Lights, Camera, Lions by Hubert Geza Wells

Author:Hubert Geza Wells [Hubert Geza Wells]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Morgan James Publishing
Published: 2017-02-27T16:00:00+00:00

My Lion act at Jungleland

CHAPTER 10

TO THE ISLAND OF DROON OR OTTERELY RIDICULOUS

My next overseas job took me to Scotland to film Ring of Bright Water, the story of an otter and an eccentric Scotsman based on the bestseller by Gavin Maxwell. On this production, the slogan was a line from the movie. Virginia McKenna is looking for the lost otter. The lonely lighthouse keeper points to a black dot on the misty horizon. “The wee thing swam to the island of Droon.” The director, Jack Couffer, was a member of the Disney field producer school, and we hit it off right away. We stayed friends for the next forty years.

We took six otters to Oban, on the west coast of Scotland. Five came from a trout farm in Wisconsin. The owners of the farm, Tom and Mabel, trapped the first otter they owned, and their love affair with Lutra Canadiensis began. The sixth member of the cast, Oliver, was the pet of a dentist in Laguna Beach, California. He had to give him up or face an expensive divorce. Oliver would just as soon dine on his wife’s toes than on mackerel. During the shoot, the crew called him Fingers Oliver or, with even more respect, Mr. Fingers. Luckily, Oliver liked me and left my digits where they belong. He also taught me a lot about his slippery, mercurial, intelligent kind.

The rock base of all motion picture animal training is the A-B call. Someone releases the animal at point A. He is called to point B, and during his journey, the camera rolls. Timing is always important. When an animal is released in the open, the variety of distractions is endless. The word “ready” from the cameraman should really mean “ready” and not “just a second.” Our director understood this simple but very important request of mine. Woe upon the focus puller who stretched his tape or the grip who adjusted a flag after the word “ready” had been uttered.

All movies need close-ups, especially of the stars, and otters were the main attraction of Ring of Bright Water. The human stars, Bill Travers and Virginia McKenna, of Born Free fame, obliged easily for right profile, left profile, and full faces. Oliver wasn’t nearly as willing. Otters have two speeds, sleep and run. I had to find a way to slow him down and stay in the same spot for the otter equivalent of eternity: ten seconds. I invented or stumbled on something that since then has become a standard for film animals: hitting and holding a mark, like an actor stopping on a piece of tape on the floor.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.