BBC producer talks about life on the wild side

BBC producer Hugh Pearson is to speak about his role in two dramatic wildlife series — Nature’s Great Events and Africa.

Pearson has been on the island for two weeks with a small BBC crew and LookBermuda’s JP Rouja filming sea creatures in the Sargasso Sea for a future series called The Hunt.

The focus of Pearson’s talk will be on the two series that aired in 2009 and earlier this year respectively. Speaking to the Bermuda Sun, Pearson said: “I’ll be showing some clips from the series and explaining a little bit about how we got them. I’ll explain all the pre-production, on location and post production that is involved in bringing these series to realisation.”

Among the clips he will present is a sequence showing a fight between two desert giraffes in Namibia, taken from the Africa series. 

“We have got a quite dramatic giraffe fight which was pretty spectacular and it goes to show that even with an animal as familiar as a giraffe there are still new things that we can film and new ways of telling stories and new ways of entertaining people.”

Pearson will also talk about the incredible sardine run up the coast of South Africa as well as the plankton blooms in the Pacific North West of Alaska, both of which he produced for the series Nature’s Great Events.

“I will talk about my role as a producer and also the number of people, which is a lot, involved in bringing these films to realisation. Many people don’t fully appreciate what goes into making these series and how many people have an input. 

“It goes into the hundreds — with the core camera team, the core post production team — the editors and such like and even the composers and concert orchestra. 

But then on each trip you have different skippers, and the fixers and scientists it is just a lot of work and a lot of people. There are literally hundreds who contribute and we try to get the very best in the business at what they do.”

Another aspect of Pearson’s talk will cover how wildlife documentary makers have had to adapt over the years in an ever-changing media landscape. 

“Like anything, nothing stays the same. We are constantly having to evolve and adapt and compete with other forms of entertainment both on TV and otherwise.

“Over the last ten or fifteen years that I have been doing this I think we have gone from more documenting the natural world to dramatizing and documenting the natural world. 

“All the series we make are founded on fact and that is the basis of what we do but we have to make sure they are factually correct and authentic but we are increasingly competing in a mainstream entertainment business so we have to do everything we can to make them as entertaining as possible.”

Pearson will remain in Bermuda until next week filming animals in the Sargasso Sea as part of a The Hunt to be completed by October 2015.

 Although the team has been hampered by the weather, they have so far captured some great footage of a Sargassum fish preying.