| Sir David, apart
from the many achievements you are so well known for, is it
true that you were responsible for introducing colour television
to Britain?
Yes, not because I was particularly clever or far sighted;
it was determined by the technological plans that the first
network to go into colour would be BBC 2 and that was determined
before I joined BBC 2.
You officially retired way back in 1973. Is it true
what they say? That you retired because you had not visited
the Galapagos?
That was a way of keeping journalists quiet. The reason I
was leaving was because I had spent eight years in administration
and had I spent any more time, I would have been moving further
and further away from making and devising programmes and that’s
what I enjoy doing most. So after doing administration for
eight years... yeah ...why not do what I enjoy rather than
sit behind a desk?
When you launched zoo quest in the 1950s, you went
to places where not too many people had been before... that
must have been adventurous.
It was a huge privilege and unthinkable now. But in 1959-60,
I thought... why not go to Madagascar? What lives in Madagascar?
It was almost impossible to know really. There were all kinds
of things, which had never been photographed... extraordinary,
isn’t it? Well, think of that, going to an island with
unique fauna, which nobody has ever photographed. What a privilege...
huge privilege.
So it was one of those explorer moments… going
where no one had gone before?
Of course, lots of people had been to Madagascar. It’s
just that wildlife filmmakers hadn’t been to Madagascar.
There have been times when I went to places nobody had been
to before. That was in the 1950s and that was very exciting
in a childish kind of way. It was very exciting and unforgettable
and is very difficult to do now. There are not many places
like that.
How often have you been to India?
Not enough… though I have seen some very nice animals
there.
You are reputed to have a rat phobia?
Yes, certainly I do. I saw lots of rats in India and out of
bravado… foolishness… I wrote a shot involving
rats into the script. I found it very hard and I had a cynical,
ghastly, appalling TV director friend shooting it, and he
said it would be perfectly OK. He said I’ll put you
on a stool so you’ll be above all the thousands of rats
running on the floor and I turned up early and saw him smearing
banana on the legs of the stool to encourage the rats to climb
up the stool. It was terrible... the worst thing I’ve
done!
You started out in the age of black-and-white. Have
the immense changes that have taken place in cinematography
helped you to obtain a completely different view of the natural
world?
Certainly! Every year, there is something new that can be
the spur for a new series. Originally, when I started you
couldn’t record in synch... couldn’t record someone
talking and you couldn’t film animals talking or squeaking
or whatever, and as time lapsed technology improved…
and here we are now. It’s a paradox. There are more
people now, I’m told, living in the cities than those
living in what we would call wild countryside. And yet, people
living in the cities have a broader view and understanding
of what wildlife is than ever before in history. Perhaps not
as intimate and detailed, but nonetheless extraordinary. For
example, there is a move worldwide that we should protect
whales. One in 50 million humans must have seen a whale in
the wild... and yet everyone knows what whales are... they
know very well that we ought not to kill them… that’s
great… that’s an advance and that is something
wildlife filmmakers can take credit for; not I, but certainly
the filmmakers who make films on whales can certainly feel
that they have made a contribution and pushed things forward.
Do you feel that sometimes there is a disconnect with
people in the cities getting to see these fascinating programmes
and learning about animals in remote areas, while local communities
are unaware of what they have?
That’s quite true, and many colleagues of mine work
hard to send the films we’ve made back to local people.
But just sending the film back into space is no good... it
should go to someone who knows how to exhibit it, so people
can see it, understand what it means in the appropriate language.
But again all these things are changing at an enormous speed.
I mean just consider DVD discs now, compared with the problems
of shooting on 16 mm. film and then putting on separate sound
tracks and lugging all that apparatus around. People even
in remote parts are getting the opportunity to see those films.
As a naturalist is it your duty to talk about natural
life and give us the basic facts, or, considering the state
of the planet, include conservation messages with your films?
Yes, conservation is important, but the first thing is to
get the facts to them. Until people know what these creatures
are, what they do… why should they care about them?
Increasingly, people are losing sight of what the natural
world is, which puts a huge responsibility on those of us
who make films about nature.
With so many threats to the world emerging, would
you say that climate change is the biggest threat to the world
today?
Yes. The human race is all over the world and there are more
than twice the number of people today than when I was born
and it can’t go on. It can’t in the next 50 years
double again and double again. It’s got to stop somehow
and if we don’t make it stop, the natural world will
make it stop by spreading famine.
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