GR425: Media Package Photo Journal

THE ADVENTURES OF ATTENBOROUGH: THE PERSONAL ARCHIVES

An Exclusive Glimpse Behind the Lens of David Attenborough.

Featuring Photography & Commentary from His Personal Collection.

“I know of no pleasure deeper than that which comes from contemplating the

natural world & trying to understand it.”

DAV I D AT T EN B O R O U G H

1950—

ZO O Q U E S T

195 4 - 1963

In 1954, Attenborough traveled to Sierra Leone to film a new series, Zoo Quest. The concept was simple: they would catch wild animals – their bounty from Sierra Leone included wild pythons, bird-eating spiders and their big prize, the bald headed rockfowl – and bring them back to UK to add to the zoo’s collection. On set, Attenborough was the producer, director, sound man and animal wrangler. He only ended up being the presenter because Lester was taken ill after the first episode.

Zoo Quest was broadcast in black and white, but the original colour footage, which was later discovered by BBC archivists, is beautiful.

Attenborough narrates his encounters in clipped, 1950s, BBC-issue received pronunciation, with little trace of his more expressive later style.

Although the colonial animal-snatching conceit of Zoo Quest is extremely dated, each episode focuses as much on the human worlds he visits as the exotic animals. Attenborough’s script is factual, respectful and open-minded; his films unsensationally depict nudity, polygamy & cultural traditions, alongside the animal hunt.

Over the next few years, new series of Zoo Quest appeared and Attenborough’s reputation grew. With his keen eye for the perceptions of his TV audience, he adapted cannily to a rapidly expanding industry. By the dawn of the 60s, as he admitted in his autobiography, Zoo Quest was looking “increasingly antiquated”. He realised that it was time for a new approach. His next Quest series, filmed in northern Australia, eschewed attempts to bring animals home and instead depicted the cultural lives of Aboriginal peoples.

1970—

In 1965, he became controller of BBC Two, an appointment greeted with scepticism by “TV professionals” quoted in newspaper columns of the day. At first, he was considered lightweight, a youthful bit of eye-candy, but he was soon hailed for his “unexpected” success, as a Daily Express profile put it. “Everybody forgot I wasn’t just a naturalist – I was always a trained TV man,” he told the paper in 1965. “Hell, I love it. I watch everything. Straight home from the office – switch to BBC Two – see all my babies.”

As the channel’s controller and then director of programmes for both BBC channels, Attenborough was a great innovator. In 1967, the government decided that BBC Two would become the first channel to switch to colour, and he set about exploiting this advantage. He put snooker on the channel and helped devise new forms of sport: one-day cricket and rugby league under floodlights. Programmes that emerged under his watch include Dad’s Army, Porridge and Monty Python’s Flying Circus. In 1972, he championed “community programming” that included what has been described as the first sympathetic portrayal of transgender people on British television; he even suggested phone-ins to widen audience participation, years before they became a staple of TV and radio. ttenborough’s achievements at BBC Two made him a prime candidate for director-general, the top job at the corporation. But he was tiring of the senior executive’s life – desk-bound, constant meetings – and in the early 70s he resigned.

“The fact he didn’t want to stay as an executive and wanted to go back to programming says something very important about him,” his son

Robert told me. Attenborough yearned to be more creative, and had seen the thankless politics involved in the top job. “The Archangel Gabriel couldn’t do the DG’s job,” he remarked to me.

Instead, he persuaded the BBC that he could create a Civilisation-style treatment of the evolution of plants and animals.

This series took three years to make, and the budget was so big that Attenborough had to pitch to US networks for funding.

(He still enjoys impersonating a sceptical American TV man aghast at the prospect of funding a series that opened with “slime mould”.)

L I F E O N E A R T H (1979)

Life on Earth was broadcast for 55 minutes on 13 consecutive Sunday evenings in 1979. It “started quietly,” according to Mike Salisbury, a former producer who worked on the programme. Despite the presence of a safari-suited Attenborough, binoculars around his neck, skipping between exotic locations, the early episodes often feel like a lecture with moving pictures. Our handsome presenter tries to make the best of diagrams of DNA, micro-organisms and 200m-year-old fossils. “A whole lot of worms have left this delicate tracery of trails in what was mud,” he enthuses in the Grand Canyon. Salisbury chuckled at the difficulty of bringing this to life on television: “Fossils, for God’s sake. They don’t even move.”

But as its epic story slowly unfolds, the series warms up. The writing is often superb: “Four million animals and plants in the world,” says Attenborough, “four million different solutions to staying alive.” The penultimate episode, on primates, features the first memorable Attenborough “two shot”, where he appears alongside another animal. He joins a grooming session among mountain gorillas in Rwanda, and still has the presence-of-mind to whisper: “There is more meaning and mutual understanding in exchanging a glance with a gorilla than any other animal I know.” Although some facts have changed – we now know there are more than 8m species, not 4m – the series stands the test of time; one Cambridge professor still shows his undergraduates the primates episode each year.

