nikonownermagazine.com 1 lifeBUT NOT AS WE KNOW IT

THE NEIL LUCAS INTERVIEW: PART I With an introduction by Gillian Greenwood

Neil Lucas, producer for the BBC Natural History Unit for over twenty years, talks to Gillian Greenwood and Gray Levett about working with and his ground- breaking use of Time Lapse Photography.

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 Dragons Tree (Dracaena cinnabari) in the harsh mountainous region of central Socotra

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 Inside our studio near Exeter, which was transformed for over two years for this one shot. By matching shots on a computer from inside the studio and out in the woods we were able to make sure everything was lining up and working well.

 1Wistman’s Wood. This is truly a magical place and somewhere I have tried to work for many years; the moss covered rocks and stunted oak trees transport you back to your childhood.

he copse is encircled by with the passage of time; long green random boulders, perpendicular wires clutch the sides of a bank to There is a stillness Tstructures of the ancient world find a foothold with hurried insistence. covered thickly in lichen and moss. Damp with rain, ferns unfurl their about this place, Beside them, the oak-trees with their hooded stems, and autumn’s pale furrowed branches and unyielding fungi finally push their way out of the a quiet solitude solidity stand as watchful as sentinels. trunks of the trees, strange, sharp, Perhaps it has been a sanctuary for alien forms. woven by the different creatures throughout the guardians of seasons of time; perhaps it is a wood And so it ends, as quickly as it began. between the worlds. the forest. The sequence that was created in There is a stillness about this place, the Plants episode of the recent BBC a quiet solitude woven by the landmark Life series showed the period Many of Neil’s programmes have guardians of the forest; the woodland of half a year of a growing season also been nominated for BAFTAs is silently sleeping, waiting for its in an English woodland taken in one and Emmys over the past years. own story to unfold. continuous shot. On air it lasted less He is now a freelance film director than a minute, yet it took over two and photographer specializing in Then, with hushed urgency, life is years to create. more challenging and technical breathed afresh, a faint murmur at shoots, using the same filming and first, the whisper of an enchantment. Neil Lucas, who created this photographic techniques he has Light moves through the pathway sequence, worked for the BBC mastered throughout his career. Neil between the trees and the boulders Natural History Unit as a producer has been a Nikon user and a Nikon with the shimmer of green glass. for over twenty years. He produced Owner subscriber for many years. Shadows change, then transmute in two of the most technically unison. Small early spring flowers challenging programmes within the GL: Can you tell us how your interest bloom, each of them tiny dots of whole Life series. in photography began? colour amongst the muted patterns of -litter on the woodland floor. During his time with the BBC Natural NL: My real interest in photography Cobwebs are spun, a haze of beaded History Unit, he worked on many started when I was at Art College; I concentric circles, and the wood is internationally acclaimed and award- was on an art foundation course and filled with a dazzling profusion of winning productions, including Sir photography was part of that course nodding daffodils, purple foxgloves David Attenborough’s The Trials of Life, but it was something I had always been and hanging threads of honeysuckle. The Private Life of Plants, The Life of interested in. When I was a child, if I Brambles grow rapidly to compete and Planet . wasn’t drawing pictures, I was making

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 1Wistman’s Wood. This is truly a magical place and somewhere I have tried to work for many years; the moss covered rocks and stunted oak trees transport you back to your childhood.

 Inside the studio with part of the woodland recreated in ‘Blue Screen’ and wire, just waiting for the plants to arrive.  A view of Wistman’s Wood, the Autumn before my planned shoot. It had been a very dry year and my concerns for the mosses in the woodland almost made me change my mind about filming.

