This short article is an excerpt from the famous David Attenborough. I post it here because I can’t find it anywhere else on the web and I think it’s a great read, especially for us wildlife filmmakers.

Natural history filmmakers should be allowed to manipulate images but not distort the truth

by David Attenborough

Do natural history programs on television distort reality? Of course they do. Go for a walk in a tropical rainforest after watching a program about one and you will be in no doubt of that. On television, all kinds of animals appeared continuously all over the place.

In reality, you may be lucky to see a single bird or monkey. But are there distortions that are more serious than that? Does it matter that a program about the life of a polar bear, filmed for the most part in the Arctic, includes shots of a mother bear giving birth that were taken in a zoo – and that the commentary did not say so? That depends on the program. If the program claimed to be recording the actual adventures of an Arctic explorer then that would clearly be wrong. But if its aim was to document the life history of the polar bear then I believe that could be acceptable. Filming a polar bear birth in the wild is virtually impossible. Trying to do so might well endanger the lives of both the cameraman and the cub, were the mother to be disturbed. So the only way to include shots of that crucial event in a bear’s life is to film it in captivity.

Is it acceptable – on occasion – to use film to suggest that something happened which did not? Sometimes it is. That swoop by a peregrine falcon did not, in fact, result in the death of a grouse. The puff of feathers rising into the sky was thrown into the air by one of the film crew. With such a shot at his disposal the skillful film editor was able to create a sequence representing a successful peregrine hunt – without it costing the life of a bird. But such stagings must be done with care. Sometimes, a film shows an event that not only did not take place on that occasion, but has never happened – ever. The most notorious example comes not from television but from the cinema.
Producers working for Disney in the years when the organization regularly produced natural history documentaries, made a film about the Arctic. Its highlight was a sequence featuring lemmings. Every few years, according to a widely-believed story, lemming numbers increase to such an extent that the animals, swarming over the tundra, eventually deliberately commit suicide by swimming out to sea and drowning themselves .

So the Disney film team working in northern Canada paid local children to collect live lemmings. A few dozen were then taken down to an enclosure on the banks of a river and filmed in such a way that the few dozen appeared to be a plague. They were then chivvied until they came to the edge of a river bank and tumbled over it into the water. And the

film-makers had their sequence. But two things were wrong. First the lemmings that gave rise to the story were not Canadian ones but a quite different species that occurs in Scandinavia. And second the story is, in any case, a myth.

Populations of Scandinavian lemmings in some years, do vastly increase in numbers. And then they do indeed start searching for food with such desperation that they will occasionally swim across rivers. But they don’t commit suicide at sea. None the less, the film gave such a convincing portrayal of the story that many still believe it – on this

evidence alone.

The need for such tricks has, over the years, become less and less. Lenses have become more powerful. The large film cameras driven by clockwork that we had to use a few decades ago have been replaced by electronic cameras, some no bigger than a lipstick that can be strapped to an eagle’s back or lowered down a mouse-hole. We can now, with infra-red light, record what goes on in what appears to both animals and ourselves to be total darkness. But, paradoxically, these huge advances in our ability to record reality have coincided with other developments that enable us to falsify more convincingly than ever.

Just as computer imaging can bring long-extinct dinosaurs back to life, so the same techniques could also make living animals appear to do things that a cameraman failed to film in reality – maybe because he was unlucky or because, in spite of what some book said, the animal in fact never behaves that way.

We can now combine pictures so perfectly that a natural history presenter could appear to be crouching within a yard of a ferocious animal that he has never ever seen. That has not happened yet – as far as I know. It would be nice to say that if you or I looked closely enough we could spot it. But electronic techniques are now so ingenious that such deceptions could be almost undetectable.

In these circumstances, television producers and the organizations which transmit their work have to guard their reputations for honesty with greater care than ever. The BBC Natural History Unit already has a code governing the treatment of animals during filming. The welfare of the subject is more important than the success of the film. There should be no lighting that makes it easier for one animal to hunt another. It also lays down rules about deceptions. Telling the story of an animal identified as an individual but using shots of several is now impermissible. Other tricks and techniques we have used
in the past, no matter how well-intentioned, are no longer acceptable.
And quite right too. The natural world contains enough astonishment. Who would believe that spiders throw silken lassos at their prey, that dolphins work in well-drilled teams to drive fish up on to a mud bank, that baby shrews dance the conga with their mother in the lead to make sure they don’t get lost.

“But we saw that in a program the other night” some will say. Let’s not get to the stage when someone else can reply, “You don’t want to believe what you see on the telly – even in natural history programs.”

As film-makers trying to illuminate the natural world, we must be allowed to manipulate images and use all the devices that recent technological advances have given us. But we must also recognize our responsibilities to scientific truth. The events and the creatures we chronicle are more than just entertainment that can be jazzed up to taste.

As science and wildlife documentary filmmakers, we have a great deal of public responsibility. Much of what the public learns about the natural world comes from the films we make. If we explain the aerial acrobatics of the great white shark, the mating behavior of paradise birds, or the burrowing habits of the pygmy armadillo, people should trust that what we’re telling them is true.