For old-timers at the BBC, history is divided into before and after Life on Earth. “We hadn’t realised what a game-changer it was going to be,” said Salisbury. “By the end there were 14 million people watching it.” The series established what television executives call the “blue-chip” natural history blockbuster. While the BBC has relinquished its dominance over most genres, it remains the pre-eminent maker of natural history programmes, according to

Fothergill. So much of that “is down to David”, he said. Much imitated, these blockbusters are still a huge global export: the BBC will not reveal what profit, if any, these series make, but Planet Earth II and Blue Planet II were sold to more than 235 territories.

After the success of Life on Earth, Attenborough spent much of the 80s completing what became a triumvirate of blue-chip behemoths, with The Living Planet exploring ecology and The Trials of Life revealing animal behaviour. He also turned his attention to series about less fashionable subjects: plants, spiders, stick insects and other invertebrates. Audiences liked his enthusiasm, his quick wit and his affection for animals, already evident from his early days bottle-feeding a tiny African bush rat in Zoo Quest.

1980-

By the early 80s, Attenborough’s programmes had been broadcast around the world and he became recognised wherever he went. But he was not yet, to use another label that vexes him, a global superstar. Until recently, when Attenborough’s series were shown on US television, broadcasters would replace his narration with voices they thought an American audience would prefer. In 2010, when Life was broadcast in the US, Oprah Winfrey was the narrator.

Viewers tend to assume Attenborough writes every word he says on screen, while TV people think his lines are written for him. The truth is somewhere in between. Attenborough’s scripts are written by production teams, but he is an unusually rigorous editor and rewriter. Even today, Attenborough rewrites each script to fit his own turn of phrase and checks for accuracy. “If I send him a script, he goes through it with a fine-tooth comb. More than any other presenter,” said Mary Colwell. “His attention to detail is incredible and he won’t say anything he doesn’t want to say.”

When filming, according to Mike Gunton, Attenborough does not learn his lines precisely. “He looks at it and comes back and says: ‘What do you think if I say it like this?’ His turn of phrase and the way he delivers these turns of phrase – it’s got such power. He has the same genes as his brother,” meaning Richard, the Oscar-winning actor-director, who died in 2014. “I’ve often said he’s as good a performer as his brother,” Gunton said.

“You change the pace, you change the timbre, you change the mood, and the commentary has organic flow,” Attenborough told me. “If the last sentence ended 10 seconds ago rather than one minute ago, you start in a different kind of way. I don’t think other people do that. It’s a craft, and I quite enjoy it, actually.” His colleagues think his voice has improved with age. “If you go back to the older programmes, even on Blue Planet [from 2001], it’s quite a clipped voice,” said Fothergill. “It’s now the voice of an older man, but it’s become even more powerful, with a timbre and an emotional resonance.”

T H E L I V I N G P L A N E T (198 4) The Living Planet: A Portrait of the Earth is a BBC nature documentary series written and presented by David Attenborough, looking at the ways in which living organisms, including humans, adapt to their surroundings. The series consists of twelve episodes which explain how the Earth works and how living organisms survive and thrive in different environments.

Filming techniques continued to evolve. One new piece of equipment used was a scuba diving suit with a large, fully enclosed faceplate, allowing Attenborough to speak (and be seen) underwater.

In the opening of the series, David Attenborough narrates: “Our planet, the Earth, is, as far as we know, unique in the universe. It contains life. Even in its most barren stretches, there are animals.”

As the narration hints, he explores every corner of the planet. First, he goes to the world’s deepest valley in the Himalayas where temperatures range from those of the tropics in its lower reaches to that of the poles higher up. This is an example to show how creatures become adapted to living in certain environments. And he explains how the Earth has become formed as today as well as examines the life around volcanic eruptions. Then he explores the polar regions, the northern coniferous forests, the jungles of the tropics, the savannahs of Africa, North America and South America, and the world of deserts.

And then he looks at the creatures that spend most of their lives in the air, freshwater habitats and their inhabitants, coastal environments and the effects of tides, remote islands and their inhabitants, and the marine environment. Lastly, he tells of “New Worlds” that humans have changed so far not only by creating new ones like villages and cities but also by destroying environments like deforestations and oil spills.

