A day in a filming truck
When I’m sleeping out on top of the filming truck I wake up at 5am sharp - if not before - often to the rumbling of vocalising lions in the distance, or Tom the producer snoring.
The direction of that sound – of the lions vocalising, not Tom’s snoring - dictate your direction of travel for the morning. If you’re following lions, head towards the sound, if you’re looking for cheetahs, you’re better off going in the opposite direction. Because cheetahs and lions historically don’t mix.
If it’s the dry season, then at that time of the morning it’s still pitch black and it’s also freezing cold - cold enough to make you want to stay cocooned in your bedroll indefinitely. But someone has to take one for the team and boil the kettle – that’s what gets everyone out of their bed rolls: the promise of coffee. Or the desperate urge to empty your bladder.
Once the coffee has been made and distributed into a multitude of drinking vessels, bed rolls have been zipped up and ratchet strapped to the roof, missing items have been located, mics have been switched on and eyes have finally fully opened, we set off – into the dawn, just as the red sphere of Delta sunlight touches the horizon.
At this point, it’s anyone’s guess how the day will unfold. That is the most joyous part of being in the Delta: the endless possibilities for bizarre animal encounters that await you around every termite mound, baobab tree or leadwood forest.
If I’m with a moving cheetah at this time of the morning, then I’m usually following a hungry one. In which case the next 4 hours is a fairly frantic time, trying to predict the cheetah’s movements and find their possible prey targets before they do (which, as it goes, is not easy when you’re up against a cheetah with supercharged vision).
If you have a moment of calm and the cat you’re following is flat (i.e. sleeping), you’re finally able to indulge in your second coffee of the day and a rusk – I could write a whole ode dedicated to the humble rusk.
Simply put, it’s a delectable crispy biscuit snack, which tastes like it’s been hand-baked by the gods. It also just so happens to go down extraordinarily well after being dunked in a coffee. But that’s a lot of mention of coffee, so what happens when nature calls, I hear you ask? And I don’t mean African wildlife.
For number 1s that’s a simple squat behind the truck scenario. When it’s a number 2, things get a little more complex. The process usually consists of a musical chairs-esque exchange of passengers between vehicles to get rid of your colleague…followed by finding a safe spot and the infamous delta decision: ‘to burn, or to bury’ the paper?!
I’ll save my quickly diminishing modesty by not going into the details of that particular event.
Once that operation is complete, you’re straight back onto the hippo trail ridden floodplain and whatever action might be unfolding. If you have a moment for lunch, then it’s a pre-cooked frozen meal out of your onboard fridge, heated up on your gas stove (butter bean, veg curry, coconut milk topped with a hot sauce has been the recent go-to).
Self-sufficiency is key when working out of the trucks and essentials come in the order of: coffee, fuel, loo roll, water, food, gas. The phrase: ‘fail to prepare, prepare to fail’ really comes into its own, because you could be out following cats for 4 days straight.
If we can muster up the motivation, we very occasionally work off our meals with a vehicle based workout using resistance bands in the back of the truck. A shower is then had by heating up some water in a cooking pot, standing naked as the day you were born on a wooden plank and scooping said warmed water over you. This is wildly invigorating. NB: the cooking pot that you’re eating out of should not be used to put your charcoal coloured dirty feet into. (NO producer Tom, just NO).
You’ll be with the cats solidly until the sun decides to dip again, by which point, if the cat you’ve been with all day has been sleeping, it’s likely to get up and start moving the second the sun sets. (I’m sure they do it just to mess with us). We’ll then radio back into camp for the thermal camera… set up for a night shift and occasionally some kind of never-before-filmed behaviour will begin to play out in front of us. Who needs sleep anyway?
A tour of Greg's filming truck
Greg gives a tour of his specialist filming truck which he uses to film the cats.