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little flick books and drawing cartoons GG: How did you become interested or designing different things and in Natural History? always taking things apart; cameras were part of that. I remember when my NL: I think my interest stemmed from family and I went to Mount Snowdon; I having a sister who was a vet and a was standing there in the rain with my father who would bring stray animal two sisters and my father took a picture families home for me to look after with a little Kodak Brownie camera – when I was a child. My first job after and I wanted to with it because it Art College was in a local wildlife park, was something new. My son, who is where I was paid five pounds a week not yet a year old, is just the same. but my bus fare was two pounds more than the money I earned! At Art College, whether it was a drawn image or a photograph, it was the Following that, I worked for a while with composition that was considered to be the gorilla and primate unit at Bristol  Tortoise Shell Bamboo important; so if I was about to take a Zoo, and during this time-period, I (Phyllostachys heterocycla) in Japan. picture of something, I would zoom in frequently provided animals for television on it first in my mind and then reframe programmes. There was a programme movies. I would be in the back of the it. In fact, in those early days, I would called Animal Magic with Johnny Morris2 studio with the technicians who worked often walk around without any film in my and one of the animals that I took along to on the lights, props and scenery and I camera so I could practice composition. the studio from the zoo was an orangutan became involved with the BBC Natural With a camera you can zoom in and take called Jimmy James. I was also invited to History Unit in Bristol as a result. little segments of the image that work present individual programmes in front of just for you; this method of doing things the camera, which I really enjoyed. My intention had originally been to stay has helped me enormously because in the United States on a full-time basis I believe you have to understand the I was then offered the opportunity to and study photography, and then the correlation of images and how they work for the Peregrine Fund3 in the BBC offered me a short contract to train work. Part of the satisfaction I still get United States. This was an organization blue-tits to fly in front of the camera. Four from my work is the creation of an designed to rehabilitate Peregrine days led to four years and then twenty. image before I start to work on it. Falcons back into the wild after the So I never got to the States and my life DDT scare of the time. The chemical, took an entirely different direction. I think photography and art went which had progressively got into the hand-in-hand for me at Art College, food-chain, had thinned the egg shells GL: What was the first major but in the end, photography became so that when the falcons laid their eggs, programme you worked on? the strongest draw; probably because they would break, and the peregrine it was a simple concept, it intrigued population had been decimated. The NL: The first major programme was me. I mean, really all it is, is a box same organization also worked with called Super Sense in which I was a field with a hole in it, isn’t it? Some old hawks and , and I continued to assistant. Then I became a researcher, photographs are pin-sharp and that go to the States for six months every and I’d go out with the cameramen I knew also really interested me. I remember year over a period of four or five years from My Family and Other Animals and I seeing a picture of my local Post during my late teens and early twenties. got to know the producers and directors, Office with a police officer standing so it was a natural progression from being outside wearing a cape with a Back in the UK, I continued working in front of the camera with the animals to chain; the details in the chain were with wildlife, providing and often behind it directing the cameramen. amazing and I was so surprised that training animals for television such sharpness and quality could programmes. I used to provide the After that I worked on the Trials be achieved in 1909 that I became birds, foxes and other animals for of Life, my first series with David absorbed with older cameras. I think shows such as Seal Morning as well Attenborough, which was a major, everything evolved from there. as for various other commercials and major series – it was the first of the big

 A 360° panoramic of a ‘Strangler Fig Tree’ deep in the of Borneo, part of the filming which unfortunately never made the final programme.

10 10 nikonownermagazine.com NL  A Red Mangrove Tree (Rhizophora mangle) on the Daintree Coast of Eastern Austrailia Species become extinct every day; some disappear before they’re ever discovered. In the end, nature has a way of balancing things out for the greater good.

I think photography blockbusters after Life on Earth and it GL: What format were the clockwork was a big turnaround for the Natural Bolexes? and art went History Unit. David Attenborough was a Controller of BBC2 at the time. NL: They were 16mm and took 100ft hand-in-hand for daylight loads which lasted for about me at Art College, I was very fortunate to get involved in two and a half minutes and had a that series as a researcher and it took handle on the side and a turret of three but in the end, me around the world working with lenses. We were able to adapt them for David Attenborough, even at a distance. Time Lapse because they would take photography My unit would go in a few days before one frame at a time; and that is how we became the and set everything up; David and his started the whole Time Lapse evolution. unit would arrive, and we would stay strongest draw; with them for a couple of days then GG: You started Time Lapse all those move on ahead of them to the next years ago when it was completely probably because location. We were building cameras to new and I believe it became a it was a simple be eaten by or putting cameras passion of yours? on the backs of birds and again it was concept, it animals and cameras. To me it was NL: It became that way because heaven because I could just play! I understood it and the constant intrigued me. framing and reframing of an image, I mean, really all it The cameras we used for filming were snapshots in time. It was easy for clockwork Bolexes4 and Arries5. The me – if I wanted to shrink an hour is, is a box with a ones on the back of birds we would down to a much smaller period of strip down to Super-8 or Standard-8 and time, I knew I had to take a certain hole in it, isn’t it? we would cut them down just to carry number of photos. The Bolexes were enough for one minute of filming. Every perfect for that because they had a gram had to be stripped down because one-to-one drive and we were able we were putting sizeable cameras on to put a motor onto the side which the backs of buzzards or eagles. We would take a single frame. I wanted would make a little harness, like a little to find out how you could do this backpack for each of the birds, who electronically and I met Martin Shann Visit Neil Lucas’ website at: became completely used to it. (Head of Production Technology www.lucasproductions.com

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 Judd Lake, part of Jim Brandenburg’s ‘back garden’; a perfect autumn day on a visit to see Jim and work out possible filming locations for the ‘Life’ series.

