Dealing with COVID

With productions locked down in the UK and unable to travel, the wildlife film industry, like many others, has taken quite a knock, but how did? “We were fairly lucky,” says series producer Huw Cordey, “as we had more or less finished offline picture edits by the time lockdown started, with the exception of . It had a huge impact on the rest of the process, though. For the edit, the editor was in the Silverback Productions offices in Bristol, with the producer at home monitoring on a Zoom connection. Everything took more than twice as long. By the time we delivered, we had completed 60 weeks of post-production – a record, I think, for a landmark natural history series, and in many cases we had to change the way we worked. Recording the narration with Sir David Attenborough ( ), for instance, was an interesting experience. “Three out of the five narrations were recorded at Sir David’s home. He sat in his dining room, with the walls and windows covered in duvets and sheets to stop echo and exclude traffic noise, and the microphone was cabled to Graham Wild, our sound mixer, who had set up on a table in Sir David’s garden. The first recording was on a swelteringly hot summer’s day, the second in the rain. Nevertheless, I would be surprised if anyone could tell which was recorded in a professional studio and which was in Sir David’s house.”