Landmark occasions
There are landmark occasions in one’s life, which should not go unmentioned. For an actor, perhaps its treading the boards with a bastion of the RSC; a sportsman would possibly cite playing alongside a world class superstar. I had such a brush with greatness last week as I found myself appearing alongside CBeebies puppet presenter, Jelly on a recording of the Green Balloon Club.
After a very successful film about bird ringing, organised by the Countryside Service on Colyford Common Local Nature Reserve, the production team were keen to revisit East Devon and film more of our wonderful wildlife – and who can blame them!
I suggested a look at estuary birds on the Exe and the team jumped at the chance. For those of you who might have missed the programme, Green Balloon Club is a show about the countryside for the under fives. Lead by intrepid reporter Jelly and various child guest presenters, aspects of the country’s wildlife and landscape are brought to the screen. For this programme I was asked to join Jelly and two young Exmouth school children, Nat and Lauren, to look at the different bird beaks on the estuary.
Working with Jelly was such fun, thanks largely to the magic created by Aliex, her puppeteer. While Nat, Lauren and I were sitting on board the Tudor Rose, cruising slowly past a grey seal banana-ing on the Great Bull Hill, Aliex was lying on her back on deck, crammed under the seating with nothing but a small TV screen for company. I was chilly, but she must have been freezing!
So off we sailed, to get footage of birds (difficult at the best of times) and young children; who said never work with children and animals - I’ve based my career on it! Nat and Lauren were tremendous, they remembered lines quickly, and repeated them over and over again as various trains, planes, motorbikes and off-camera giggles spoilt the take. They never grumbled about being cold – even though they must have been really chilly – and they always had big smiles on their faces, what great ambassadors for the town.
The estuary also gave a good account of itself, with stunning views of avocets, godwit, huge flocks of brent geese and bristling swarms of dunlin. It’s always refreshing to introduce new people to this spectacle, as it helps to remind yourself of just how amazing the place is. The BBC guys were spellbound by the birds on the estuary.
You may have noticed a stark omission from the previous list of birds seen. Curlew. This would not have been an issue, but for one little thing. Although we hadn’t seen a curlew on the mud, I had spoken about them on camera, and that meant that we needed to find one before the end of the day, or risk the entire day’s filming!
I love a challenge, but I’ll admit to being a little nervous. It was already high water, and a shot of a curlew on grass would not cut easily into the muddy estuary footage we had already got. Before we could get this crucial shot, there were other sequences that needed filming.
We filmed the introductions on the seafront beach, where a crowd gathered as crowds tend to when a TV camera is spotted. Any family with children under the age of twelve immediately recognised Jelly and a fan club of about 20 children gathered around her while we filmed the first sequence – as ever the young presenters were undaunted and performed like true professionals.
Eventually, with about 40 minutes of filmable light left in the day, I was able to find a curlew on a fittingly muddy background, and Ian the cameraman got his shots. Now all that’s left to do is sit back and wait for the programme to be broadcast, which will be sometime in March. I’ll keep you posted.
So a day’s filming translates into about three minutes of airtime in the programme, which might on first impressions seem rather inefficient. However, as evidenced by the number of children who recognised Jelly around Exmouth, this is a really popular series and after watching the Exe Estuary film, children up and down the country will have been given an introduction to a few very core ecological principals, worded in language befitting an audience of the under fives.
Questions like, “why are the birds here?” or “what are they eating?” are simple enough, but allowed us to probe a little deeper than merely stating that “curlews are brown and avocets are black and white”. We did say that too - its important stuff to a toddler, colour – but we also spoke about the lives of the birds and how they live.
Three minutes is too short a time to investigate the full depths of wetland avian ecology, but we certainly scratched the surface for a lot of little ones with this film; a real thrill and a real privilege.