3 min readMay 24, 2011 03:34 AM IST
First published on: May 24, 2011 at 03:34 AM IST
When the average,city-bred human being hears of an indigenous Amazon tribe where women breastfeed monkeys,there’s bound to be an adverse reaction. Scorn for a primitive way of life will colour the way the urban person interacts with a group of people who were introduced to the modern world only as late as the 1980s. It is to dispel such prejudices and forge a greater understanding of the sheer diversity of lifestyles adopted by human beings,that Andrew Jackson and his team at the BBC Natural History Unit decided to film Human Planet. This and other documentaries,such as Planet Earth and Wild China will be part of the programming for BBC Earth,which will soon bring the best of BBC’s natural history programming to India.
“It was a gamble for us,really,” says Jackson,head of of the Unit which has produced television classics such as Blue Planet and Life ,“There was,honestly,no telling how people would react to the show.” After all,this was the first time that human beings were taken from behind the camera in a natural history documentary and were put in front of it — to be observed,just like the lions and wildebeest that have formed such popular subjects for these documentaries in the past. And it wasn’t just the viewers’ reactions that Jackson was worried about.
“We had to travel around the world and film people in their homes and their lives. We weren’t sure whether they would co-operate,so it felt wonderful when they opened up their lives and their homes to us,” he says. Human Planet ,which covered stories of human survival in some of the harshest environments in the world,went on to become a global phenomenon and brought little told stories to the world. One episode featured the
Khasi Hills in the North-East of India where the locals showed them how they combat the ferocity of the monsoons,by training the roots of rubber trees to form bridges.
As someone who has been in the business of filming natural history documentaries for almost 25 years,Jackson says that only constant innovation in ideas and technology can keep stories fresh and relevant. “Most stories have been done and we’re constantly looking for new approaches. There were many brilliant documentaries shot in the 1970s,but they would seem dated now. The evolution of technology has obviously helped a lot. Something like the ‘cineflex’ — an aerial camera technology which was originally developed for military purposes — has enabled us to shoot from elevated levels from helicopters. We’re so far away from the animals that they don’t even realise we’re there,so the cameras enable us to capture their natural behaviour.” There is no shortage of funds or passion for filming the natural world. “The only obstacle is the inability to think out-of-the-box,” he says.
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