Specifically, we are trusted to share science and natural history stories as accurately as possible and to interact responsibly with animals while we’re in the field.

Telling a Truthful Story

Science and wildlife filmmaking is about telling stories, but there is a delicate line between fact and fiction. Most audiences know they can’t believe everything they see in the movies or in fictional television programming, but we don’t want to get to the point where they are doubtful of natural history programming, too.

A few years back, the filmmakers of a popular show on a respected science documentary channel got into trouble. The show claimed to be a two-man crew following the host as he was trying to rescue himself in the wild. It proved to be a false statement. People were outraged when they found out that the crew actually spent a few weeks shooting the purported three-day survival trip and that the two-person camera team actually consisted of closer to a dozen people, all staying in nice hotels at the end of the day. After this was leaked to the public though, the show remained on the air with only a small disclaimer at the beginning of the show claiming that not everything was real.

A colleague of mine accompanied this crew to the tropics as their survival expert. They wanted to tell the story of how to avoid a piranha attack. He told us of one particular shoot where they wanted to show a piranha hunt. He fished a bunch of piranha from the river, put them into a small backwater pool, and fashioned a bow for the host to use. Unfortunately the host couldn’t shoot the arrows well enough to catch a piranha, so our expert shot the piranha then threw the host the bow as the camera panned up. Is this kind of truth-bending okay? Are they breaking any fundamental ethical rules in documentary filmmaking?

Another recent ground-breaking show took the technology of Jurassic Park and put a natural history story to dinosaurs. Unlike other shows that theorized how dinosaurs might have behaved in the wild, this show used high-tech computers to render the life of dinosaurs from birth to death, often making up facts in order to tell the story.

A third wildlife documentary from the 1950s about the Arctic contains a famous scene of the mass suicide of lemmings. The lemming populations increase dramatically, only to run out of food and force them to commit suicide into the ocean; we saw it for the first time on the film. The idea was later proved to be fake and there were accusations of animal cruelty.

We give these three examples so you can start thinking about the issues. Where is the line?

Treating the Animals Right

Telling animal stories in nature is innately difficult. Consider shooting a film on wolves, for example. Most people will never see a wolf in the wild. Now imagine trying to tell the story with a 70-pound IMAX camera loudly whirring and scaring away the subject. Filmmakers may get past these problems by using tame wolves. If an expensive film shoot demands it, why not get trained animals to perform for the camera?

It might depend on the narration of the film. If the film claims the wolves are wild, then this is untruthful storytelling. However, the narration could be written to tell the natural history of the wolf and avoid mentioning whether these particular wolves on camera are wild. It allows audiences to see how wolves behave and earn an appreciation for their beauty without endangering them. We’d argue that this protects wild wolves.

Under no circumstances should filmmakers put animals in physical danger simply for a shot. We’ve heard horror stories where a group of filmmakers pulled an exhausted wildebeest out of a mud pit in order to film the kill by waiting lions, or a film about Hawaii where a pig was tied down to be included in a shot panning through the forest. Untamed Science takes the stance that filmmakers must avoid all acts of animal cruelty when making wildlife documentaries.

Ethical Code of Conduct

Fortunately, there are certain codes that organizations like the BBC and Filmmakers for Conservation have instated for wildlife filmmakers. We support and follow these guidelines.

Principles

1. Always place the welfare of the subject above all else.
2. Ensure that your subjects are not caused any physical harm, anxiety, consequential predation or lessened reproductive success by your activities.
3. Don’t do anything that will permanently alter the natural behavior of your subject. Be aware that habituation, baiting, and feeding may place your subjects at risk and may be lethal.
4. It is unacceptable to restrict or restrain an animal by any means to attract a predator.
5. Subjects should never be drugged or restrained in order to alter their behavior for the sole purpose of filming.
6. Be aware of and follow all local and national laws regarding wildlife where you are filming.
7. Be courteous to your contributors (give appropriate credit where it is due). Whenever possible give copies of the finished program, a copy of a long edit of an appropriate scene, and/or publicity photographs to the people who helped you.
8. Images or script that give an audience abnormal, false or misleading information about a subject or its behavior should be avoided.
9. Always research your subject prior to filming.

Guidelines for Working in the Field

• Restore all sites to their original state before you leave (for example: tie back rather than cut vegetation).
• Be aware and take precautions, as some species will permanently quit a site just because of your odor.
• Keep film, video equipment, and crew members at a distance sufficient to avoid site or subject disturbance.
• Night shooting with artificial lights can require precautions to avoid making the subject vulnerable to predation.
• Be prepared to meet unexpected conditions without damaging the environment or subject. Be especially prepared and deal with any people attracted by your activities as they could put the subject at risk.
• Be aware that filming a den or nest site could attract predators.
• The use of tame or captive animals should be acknowledged. If so, ensure the subject receives proper care; the subject’s trainer or custodian should always be present during filming.

A good bottom line to consider is, if it feels wrong or questionable then it probably is.