We’ve all heard that famous saying: “Never work with animals or children.” It’s a maxim almost every filmmaker will encounter at some point throughout their career.
It’s also wrong.
Of course, sometimes working with children and animals can be hard. They’re unpredictable on sets and shoots and they always steal the scene of whatever they are in, but in a lot of cases that isn’t always a bad thing. We’ve all seen more than enough video calls derailed by the presence of someone’s furry companion and the internet was practically built on sharing and distributing funny cat videos. We all remember that famous BBC interview where Professor Robert Kelly is interrupted by the chaotic arrival of his two children. It made for some amazing viewing, the video went viral and is currently sitting at over fifty-three million views! It’s probably been seen by far more people than anyone ever expected an in-depth discussion about Korean politics to ever get.
People love babies, and people love animals, and they especially love baby animals. So they’re far more likely to stick around and watch your content if it features some measure of the above. For us at Production Attic, we recently had a lovely example of this when we filmed with Diabetes UK about Nala, the world’s first Diabetic Anteater, for their upcoming health conference.
Nala currently resides at the Dundee Camperdown Wildlife Centre with her companion Lucifer, after they were both transferred from Edinburgh Zoo where she’d received her official diagnosis.
I was fortunate enough to be part of the filming process, going down with our producer Steph to capture footage from around the wildlife centre, not just of Nala herself but of her carers and of neighbouring animals too. Though of course, Nala was the main focus! We learnt all about how she lived, getting to get some up close – but safely supervised – footage with her.
The most interesting part came at the end of our day, as we began to head down from the back of the enclosure, where we had gotten some adorable footage of a group of meerkats. We came across a small fuzzy lemur sitting in the path who had escaped his pen, and the staff explained the lemurs had been moved recently and were probably trying to go back to their original home. Luckily, the staff were able to collect him safely.
Aside from this encounter, the filming went off without a hitch! We got some great shots of Nala and her neighbours, and it was also just very exciting for us – both Steph and I were highly anticipating meeting Nala, and we were both thrilled with our experience.
Of course, it’s not the first time we’ve worked with animals, and it certainly won’t be the last time either! We loved working with Nala and Diabetes UK, and we’re looking forwards to the chance to work with many more animals in the future!
