‘Doug is going out on tour throughout November around Ireland, you can purchase tickets through dougallan.com’ and his website https://dougallan.com/
What’s it like working with animals, close-up and in the wild? Tell us about your favourites.
I love working with big mammals, they’re so charismatic. Polar bears are wonderful, with an amazing sense of smell. They know you’re there from over a mile away, long before they might be able to see you.
It’s particularly special to be in the company of marine mammals. Whales are among my favourites. You need to get closer to animals when you’re in the water than you do on land. And you can only do that when you’re on the animals’ wavelength. You have to read their body language, and they in turn have to tune into yours. There’s no hiding from them, it’s like they have a sixth sense, and are able to gauge your mood. When you give off the right mental vibes, that’s when everything comes together between you.
One of my most memorable shoots was in Tonga in the South Pacific. We were filming humpback whales, and over the time we were there we really got to know them as individuals – you can recognise each one from the black and white pattern on their tails. I remember one very friendly female in particular. If I found her, she’d come up to me, to just a metre away, and look at me with her big eye. My relationship with her was a bit like you might have with a dog you know really well. We respected one another, I came to know her and she recognised me. It was such a privilege to think that this was a totally wild animal, and she was choosing to spend time with me.
Another big highlight was filming killer whales for Frozen Planet. I’d heard about this behaviour 30 years earlier, where the whales move into the pack ice to find seals on the floes. Then the members of the orca pod beat their tails in unison to make a wave that washes the seal off the ice. We were the first to capture the action on film.
What kind of childhood did you have, and how did it prepare you for your film career?
I grew up in Dunfermline in Scotland, at a time before children’s lives were full of TV and the internet. In those days, we made our own excitement. I was drawn to adventure, and I remember reading Jacques Cousteau’s book The Silent World when I was about ten. It was all about what was going on in the depths of the sea, and it made a big impression on me. In the summer we were lucky enough to go on the first package holidays to the Mediterranean, and it was there I discovered the wonder of underwater with simply a mask and fins. My love of that took me after leaving school to a degree in biology at Stirling University. I was very interested in what the scientists were finding underwater, but I realised I didn’t want to actually be a scientist – I wanted to be a diver, working alongside them, gathering the data they needed. Leave the number crunching to them!
What was your first big break into wildlife film-making?
My big break happened when I was 24 years old, when I was taken on as the diving officer for the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) on their research station on Signy Island. I did hundreds of dives, helping the marine biologists and developing my skills in underwater photography. It was a wonderful experience, but also very isolated: we were “down south” on base for over a year, in a place where the sea froze over for six months. We were 16 men, no women in those days, with the only outside communication via a telex machine, over which you were allowed to send 100 words a month to your family. But that taught me that you don’t need to always be in touch. To this day I’m a believer in “no news is good news”. When I’m away I focus on what I’m doing, not on communicating with people back home.
After my first BAS contract in Antarctica, I did a second, and it was towards the end of my final summer that I met David Attenborough for the first time. He was working with his film crew, they came ashore at Signy and I helped out, taking them to the places where I knew they’d get the best shots. It was the first time I’d seen a film crew in action, and it made me realise this was my calling. I decided to switch from stills to film making as a freelance cameraman – and that was the making of my career.
I bought a 16mm cine camera, took another contract with BAS but at a base station where I could access emperor penguins through the winter. I managed to film shots for the BBC series Birds for All Seasons and when that was transmitted in 1985, much of the first episode’s footage was mine. I’d broken through. I was a professional wildlife filmmaker.
When did you start sharing your story as a filmmaker?
It was Blue Planet, in 2001, that put the story of the filmmakers into the frame. Until that point the names of the camerapersons just whizzed by on the credits. But Blue Planet in the final ten minutes turned the spotlight on how the films were made, which became a very popular part of the programme. So from then on we weren’t just making films, we were telling people about how we made the films as well.
What kind of personality do you need to be a wildlife filmmaker?
The number one thing you need to do this job is to have a passion for the pictures. You have to be willing to put up with discomfort, uncertainty, and inconvenience to any semblance of routine in your personal life. You only do that if you’re really dedicated to achieving what ultimately matters – delivering pictures. You don’t always succeed, but you have to be driven to try again the next day, and to keep on trying. You must have the vision for your story. That’s why I can persist in freezing, miserable weather, maybe missing my family, sometimes wishing I was with them. I stay there because I want to improve on the images I’ve already shot. It’s wonderfully straighforward really – the first rule of wildlife filming is simply to be there. Because if you’re NOT there, you’ll never get it. It’s not like making a feature or a drama, where so much is controllable. You can’t control the wildlife or the weather, so stick with your own tenacity and drive, to keep going, to keep working for something better.
What sort of places have you worked in?
I’ve mostly worked in cold places, especially the Arctic and the Antarctic. But I’ve also filmed in the Himalayas, Andes, on Mount Everest, Asia and Africa. I was lucky, I saw a lot of amazing places, and most of my career was at a time when we didn’t think much about the impact of all that travelling. Today we’re much more aware, and I’m a lot more careful about how much I travel. I also think it’s important to think about the nature we can see without going too far. I’ve just finished making a film in Shropshire. There’s so much diversity in the UK, so much to see and to do.
What’s next for you? Any ambitions still to realise?
I want to put my feet up and my slippers on…no, not really. When opportunities appear, I’ll continue to make films – these days, they’re for organisations that are spreading awareness about our world. One ambition I have is to film a male narwhal. They’re small whales with a three-metre tusk – basically, a sea unicorn. They’re difficult animals to even track down, they’re very wary. But I’d relish the challenge. I’d love to spend time in the company of a friendly narwhal.
What’s the most important thing you want to share in your work?
Right now we seem to be rediscovering a sense of empathy with the planet, an awareness of our dependence on the natural world. We felt that in the sixties and seventies, but then we lost it and were persuaded to become super consumers instead. That’s why we’re in the ecological mess we’re in right now. We need to establish a better relationship with the planet, and the best programmes should be encouraging us to do it. It’s about seeing the world from nature’s point of view and reining in our materialism.