GG: Do you think you were the main was a complete innovation at that time instigator of Time Lapse within for the British public. It was the nature programmes for the BBC? development of that I’m sure in the background in the movie NL: I do think I brought a new aspect business certain film-makers had been equipment which to it – there were photographers toying with using it for a long time but experimenting with Time Lapse from no-one had the entry point such as really led to the the time the first cameras existed, but David Attenborough to bring it to life. next Attenborough up until The Private Life of Plants the I don’t think The Private Life of Plants use of Time Lapse was very infrequent, would have worked without it. Because success... and we wanted to make it different and you trust what David Attenborough says interesting, so the only way to do that was and what we were filming was actually to show things in their own time scale. true, it gave the work gravity and took from 1997 until 2006 at Aardman us all over the world. Animations, the creators of Morph Looking at the equipment that was and Wallace and Gromit) who at available to shoot Time Lapse, we saw GG: What was it like to work with the time was working with Oxford that none of it was going to be good David Attenborough? Scientific Films. Together we came enough for what we wanted, so we built up with our own system to make it our own equipment, and approached it in NL: Working with David Attenborough work and it was literally a case of a different way. Time Lapse is just another has always been great fun. I remember buying a motor, putting it onto the way of filming and if you treat it that way the time we were filming in a tiny side of this old clockwork camera and as nothing special and you edit it as little village in North Carolina; it was which was forty years old, and using a normal piece of film, then it becomes one of the first things I did with David a computer to tell the motor to easier to comprehend. It’s almost like 3D Attenborough as a director. I turned advance one frame at a time. chess where you can do anything you on the TV in the tiny little motel room want to within the constraints of reality. where I was staying, and there was Up to that point Time Lapse was just a You can’t lie. You can exaggerate the truth David on the screen doing one of his bit of an oddity. It was the development sometimes to make it work, but what we programmes, and I of that equipment which really led to filmed was true and it worked. thought how amazing it was – I was the next Attenborough success, which working with David and he was at the was the Private Life of Plants, a series I think if I hadn’t concentrated on same time on television. And then, all that went around the world and was Time Lapse for the BBC at that of a sudden, he knocked on my door amazingly successful. We learnt so much point, someone else would have, and he was in the room; it was really about plant life and also the technical side and now Time Lapse is part of every surreal, he was on the TV and in my of it for the production of the series. commercial; it’s everywhere. But it room at the same time!

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GL: Obviously these Natural History GG: How and where do you start programmes require a big budget; when you want to find out about do you come up with an idea and the particular material for any of the BBC organises the package? programmes?

NL: Nowadays you come up with a NL: To find out what is already known programme idea and a budget for it, about a subject, the first place you which goes to the controllers who start is with the Internet. If you want a tell you how much they can allow fuller knowledge, you get in touch with for that time-period on TV. That’s the academic zoologists. Occasionally then subdivided down into costs it happens that the research we do of episodes, the cheaper ones and in the programme might prove their expensive ones. original theories to be incorrect, but more often than not they are happy to Sometimes you rework your budget have us there because we can put their or, depending on the programme, research into a common language that single or multiple co-producers might everyone understands. become involved, often from or America. For example, Life was bought For example, if you put a description into by the Discovery Channel and also of the interaction between dung the Open University. beetles on a piece of paper and show it to someone in the street they’re The budgets vary; the two episodes not going to read it, but if you put it of Life I produced were very technical into a programme and show what the with a higher cost; for example, dung beetles actually do, everyone if you go on a submarine dive, it’s can watch and learn. The scientists £28,000 for one dive and you might generally like the idea of getting their achieve nothing, so you have to information to the public, and we can be prepared for that; whereas, if help them with funding and analyze a you’re in doing a safari shoot, lot of work that they do. you’re in one location and won’t need to spend as much money. I’ve GL: Having said that, have you  One of my specially built computer controlled pan-heads and been lucky enough to get some of experienced any unexplained or track, used for motion-control timelapse throughout the series. the biggest jobs, but I have a bad unexpected things when you’ve been reputation of being expensive! out in the field?

nikonownermagazine.com 13 13 NL NL: Going back to stills and Time Lapse – many people didn’t know for certain exactly how plants grew – for example that a bramble expands across all sections, growing in all areas at once. This was shown in The Private Life of Plants and no one had really seen it before so it was quite unexpected.

