FILMING NATURE

Evening Post, Volume CXIX, Issue 34, 9 February 1935, Page 24

FILMING NATURE

"Secrets:of Nature," by Mary Field and Percy Smith, reveals to the large public which has enjoyed the "Secrets of Nature" film series the methods by which these beautiful and interesting pictures were, obtained. The time, skill, and patience, involved can be imagined when we learn that some- of the films take four years to make and demand very complicated, and highly-specialised outfit. Bird-lovers will bo diverted by the chapter on the trials of bird, photographers, and the authors' appreciation of. their widely-differing methods and temperaments.

To the general reader tho account of the making of the Zoo films will be most attractive. The lights and lamps of the operators were much to the liking of the both animals and birds. The hornbills. hopped for joy, tho gibbons pirouetted so as to get well baked on all sides,: and the polar bears started a game of water polo. The monkey, to whom life is an endless succession of back somersaults, was so gratified with the unexpected warmth that he relinquished his accustomed acrobatics in order to toast his stomach in the beneficent rays: it was only by means of a that he was induced to resumo his antics and allow a cinematographic representation of his activities to be' obtained.

Tho elephant seal was also a reluctant performer, but he was at last lured from his retirement by the blandishments of a cameraman, who made encouraging, noises in his throat. But the python, who curled himself round Miss Field's waist for ■warmth, was perhaps a little too confiding, though the courageous lacly did not flinch. The "still" pictures reproduced in this work are excellent as photographs and wonderful as records. .

It is disheartening to learn that the "Secrets of Nature" films are not popular in the film world. They have recently been abandoned by a group which, was once enthusiastic over them. As the authors say, "that the series should be allowed to lapse is unthinkable." Even now a new scries of Nature films is being prepared.