Roughing It!

Filming wildlife often involves long haul flights on uninsurable airlines to far flung unheard of destinations at least 50km from the nearest Golden Arches fast food restaurant. Obviously that’s not all bad but in Africa you often have to put up with bugs, bats, malaria and waterborne diseases in your coffee. I say ‘often’, as on this occasion our accommodation could not have been further removed from the traditional natural history filming experience. Mara Plains is one of the best camps in the Mara. But honestly we stayed there because of the location and 24 hour electricity, not because of the amazing food, good company or stunning tents.

We would like to thank Richard, Juma, Moses, Dominic, Adam, Kelvin, Tyler, Susan, Ella, Ping, Philip and everyone else at Mara Plains Camp (http://www.maraplains.com) who helped to make our trip so memorable (in a successful sort of way). We were extremely lucky to find such a fantastic location to use as a base camp and even more fortunate to have been looked after so well. A special thank you to Sean ‘Boy Scout’ Hartley for all of his help in accommodating us, spotting the lions and keeping the generators running despite the sleep deprivation this must have caused.

And special thanks too to:
Richard ‘Marmalade’ Jones for learning to love the Starlight camera
Tom ‘Cakeboy’ Stephens for getting to grips with the thermal camera alongside general creative input AND dealing with much of the digital file management
Stanley ‘Houdini’ Kinyolo, for some expert car magic in the Mara mud
Jean Hartley of Viewfinders http://www.viewfindersltd.com/ for getting us in and out of the country with no problems whatsoever, and supplying Snickers bars at a time of need.

We have now returned to the office in the UK with all of our kit intact (if a few kilos heavier from the sand (read blood sweat and tears) it has collected to start the preparation for the edit at the end of the month. Thank you to everyone back in Kenya who helped us with this trip and made it such a success.


The Ammonite Team