“The difficulties are not actually experienced by me, because the bits that I do are the easiest bits. [...] It’s not too difficult to walk on to a rock and look at a camera and say something. The difficulties are those that are encountered by the cameramen, directors and recordists, who actually have to get an animal doing something which perhaps nobody’s ever even seen before. Those are extremely difficult things to do.”[1]

In an interview on the making of the series, Attenborough was self-effacing concerning his own contribution:

1990-

In common with Attenborough’s previous productions, the programmes include sequences that were filmed in many locales. The series took three years to make, involving visits to 42 countries. The subject matter had been covered before by Attenborough within Life on Earth, in an episode entitled “Lords of the Air”, but now he was free to expand on it. However, by his own confession, despite being especially fascinated by one family, the birds of paradise, Attenborough was not an expert in ornithology. Nevertheless, the notion of an entire series devoted to the creatures excited him, as he would be able to not only communicate his findings to the viewing audience, but further his own knowledge as well.

From the outset, the production team were determined that the sound of birds calling and singing would not be dubbed on to the filmed pictures afterwards: it would be recorded simultaneously. To that end, meticulous care was taken not to include man-made ‘noises off’ from the likes of cars and aeroplanes. For one particular sequence, Britain’s dawn chorus, it was important that the movement of the beak and the expelled warm air was synchronous with the accompanying song.

A trick used to entice some of the animals near the camera was to play a recording of the same species in the hope that the target would not only answer back, but investigate its source as well. This was employed in the episode “Signals

L I F E O F B I R D S (1998) and Songs”, where Attenborough encouraged a superb lyrebird—one of nature’s best mimics—to perform on cue. Despite such fortuity, filming on the series was not all plain sailing: in “Finding Partners”, Attenborough was chased by a capercaillie, which didn’t even stop when the presenter fell over.

A technique that had been previously used for The Living Planet was again called for to film greylag geese in flight.

The newly hatched goslings were imprinted with a human ‘mother’, and, when fully grown, were able to be photographed flying alongside an open-top car.[2] Computer animation was utilised in the first episode to illustrate extinct species, such as the terror bird and the moa.

2000-

In November 2004, nearly 20 years after the phrase “global warming” was first coined, Attenborough attended a lecture in Belgium given by Ralph Cicerone, an American expert on atmospheric chemistry. The graphs that Cicerone presented, showing the rise in global temperatures, finally convinced Attenborough, beyond any doubt, that humans were responsible for the changing climate. Attenborough insists he was never a sceptic about man-made climate change; just cautious. Even after Cicerone’s lecture, he still believed his job was to make programmes about wildlife. He worried that people would think he was setting himself up as an expert on climate science.

Attenborough’s output changed, however. This distinction may mystify those beyond the Natural History Unit, but its film-makers distinguish between natural history and “environmental” film-making. The former focus on animal or plant biology and behaviour; the latter address environmental issues. Attenborough’s 2006 BBC two-parter, The Truth About Climate Change, was his first to address global warming explicitly. Three years later came How Many People Can Live on Planet Earth?, which reflected his long-standing concern over the rising human population. (Attenborough’s position incurred criticism from some who argued he was focusing more on environmental harm caused by poorer nations rather than over-consumption by wealthier populations.) This year came a new Attenborough BBC documentary, Climate Change: The Facts. Next year, the BBC will broadcast another, Extinction: The Facts.

P L A N E T E A R T H ( 2006) Planet Earth is a 2006 British television series produced by the BBC Natural History Unit. Five years in the making, it was the most expensive nature documentary series ever commissioned by the BBC and also the first to be filmed in high definition.[1] The series received multiple awards, including four Emmy Awards, a Peabody Award, and an award from the Royal Television Society.

Planet Earth premiered on 5 March 2006 in the United Kingdom on BBC One, and by June 2007 had been shown in 130 countries. The original version was narrated by David Attenborough, whilst some international versions used alternative narrators.

Ten years later, the BBC announced a six-part sequel had been commissioned, titled Planet Earth II, the first television series produced by the BBC in Ultra-high-definition (4K). David Attenborough returned as narrator and presenter.

[2][3] A second sequel, Planet Earth III is currently announced and planned to air in 2022.

2010-

The arrival of Blue Planet II in 2017 heralded a new urgency to Attenborough’s blockbusters, helping transform popular attitudes towards waste and pollution with its images of plastic enveloping a turtle, and albatrosses unwittingly feeding plastic bags to their chicks. When I interviewed Attenborough this spring, his Netflix series Our Planet had not yet been released. It was billed as a significantly more pressing appeal to save the world, and Fothergill, its producer, was keen to assert its environmental credentials.

Attenborough, meanwhile, seemed equally keen to assert that it wasn’t so different to his earlier work: “If you forget the flummery and the propaganda and the press releases, what does it do? It shows the most breathtaking sequences you’ve ever seen – beauty, wonder, spectacles filmed in a way that you never saw before, with drones and in fabulous colour, with surging music, and so on, and then at the end, it says it’s all in danger.

