When we arrived in South Africa, Camera Operator John Brown and I couldn’t wait to get started building these realistic homes for the mole-rats to inhabit for the duration of our filming. Initially we spent 3 days constructing and perfecting the enclosed tunnels in exactly the correct proportions, and with sections, the mole-rats could dig through to find their food: plant tubers.
I’d filmed Damaraland mole-rats 20 years previously but for this sequence we were much more ambitious
Mammals Camera Operator, John Brown
John is a real expert at building work like this and had also specially built a rig for our camera that would enable us to get really interesting perspectives down the tunnels. This, coupled with the scientists being on-hand to check the dimensions, sand density, and authenticity of our build, and welfare of the mole-rats, meant that I thought we were on to a winner of a sequence. Little did we know the mole-rats were going to be so much more challenging than we bargained for – they were whirlwinds of energy, with gnashing front incisors that seemed able to cut through anything with rapid and erratic movements meaning they were extremely difficult to film. As much as we were in awe watching them, and how characterful they were, we realised we were in for a tricky month’s shoot. Here is John’s :
“To film the mole-rats I used a specialised computer-controlled camera rig that I’d built during the lockdown of 2020. This allowed me to programme complex flowing moves to ‘fly’ the camera within the tunnels we’d built, [sort of like a miniature drone]. I’d previously used this rig everywhere from the Amazonian rainforest to the streets of Manhattan, but nothing was more challenging than filming the mole-rats.
I’d filmed Damaraland mole-rats 20 years previously but for this sequence we were much more ambitious and wanted the camera to feel as if it was inside the tunnels that make up the mole-rat’s world. In many ways we were victims of our own ambition - the tunnels and chambers we painstakingly built to replicate the mole-rat’s environment proved so exciting for them that within minutes they would revert to type; charging around the tunnels like kids in an adventure playground and, most challengingly for us, deploying their formidable burrowing skills.
A network of tunnels that might take us a day to build could be destroyed in minutes - the mole-rats had an uncanny ability to find and exploit any weakness, chewing through our thick, cement-hard, tunnel lining like it was warm butter. As exasperating as this was, we’d get to work repairing the damage in the knowledge we’d provided these fantastic creatures with a life enriching experience!”
