How we made it: Flying with Dogs

One of the animals we most wanted to film for Life Story was the African Hunting Dog. Normally these animals live among dense scrub and as a result are renown for being extremely difficult to see, let alone film.

However after a year of research, the Life Story team discovered a location in Zambia where a large pack of Hunting Dogs had successfully bred, and were occupying an open, grassland territory. This was a rare opportunity to film one of Africa’s most rapidly declining mammals.

The team filmed from a 4 x 4, but the dogs were so fast during a hunt that it was very difficult to keep up with them to film a complete hunt. In order to capture a full picture of how they work together to hunt wildebeest the team needed to film from the air. There were no suitable helicopters in Zambia so the team had to call one in from South Africa. But at the last minute, a sudden change in government policy rendered the flying permits null and void. After much time, effort and form-filling, during which the original, 10-day aerial-filming window was rapidly closing, the team got the necessary permits.

They were left with just 2 days to attempt to film something that had never been achieved before – an aerial view of a complete hunt, from start to finish. However things went well and cameraman Jamie McPherson, using an aerial-filming rig that allowed him to film from a kilometre away, was able to film an entire hunt and record the dogs strategy and team-work.