19 May, 2007
In a similar vein to the worldwide box office phenomenon March of the Penguins, ELEPHANTS uses a dramatic narrative to illustrate the extraordinary journey undertaken each year by hundreds of African elephants, as they cross 300 km of red hot desert in order to reach the lush green wet lands of the flooded Okavango Delta. The film will focus on the journey of one family of Elephants, and in particular on the youngest of that group, a tiny calf, barely eight weeks old – and her mother, the great Matriarch of the herd. Along the way, the march is fraught with danger, as the family battle through blinding sandstorms, risk attack by lions and suffer for days on end with no food, water or shelter.
Production will begin this dry season, and will follow the annual migration from start to finish. The production team will benefit from the extraordinary expertise of its renowned directors of photography. Between them, Richard Jones, Mike Holding and Martyn Colbeck, have racked up over 60 years of experience in wildlife photography, and are the leading experts of their field.
Richard Jones is a renowned natural history cameraman, with a wealth of experience in African wild life film making. He received many accolades for his stunning camera work on the award-winning ‘Roar: Lions of the Kalahari’, shot in large format; and his work has appeared on award winning programs the world over, including the BBC, Discovery and the National Geographic. Mike Holding is also an award-winning cameraman and a leading expert in African wildlife photography. The documentary film production company ‘Afriscreen’ that he established in Botswana over a decade ago has been at the core of much of the most remarkable wild life footage shot in Southern Africa over the last decade, including the BBC’s landmark wildlife series Planet Earth. Martyn Colbeck was nominated for a BAFTA for his work on the television series Wild Africa, and has recently received a lifetime achievement accolade from the BBC.
This formidable team of cameramen will be further enhanced by the guidance of Visual Supervisor John Ruthven, another BBC veteran, whose pioneering techniques of time-lapse and graphic projection are now used as standard practice by many documentary filmmakers.
ELEPHANTS will be produced by Madeleine Westwood and Richard Waterstone.
Producer Richard Waterstone of Waterstone Westwood said: ‘You’ve got to see it to believe it. These amazing animals cross a vast distance of heat and sand to reach the paradise of the Okavango Delta, truly one of the natural wonders of the world. As the first natural history feature film production company in Wales, we’re thrilled to be able to tell such a remarkable story.’
ContentFilm’s Jamie Carmichael said: “This is a personal mission for me. I have family involved in conservation in Kenya and across Africa, and I immediately knew that this story was something very special – . The story has the ‘tingle factor’ and distributors have agreed. We’ve already sold to Falcom in Germany, Euro TV in France, MGN in CIS and Baltics, Intersonic for Hungary, Czech & Slovak republics, SWEN for Latin America, Gulf in the Middle East and A Film for the Holland and Belgium. And this is before we’ve shot a frame. ELEPHANTS will make you laugh and cry. Its going to be an extraordinary journey.”
