Making Meerkat: A Dynasties Special
Meerkat production team members recount some memorable moments from the field.
The day begins...
Emma Napper (Producer/ Director)
Each day filming meerkats begins exactly the same way. We get up at 4am, throw on some clothes in our tents, grab our kit and a flask of coffee and head out of camp into the vastness of the Makgadigadi salt pans.
We head for the den where we left the meerkats. Around the camp there are tracks and trees, but out where the meerkats live there is just grass and salt and the great nothing!
If it wasn’t for the amazing guides we wouldn’t be able to find anything, but somehow even in the dark, and surrounded by the featureless plains, we find the small patch of land where we left the meerkats the night before.
After that anything can happen…
Unpredictable chaos!
John Brown (Cameraman)
Of all the species I’ve filmed over the 30 years of my career nothing is more capable of producing moments of utterly unpredictable chaos than the meerkat. Its capacity to defy logic, sense, and the basic rules of natural selection would have Darwin scratching his beard.
Prior to what became one of the most dramatic moments of the filming, our group had already carelessly managed to let its one remaining pup wander off to a neighbouring group - behaviour that might have resulted in the pup’s death.
Then, when one of the males – Thonga Tona – decided to go on a solo search and recovery mission, behind enemy lines, we were surprised to say the least. I now had the various key characters in our film spread across several hundred metres of scrubby terrain, with Thonga Tona belly-crawling towards the rival’s den containing three unguarded pups.
We thought it was obvious what would happen: Thonga Tona would kill the rivals’ pups, this would be expected, if gruesome, meerkat behaviour… Maybe the rivals would return, but the action was definitely going to be focussed at the rivals’ den site. I carried the camera and tripod to the den and prepared for the action.
I got some lovely low angle shots as TT advanced and began to cautiously explore the rivals’ den. However I wasn’t sure what horrors might be playing out underground? Would the rivals return to save the pups?
I was in the right place for any eventuality, except for what actually happened.
Thonga Tona emerged with the three rival group’s pups, all intact and looking remarkably perky, and proceeded to charge at top speed back towards our group on the horizon. He was followed by the pups going as fast as their little legs could carry them, and away from me. He had kidnapped them!
The rival group then steamed in, to my left, and raced off after Thonga Tona and their pups, and before I knew it there wasn’t a meerkat in sight.
I tried to run across scrub and salt flats carrying half my bodyweight in camera kit - it was 40C. Out of breath, melting in the heat, I felt like I’d missed the best behaviour of the shoot - my gamble of deploying meerkat logic had failed - meerkats have no logic.
Then, the filming gods were with me – coming toward me with fantastic war-dancing and amazing interactions were the two groups, and I got to witness – and film - the melee that ensued!
They need to run away?!
Sophie Meyjes (Assistant producer)
The moment that really sticks out for me, was when Maghogho’s family headed for their bunker.
As her family ran into this tiny hole to get away from the rival gang, I thought to myself “there is no way this can work…what on earth are they doing, they need to run away?!”
At the same time, our guide BK got the giggles – Thonga Tona, what is he doing?! He, the meerkat that had created this whole mess in the first place – was now watching from afar! He’d ducked out of the fight and was observing from the sidelines. A move that our guide found highly entertaining!
Incredibly, Maghogho’s defensive bunker tactic had worked. It was impossible for the rival gang to attack the family as they hid within the burrow, and eventually the rivals were forced to retreat. Soon after the magnitude of what had happened began to dawn on us – we had witnessed some truly extraordinary behaviour.
Only food runs
Ed Saltau (Cameraman)
I’ve always loved all cats but, as an Australian, I’ve never had the chance to travel to Africa before filming for the Meerkat: A Dynasties Special. I was on high alert every moment we weren’t filming to hopefully catch a glimpse of a lion, but after two weeks without a sighting I started to lose hope.
This all changed after the first heavy rain of the wet season, when we woke to find the meerkat territory covered in lion prints. Our guide, Greg, announced “If you do see a big cat, don’t run. Seriously guys, only food runs in the bush. Whatever you do, don’t run”. Hardly comforting advice.
We didn’t see a lion that day, but fresh prints would appear each morning for the next few days.
Finally, one morning whilst filming our meerkat family emerge from their burrow, a pride of lions moved across the salt pan to the north, about 50m away. Heart pounding, I asked our guides if we should be concerned – but they just laughed.
That was good enough for me and I spent the next 5 minutes running around filming the lions, watching them through my binoculars and even managed to get a two shot with our meerkat family.
Lions are probably the most filmed animal in the world but I’ll never forget that first sighting. The build up over the preceding week made it all the better!
Feeling very small
Tom Crowley (Camerman/ field director)
A helicopter was the only way to really show the sheer scale of the vast landscape where Maghogho lives, but one day we were lucky enough to witness something even more impressive – a giant Makgadikgadi dust storm…
From the ground it was hard to see the size of the storm, but as we rose and started to approach it was clear that this was simply enormous. We estimated around 40 miles long and 7,000 ft high. At its front, the winds were battering maybe 70mph and flattening everything in their path – but only a mile or so away from the storm, all was calm.
It’s one of the incredible things Maghogho has to deal with – it’s just a matter of chance if storms like this miss or hit. It was exhilarating to watch, and I felt so lucky that we had happened to have the helicopter that day – I’d never seen anything like it and know there would have been no other way to capture the scale and power of this amazing event.
I felt so small.
The best moments
Emma Napper (Producer/ Director)
The best moments for me were the quiet ones.
Maybe at the end of the day, when the light is too low to film but I can still record the sound of the pups getting some last bits to eat and snuffling around the den. After watching them and following them in the intense heat, suddenly everything drops away and I can sit, put on the headphones, and concentrate on recording the intimate sounds of just one little pup as it explores a blade of grass, or tries to climb my shoe, or gets spooked by its brother.
In this huge, intense, massive place – it is these details which are important to me and really allow us to get into their world.
One of the guides often says “only when you understand the little lives, do you understand ‘The Great Nothing’ ”.
...the day ends
Emma Napper (Producer/ Director)
Everyday ends the same. Driving home in the dark we start to see the night characters take over – bat eared fox, aardvark, cheetah, wild cats – they all seem to prefer the cooler evenings!
When we get home, we sit and eat dinner in a big tent and talk about the meerkats and what has happened – we even try to guess what that will mean for tomorrow! We’re usually wrong though…
Then I head back to the kit tent in the dark to start processing the footage, following the footprints I made in the morning.
All is calm.
Except for the one night when a 4inch long solifugid ran over my foot in the dark (it looks like a Frankenstein spider but golden with huge jaws and extra legs)…
Then I might have screamed a little.
