascinated with nature even as a child. Our house in Chennai was home to a variety of creatures, such as garden lizards, palm squirrels, rose ringed parakeets and golden orioles.”

However, there are still tough challenges. Says ace wildlife filmmaker Mike Pandey: “There is a huge stone wall in front of us. The shooting fees in a national park are exorbitant and that automatically raises the cost of production. Moreover, getting permissions is another big hurdle.” Shooting fees have risen from an earlier Rs 5,000 a day to Rs 20,000 a day now.

Also, it’s still not easy to find buyers for films. The Indian TV channels aren’t keen on spending the money. Says Dattatri: “Only a few international channels such as the National Geographic, Discovery and Animal Planet fund wildlife films.” Kadur has attempted to get around this by launching his own digital channel Felis TV where people can catch his wildlife films.

Nevertheless, there’s a great interest in wildlife and the environment in today’s world and that is helping the filmmakers. Says Pandey: “People must realise that you cannot make a proper natural history film in 15 days flat. It requires years and years of extensive research and going back to the same place several times. Only then your film will match up to international standards.”

 
SOURCE : http://www.telegraphindia.com/1110116/jsp/graphiti/story_13445840.jsp
 


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