JOHN DOWNER v3.qxp_Layout 2 25/11/2022 17:56 Page 1
WILDLIFE FILMMAKING
Into the wild
After recently being recognised for producing unforgettable television moments during the BBC’s 100th birthday celebrations, we took a closer look at the revolutionary work of Bristol-based company John Downer Productions and how it has been instrumental in the way we engange with the animal kingdom...
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or over 40 years, wildlife filmmaker John Downer has been exploring the planet, taking millions of television viewers on extraordinary journeys through the wilderness. No venture has ever seemed too far nor too daring for John and his endlessly talented team as they negotiate deserts, ice sheets, rainforests and swamps to capture intimate shots of the animal kingdom. Most notably, it has been his innovative use of ultra-realistic animatronic ‘spycams’ that has made those journeys so extraordinary and provided such fascinating insights into the fauna of the natural world. John started his career at the BBC Natural History Unit in Bristol in 1981, before setting up John Downer Productions (JDP) in the city. Since its inception, JDP has become internationally recognised for its technical wizardry and emotional storytelling, garnering a multitude of awards, including an Emmy for ground-breaking footage shot from a bird’s-eye view. What’s more, in 1992, John won a Grammy for his innovative time-layering techniques in Peter Gabriel’s music video Digging in the Dirt and has since gained a reputation for being “the best of the best”, according to producer Simon Fuller, with whom he made the pioneering two-part series, Serengeti. Proud of the fact that JDP sits securely in Bristol’s Green Hollywood, we sat down with John to celebrate the decades of success and hear the incredible tales from a life spent immersed in the great outdoors. Up close and personal
In 2002, Lions: Spy in the Den introduced ‘bouldercam’ to the world, a remote camera device that boldly went where no camera had ever gone before – into the heart of a pride. Describing the series, JDP’s website reads: “Looking deceptively like a mobile rock, but carrying a hidden digital camera, ‘bouldercam’ gets up close and personal as it unravels the story of how cubs learn to become adult lions. Bouldercam was often just a whisker away as the cubs were watched for over 3,000 hours.” “Right from the very first deployment I could see that this was going to be amazing,” John explains. “The lions were accepting of the device. I found that even if I drove near to them and their cubs, they weren’t frightened. They would lie by the camera and the cubs would suckle and you started to get this unbelievably intimate imagery that no one had ever seen before. That series was the start of the whole spy concept and it was immensely successful.” 16 THE BRISTOL MAGAZINE
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DECEMBER 2022
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No 217
Memorable moments Some 10 years later, JDP produced Penguins: Spy in the Huddle, where the team spent nearly a year in close company with three colonies, deploying 50 spycams to capture the true nature of three very different, yet equally charismatic birds. Key to the success of the missions were the cameras cleverly disguised as life-size penguins, which infiltrated the colonies to record their behaviour. “One of the most extraordinary moments was when we were filming Rockhopper penguins in the Falkland Islands. We had a spy Rockhopper, which had been totally accepted into the colony. It walked in among the penguins and found this female, who was on her own. Most of them had partnered up, and Rockhoppers partner for life. We had our penguin standing next to this female. Her partner, who was one of the last to come back from sea, walked into the colony, discovered that she’d got a new mate and started beating up our penguin, which was hilarious and incredibly insightful when you actually want to know about penguins’ relationships and behaviour. “That’s when we started to realise that if the spycams were the animals, they don’t just have to film, they could interact and those interactions could reveal things about the animals that you would not reveal in any other way.”
