Getting a unique perspective on a sparrowhawk hunt
A ‘storyboard’ is a visual plan of the sequence of shots that a production hopes to film to tell a complete story. They are common practice in drama and feature films but less common in documentaries. Sometimes they are drawn up by professional storyboard artists and stand as amazing works of art in their own right. In our case they are the modest scribbles of our own team members, but the same principles still stand. All our sequences needed to explain complex scientific theories and so each step in each sequence needed to be planned in detail.
The storyboard images on this page are taken from the sparrowhawk sequence from the second episode. The purpose of this sequence was to deconstruct the abilities of these amazing birds as they hunt. The success of each hunt depends on several things coming together, so each shot added another piece to the jigsaw and together they show just how complex a hunt like this can be.
To get these privileged shots, we sought the help of Lloyd and Rose Buck and Zack; a young male sparrowhawk. For years many TV production companies have sought Lloyd and Rose’s help because of their knowledge and experience in training animals and their excellent record in animal husbandry. For them it is more than a job – it’s their life’s passion – and they share their home with a menagerie of birds. Each is treated as part of the family and each is a TV star in its own right.
With Lloyd and Rose’s expertise and Zack’s superb flying, we were able to fly a camera - mounted on a cable - at high speed alongside Zack as he zoomed through gardens and over hedges. We got incredible shots of him in action. It took a great deal of planning on the part of the whole team, but the end result is spectacular.
There are several sequences in the series where trained or tame animals were used to help us explain how animals use the air: the caracal in episode one, the whooper swans in episode two and the starlings in episode three. In each case these animals allowed us to get shots that wouldn’t have been achievable in any other way.
