Natur Cymru

I also got to do some of the infra-red filming with my colleague Leanne. This meant many nights out in a hide trying to film elusive, nocturnal wildlife, often without success! In the end, though, footage that I filmed included the mink, the dormouse, badgers and voles and wood mice, all in infra-red. I also filmed the crew quite a lot for the 'Making of Natur Cymru' programme. (Natur Cymru: Tu Ôl i'r Camera 21/00 Monday 21 April)

I have always been interested in the natural world and wildlife – growing up in rural mid-Wales it's hard not to be. Working in wildlife television had always appealed to me as well. It was obvious for me to do a degree in Zoology. Cardiff University has an excellent course where as part of your studies you could choose to do a field course in Kenya. I was lucky enough to get a place to study there. After going to Kenya I got the bug and wanted to travel and see wildlife around the world. I was torn between wanting to work in conservation and television.

I had wanted to work in wildlife television since I was a kid. After I finished my degree I was working for the local council when I managed to get a month's work experience at the BBC in Cardiff working on the first series of 'Coast'. This was a dream come true – a great way to combine my skills and knowledge. Then I heard that John [Gwyn]might be looking for a researcher, and he offered me a job working as a trainee researcher on the second series of 'Teithiau Tramor Iolo' for S4C.

I have seen so much amazing wildlife whilst working on Natur Cymru. Things that stick in my mind are: seeing a whale off the Welsh coast whilst on a recce; being there when Steve got our first shots of the otters at Porthmadog; and of course filming the female dormouse with her baby. (Programme 5)

The weather in 2007 made it possibly the worst year to do the main bulk of our filming, but we still managed to get some amazing footage. Trying to balance everything working in production is always a challenge. Sometimes you only have a very short window to film a species or a particular behaviour and you have to make sure that the crew are available and in the right place. You need to have access to the site, special licences to film if it is a protected species and then the weather plays a big part in what the wildlife does.

When dealing with wild animals nothing is certain, but when everything comes together and you get great footage it makes it all worthwhile. I would rather spend hours in a hide waiting to get a few minutes of footage than spend all my working life in the office!

The landscape that surprised me the most was the urban areas. It's amazing how close we are living to wildlife and sometimes we don't even realise it. When we were in Porthmadog, we were filming the otters as people walked and cars drove over the bridge above their heads. The coast is always a powerful landscape and it was great to see Paul [Kay]'s underwater footage. Wales is an amazing country and I have been lucky enough to spend a lot of time out in some of the most beautiful parts of it during the course of filming Natur Cymru.

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After that, I made the permanent switch from the world of science to television, but I worked on music programmes to begin with, including 'The Tube' for Channel 4. I returned to wildlife programming eventually, and I met Iolo when I produced and directed the BBC series 'Iolo’s Wild Wales', 'Wild Winter', 'Special Reserves' and 'Natural History of Wales'. We also made 'Teithiau Tramor Iolo' for S4C, and Aden makes 'Y Sioe Wyllt' (The Wild Show) for the Planed Plant children's strand.

Natur Cymru is the first fully-funded nature series for S4C to be filmed entirely on HD. Why was this important?
My first priority was to pitch a series with a long shelf-life, which would be as visually striking in 5 years as now. By that time most programmes will be shot on HD. The series is also a snapshot of wildlife in Wales at this exact moment, and it will be interesting to look back at that in the future. HD is the perfect medium for nature and landscape filming. Details are so much clearer and pleasing to the eye.

How long was the production period?
From introducing the idea to S4C in early 2006, it took 2 years. We finished filming in January 2008, and finished editing in the last week of February. This meant we got all the seasons, but unfortunately, the weather in late spring/early summer 2007 was appalling. You wouldn't think so to look at the series, but we shot round the rain!

