If there’s one place in the world where the wild things really are, it is the African savanna where such an array of animals as elephants, lions, giraffes and crocodiles all co-exist.
Well, almost.
As Disneynature’s African Cats shows through its stars – a pride of lions and a cheetah and her cubs – danger lies at every turn in the wilderness of the savanna. I had a chance to catch up to directors Alastair Fothergill and Keith Scholey to discuss their arduous project, finding the right animals to film and the importance of documentaries in Movieland.
Steve Gow: I had read that cameraman Simon King had said that he hopes that people won’t see the animals as much they will mothers, daughters and sons and great warriors. And it does really play out in a sort of Shakespearean manner, does it not?
Alastair Fothergill: It does indeed and we’ve always known that (about) the natural lives of especially lions but also cheetahs…what we wanted to do with this film is to make a very powerful character-driven movie. Not a television doc but a story that was true to those animals and true to their lives but very much driven by individual characters so that you could actually just experience their lives and the amazing drama they go through.
SG: It’s amazing too reading that in finding the right pride (to focus on), you almost went through an audition process – it took you a while to figure it out, right?
Keith Scholey: We had to be very careful who we were going to go with because once we started with them, we knew had to stick with them. We chose Sita (cheetah) because she had just had 5 tiny cubs, really young ones and we knew the chances of her bringing up all five were very small so there was great drama there. We chose Fang’s pride because he was a (lion) who was clearly on the way out to be honest. We knew there was instability in that pride. And once having chosen that pride, Layla was an obvious star because she was an old lioness and she had a perfectly aged 6-month cub and we knew that for her to bring up Mara was going to be a challenge. We weren’t exactly sure what would happen but we knew it wouldn’t be boring.
SG: Well it did take you 2 ½ years to shoot. What was the most daunting part of making something that you’re looking at finishing 2 ½ years down the road?
Alastair: The most daunting part is (thinking) have you gone with the right characters and also if you’ve gone at the start with the right characters but then it goes so badly wrong – like if Sita had lost all her cubs…what happens then? So we had some moments when we’d lost our animals temporarily and what have you and you think, ‘oh dear, what is going to happen and is this going to play out?’ but fortunately at the bad turns we got lucky as it turns out.
SG: The scene that really stuck with me after watching it is when Fang the lion faces off against the crocodile which was an amazing serendipitous moment I imagine.
Alastair: It is and the Mara River is a legendary place for crocodiles; it literally is crocodile infested and (for) the lions that live there and have to cross that river, it is a kind of an interesting battle because on the land, the lion is dominant and in the water the croc is dominant – at the edge they both think that they’ve got the upper hand so you get that (confrontation) which is very rare to see.
SG: There’s a huge importance on authenticity with this. How important do you think that is in general when we’re living in an era of computer effects and fantasy playing such a great role in cinema?
Keith: I think that’s why we hope these Disneynature films have a special place. I think, as you say, artifice is at the heart of so much of cinema but I think people still yearn for reality and I think there’s nothing more real really than a movie like African Cats and to take (audiences) to a place like that that they can never go to. All we really wanted to do is to make it a really engaging story. We didn’t want to make a sort of TV-type nature documentary that was teaching you something. We wanted to really engage people emotionally in the characters and hopefully we’ve achieved that. But I think the fact that it’s absolutely real and absolutely happened is very, very important.