GG: I understand that one of the biggest challenges was filming in the ancient woodland for Life. It was an extraordinary moment of film. Could you tell us how you created it?

NL: It’s a place called Wistman’s Wood in the Duchy of Cornwall, which is owned by Prince Charles, and it’s a beautiful, ancient-looking woodland, covered in moss. It’s on a hillside, shaded for most of the day so everything stays lush and moist, but the trees are only three or four meters tall within a very harsh landscape. I had been there a few times with my dog and always thought it would be a great place to film; in fact I was looking at some old slides from back in 1993 when I was first there taking pictures, and I had the idea that I could use it for something special.

If you want to get the best out of a subject you have to treat it in the right manner, and I always give the example of a woodland; that is to say - if you want to get the best out of the shot, you wouldn’t just turn the camera on, because that’s not how you would actually see it. You would in fact take a picture of the area from different perspectives; you would show how  The midday sun shining through the the leaf just catches the sun, the way dense branches of a Dragons Blood things move and the sounds you hear, Tree (Dracaena cinnabari) Soctra. and your mind would be zooming in on different things. You wouldn’t just be walking around with a 50mm lens  Bristlecone Pine Trees (Pinus taking shots, but going in and out of the longaeva) are the oldest living thing on woodland, looking at it from different Earth. At over 10,000 feet high in the points of view to show all the detail. White Mountains of California these trees can live for thousands of years. The fact that you can get people to perceive an image in a certain way is important, and this is the relationship between art and photography and the way pictures work.

When we came up with the idea of doing a programme on Time Lapse and the growing season of plants, the choice for me had to be a woodland. I had previously considered shooting a similar sequence at Jim Brandenburg’s Wilderness in Minnesota, but decided to take up the option of Wistman’s Wood.

We got there and started working on the sequence, expecting to build a

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 The last remains of a Bristlecone Pine Tree (Pinus longaeva). This was one of the last images I took in the White Mountains. The temperature had suddenly dropped to around -10c as the sun set, and the moon was just in the right place to improve the photo.

1Wistman’s Wood. This National Nature track, take the shots and then bring flowers were flowering at that time, Reserve is one of the most famous everything back to the studio – it so we almost had to work backwards woodlands in Britain noted for its gnarled oak trees and luxuriant mosses sounded really simple at the time – but on every step and then tie them all and lichens. The trees are Pedunculate it took two years to complete! together at the end. We were very Oak which is a large slow-growing tree. lucky to have a really good team, and Oak trees can live for over 500 years. We measured the whole woodland all the problems were able to be dealt 2 with laser levels in measuring tape with as they appeared. Ernest John “Johnny” Morris OBE (20 June 1916 – 6 May 1999) was a Welsh so that we could take it back to the television presenter, mostly associated studio perfectly. The whole woodland sequence was a with children’s programmes for the challenge but it worked and it brought BBC on the topic of zoology, most We stripped the studio out, built and together all my feelings of what we notably Animal Magic. rebuilt the track; we had complete are able to do and what we should be 3Peregrine Fund: The Peregrine Fund control over the camera and had to doing. It is effective on many levels, is a non-profit organization founded in rebuild the woodland in the studio. even as an educational tool, and if 1970 that conserves threatened and The reason for this is that we wouldn’t you break it down into individual endangered birds of prey. have been able to do the time lapses sequences it still works. 4Bolex is a Swiss company that of the plants in the wild, because you manufactures motion picture cameras would not have consistency within the We wanted to make it appear to be and lenses. The Bolex company was shot – if you imagine one day the sun an enchanted wood and in order to do founded by Jacques Bogopolsky in the might be shining, the next it might be that we had to use graphics and take 1940s. Bolex is derived from his name. raining, or, on another, the wind could it into the studio. It was an important Bolex cameras were important for early television news, nature films and be blowing and the plants moving shot for me to get right, but what documentaries and are still favoured by back and forth. you’re seeing is true, and how we got many animators today. there is a story in itself. + 5 Our biggest challenge was taking The Arri Group, founded in 1917, is the largest world-wide supplier of motion the camera backwards through this picture film equipment. It is named after woodland. founders August Arnold and Robert Richter. In Part II of Life, But Not As We Know We wanted all the flowers to grow at It, Neil Lucas tells us about the To see the astonishing Wistman’s exactly the right time so we had to plan perils and dramas of building the Wood time-lapse sequence go to: to make sure that when the camera world’s first studio underneath the was coming back into the studio, the ice in Antarctica for the LIFE series. www..co.uk/programmes/ p005m44b

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