Penguins top 'shopping’ list

Press, 17 November 1981, Page 27

Penguins top 'shopping’ list

A British naturalist and film-maker, Dr John Sparks, was to leave Christchurch for Antarctica yesterday with a Television New Zealand film crew and a “shopping” list Taking priority will be Mount Erebus, penguins, dry ’ valleys, and Sir Ernest Shackleton’s hut at Cape Royds. “We have to get the penguins,” said Dr Sparks, at his hotel last evening. “You just cannot get penguins in Greenland.” He and the film crew will be “shopping” for footage to be used in four television programmes in what is the first big co-operative venture between the 8.8. C. and Television New Zealand. The New Zealand crew will help shoot background film for three multi-million-dollar B.B.Coproductions. Dr Sparks will give the crew and T.V.N.Z. director, Mr Neil Harraway, the benefit of 15 years experience making natural history programmes while they make a film for New Zealand viewers.

The 8.8. C. productions are a dramatised documentary of Sir Ernest Shackleton’s Antarctic expeditions, a sequel to David Attenborough’s “Life on Earth” series, and a dramatised natural

history programme written and directed by Dr Sparks. The Shackleton documentary will be the biggest 1982 8.8. C. production. x

Mr Christopher Railings, who producea the popular "Search for the Nile" dramatised documentary, is executive producer. Most of the series will be filmed-in Greenland for convenience, but film of Shackleton’s hut. Emperor penguins, and the Ross Ice Shelf has to come from Antarctica.

David Attenborough ,has asked for film of algae which live in air bubbles trapped in the continent’s dry valley ice. Dr Sparks, who is 42, wants penguin rookery footage to round off a series he has been working on for two years. He has made more than 100 programmes working with the 8.8.C.’s natural history unit. Television New Zealand and the 8.8. C. had swapped cameramen and had worked together before, said Dr Sparks, but never on a project as big as this. “It makes sense in this case; both countries get something out of it,” he said. Mr Harraway, Dr Sparks, a T.V.N.Z. sound technician, Mr lan Masterton, and a T.V.N.Z. cameraman on loan to the 8.8. C., Mr Robert Brown, were to fly to Ross Island yesterday where they will spend the next month filming.