Did the fact that you were producing and directing make the process easier or more difficult?
Definitely easier! On this kind of series it's ideal, because I could monitor the pictures that the cameramen, Steve [Phillipps] and Paul [Kay] were shooting constantly. I could then re-write and adapt the scripts as the series developed. And they changed a lot. You can't depend on animals in the wild to perform for the camera on cue, unfortunately. By keeping an eye on the detail, it was easier to sort out which shots we needed with Iolo, and other elements life aerial filming.

What were the highlights for you?
The red squirrel was definitely one, because it's such an amazing animal, with such a sad story (its numbers have declined dramatically since the advent of the grey squirrel). It was also a challenge to attract to the camera. But we succeeded in the end. Personally, I loved filming the sea lampreys at Llyswen.

Did you have any major problems on the shoot?
No, not as such. Animals in general are hard to film, e.g. the otter. I spent many a cold night in several locations without success, as did our researchers, Emma Ford and Leanne Williams.

Because of the wet summer, the birds in the highlands had problems nesting, so we failed to get some of the birds we wanted to film. The biggest problem was sorting out Steve's schedule in the spring – a very busy time in wildlife terms. We had decide on a day-by-day basis which bird or animal we would concentrate on to enrich the series.

Which was your favourite location?
There are so many, it's hard to choose. Cwm Idwal was one – close to my roots, I come from Bethesda – as was Pwll-y-gele lake, but the best would have to be Skomer Island, and my favourite bird, the puffin.

Which programme is your favourite and why?
I have no idea! I'm much too close to judge. I'll know better once I've had a chance to watch them at home. But the hares in Programme 4 always make me laugh.

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We started filming Natur Cymru in September 2006 and finished in January 2008. It's not a long shoot in nature filming terms – there's a lot of landscape to film, and animals take no notice of our shooting schedule. The weather was a factor as well. The kind of rain we had last summer definitely affected the filming process. It was a bad summer for birds generally. We wanted to film a hen harrier, but a lot of them were killed by foxes or drowned in the floodwater.

My favourite places in Wales are Cwm Bychan and Cwm Nantcol in the Rhinog mountains. It's really wild, and not many people venture there, so it's peaceful.

For me, the highlight of the series was filming nesting water rails. A friendly warden helped me find the nest. The birds were very laid back about my hide, which was right next to the nest in the reeds and the mud. It stank, and I was covered in mud, but I got brilliant footage when the birds were turning the eggs, hatching, and changing the guard over the nest.

Wildlife filming is very physical work, which can be tough when you're carrying 35kg of camera equipment on your back. On Natur Cymru, I had to climb to film rutting goats, and they're a lot more nimble on the steep gorse screes where they live than I am! And to film choughs nesting in a cave, I had to cross a deep chasm by rope, with hundreds of feet of darkness below me. I'm used to ropes and climbing, but we had professional climbers on hand that time because of health and safety issues.

Normally I film on my own in the field – that's the nature of the work. When I was filming with Iolo, there was a compact team – me, the sound recordist, John the producer and sometimes a production assistant. It was a pleasure to work with Iolo, and he knows so much. I think he's the best wildlife presenter, bar none. He knows his stuff, he explains things clearly and he's passionate about his subject.

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I worked on Natur Cymru from June to October 2007, and it was an extremely variable season weather-wise. The summer season was shorter and the sea less accessible due to bad weather, and murkier, almost certainly due to the huge amount more rain last year - and in turn the run-off from the land which caused lower than normal visibility.

It's difficult to pick a favourite location. I find that the Menai Strait is still one of the most colourful and fascinating undersea areas in Wales - or the UK come to that! But Skomer, Enlli, Llyn all have their attractions underwater and all are unique in one way or another.

Its not really the location but the conditions which dictate how hard something is to film underwater. Some areas have their 'classic' species - the sea fans of Skomer; the yellow Parazoathid anemones off Enlli, and the pipefish off Criccieth. Currents around the first two make life tricky and require good knowledge of currents and slack water. The small, long pipefish (they are related to sea-horses) are small and tricky to do justice to. Some areas can only be dived once in a day due to tidal currents which simply means that there is a great deal of effort expended for a relatively short time when it is possible to film.

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