Published: Thursday, 14th August, 2008 09:00
A minute's film to show for a whole week's work
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FOR retired Dunfermline freelance photographer Morris Allan – who scooped the world in the 1950s with the first pictures of the Russian Sputniks – the festival’s inaugural lecture was another ‘first’. Although he has long taken pride in their award-winning film outputs, it was the first time he had attended a lecture by self-effacing son Doug and his wife, Sue. Now in his 85th year, Morris said, “It’s difficult to say anything that doesn’t sound like blowing trumpets. But I was impressed by the modesty of their presentation.” Of his homecoming audience, Doug said, “The great thing here is you can speak in your family accent and they understand you! I did a film with Ewan McGregor about polar bears and there was a sequence where we chatted and joked. It was for the Discovery Channel in the States and they said, ‘That’s very nice, guys – but we are going to have to have to sub-title’.”
POLE stars Doug Allan and wife Sue Flood – the wildlife film-makers celebrated for their work on the award-winning Planet Earth and The Blue Planet series – raised the curtain on the first Carnegie Festival on Friday.
And they left a packed house in Dunfermline’s Odeon Cinema with the message, “We do have a precious planet to look after.”
During their special trailer for the inaugural festival, from 21st August until 6th September, Dunfermline-born Doug revealed he and Sue would be working on various sequences for two new natural-history blockbuster series, which the BBC now had in production.
Life, looking across the whole animal kingdom, is due out in 2010, and Frozen Planet, about the poles, is scheduled for transmission in 2011.
Explaining the long lead times, Doug told his audience, “For a week in the field you will come away with about a minute on the screen. You have to spend a lot of time waiting for some of these images and animal behaviours to come along.”
It was a meeting with David Attenborough in 1981 on the British Antarctic Survey base where he was stationed that set Doug on track for his award-winning film career.
He explained how his niche of cold-water filming had expanded into filming in some of the planet’s toughest and most extreme environments, “Wildlife filming for me has been a wonderful chance to use so many things I enjoy, whether it be diving, photography, travel and adventure.”
Doug works as a freelance cameraman, making his films through Tartan Dragon Ltd, a company he set up with Sue in 2003.
Sue told the Odeon audience, “I’m often asked, ‘It must be so romantic working with your husband?’ I’m sure that will raise chuckles from the in-laws in the audience!”
For she recalled an incident during which they had got up close and personal with humpback whales.
“I was filming Doug as he was filming a mother and calf,” she explained. “I looked over the top of the camera and realised the calf was only a couple of feet away. All of a sudden, it turned and flipped its tail and whacked me on the leg. It felt like someone had hit me with a sledgehammer. I dropped the camera, which slowly started going glug, glug...
“Doug was faced with a choice between rescuing his screaming wife or the camera Unfortunately, there was no contest – he swam down and got the camera!”
Doug confided, “I’ve been paying for it ever since!”
She went on to reveal how the pair had had a rude awakening on the very last shoot for The Blue Planet.
“We had camped on the ice, filming polar bears and beluga whales,” she recalled. “During the night the ice had broken up and we were stuck on a piece of ice about a hundred foot across. We radioed to a base about a four-hour flight away to try to get a helicopter. While we were stood on the ice and I was thinking, ‘This is terrible. We are going to die,’ Doug turned round and said, ‘Will you marry me?’”
Doug quipped, “Actually, I thought we were going to die!”
Sue added, “So our wedding rings have polar bears on the outside and on the inside is the GPS position of where we floated away. Every day it’s a kind of reminder of being driven to desperate measures!”
Principal Joan Stringer, of Carnegie Film Festival sponsors Napier University, thanked the couple for the “inspirational” insights into their fieldcraft, which she said reflected the passion and joy they brought to their work – “combined with huge amounts of talent, creativity, ingenuity, sheer persistence and not a little bravery.”
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