That’s what they do. I’m not ashamed of that. I think it’s a perfectly valid thing.”

B LU E P L A N E T

I I ( 2017 ) But the strange thing, when you sat down to watch Our Planet, was that it did not match Attenborough’s billing. Each episode began with him discussing the moon landing. “Since then, the human population has more than doubled,” his voiceover continued. “This series will celebrate the natural wonders that remain, and reveal what we must preserve to ensure that people and nature thrive.” The series returned, relentlessly, to this manifesto. It explained the importance of rainforest for a habitable climate, and almost no stunning sequence of wild animals came without Attenborough emphasising the precariousness of their continued existence. Likewise, in Seven Worlds, One Planet, the environmental messages are no longer restricted to an appeal at the end of each episode. The first story about the impact of climate change comes 16 minutes into the opening episode. Throughout, there are sequences that highlight the human actions – climate change, pollution, habitat destruction, poaching – causing Earth’s sixth great planetary extinction. “We are a behavioural wildlife show and we’ve got a whole sequence without an animal in it – that’s a remarkable change,” said the series producer, Scott Alexander.

This shift in Attenborough’s work reflects a response by film-makers, and particularly the Natural History Unit, to accusations that they have pulled punches in the past. Yet, as his protestations suggest, being “environmental” has not come easily to Attenborough. “I don’t think he’s naturally an environmentalist at all,” said one former colleague. “He’s not eloquent when it comes to environmentalism. But you can’t take away his intelligence, his understanding of the zeitgeist and his integrity.” According to the source, Attenborough was initially reluctant to include the plastics story in Blue Planet II, worrying once again that “it would be a turn-off”.

If that was the case – and senior BBC executives deny it – by the time the series was broadcast in 2017, Attenborough was fully behind the plastics episode. “David really led on the plastics thing, talking about plastics before the series went out,” said the producer Miles Barton.

2020-

L I F E I N CO LO R ( 2021) Life in Color with David Attenborough is an American documentary series that was released on Netflix on April 22, 2021. This series explores how animals use colors to survive and thrive in the wild. David Attenborough travels the world from the rainforests of Costa Rica to the snowy Scottish Highlands to reveal the extraordinary and never-before-seen ways animals use color.

Using revolutionary camera technology created specifically for this series, viewers will experience how colors invisible to the human eye play a vital role in animal interactions. From the seemingly magical ultraviolet signals on a butterfly’s wings to the surprising yet crucial purpose behind a Bengal tiger’s stripes, a hidden world of color is waiting to be discovered..

Over the decades, film has made extraordinary advances, from black and white to color, and high definition to even ultra-high definition. But we have always known there is another world of color, one that only animals can see. For Life in Color, we developed new technology to provide a window into these invisible worlds. It has allowed us to unlock some of the mysteries of nature, and to share with our audience for the first time.”

WHAT’S NEXT?

At 93, Attenborough is more in demand than ever.

Susan, his daughter, keeps a watchful eye on him and tries in vain to scale back his speaking engagements and charitable commitments. (He has never put his name to any commercial product.)

The BBC want him to narrate Planet Earth III, but he will be 96 when the time comes. Meanwhile, he devotes most of his considerable stamina to appealing for radical action to tackle the climate crisis and biodiversity loss. In Poland, at the UN climate change summit in 2018, he was chosen to represent the world’s people in addressing leaders from almost 200 nations. At Davos, in early 2019, he questioned the wisdom of perpetual economic growth: only “a madman or an economist” would cling to this notion, he argued.

Earlier this month, Attenborough launched Seven Worlds, One Planet with an exhausting round of interviews to journalists from six continents, while a police helicopter buzzed over Extinction Rebellion protests on the streets of London. At the premiere, when I asked if he was comfortable about his films inspiring Extinction Rebellion, he replied sharply: “Extinction Rebellion doesn’t have the monopoly of people who care about the planet. That’s a section of people who care about the planet, but everybody should care about the planet. We’re citizens of the planet. We have the dominance of it and we ought to care about it.”

Attenborough has been supportive of school climate strikers, and likes to suggest that the planet now belongs in younger hands. He remains visibly fascinated by all kinds of life and social change around him, but instinctively cleaves to the role of his lifetime – as an interested observer, watching a new generation clamouring for environmental change. “I’ve had my share of the platform. I’d be better off standing apart from it and trying to be as dispassionate as I can,” he told me last week. “I’m old and they are young.

They have their own techniques and their own ethos. It’s their world, not mine, that’s for sure.”

“In times of crisis, the natural world is a source of both joy and solace. The natural world produces the comfort that can come from nothing else. And we are part of the natural world. If we damage the natural world, we damage ourselves.”

DAV I D AT T EN B O R O U G H