FAUNAGRAPHIC - Final Day

I am pretty happy right now. If you don't like happiness, stop here. Also reconsider things that you identify as. It's been a week since I finished work on my most recent short, 'Faunagraphic's South East Queensland' (watch below). It's been a great experience, with a lot of firsts, and hopefully the beginning of a lasting and (already) fruitful collaboration. So these are all great things. Full-screen & 1080p recommended.

If you've watched the video above, you'll have seen that it covers quite a breadth of species. A number of these were new species for me, certainly to film, and many simply to see. One of the most exciting was the Yellow-bellied Glider, which I had never successfully filmed previously. I'd seen them previously in Carnarvon National Park in Central Queensland, where photographed them - but the images I took there were like the 2009 Bieber to the 2015 Bieber that I took while working on this film (i.e. still plenty of improvement room but now it's less homocidal). This time around we spent two nights across two different locations trying to find these guys, using recordings of their calls, which we'd found or taken, to track them by their responses. Their calls are just mimics of Ace Ventura celebrating that wedding at the end of When Nature Calls, so it's pretty distinctive tracking them through the bush. Another major accomplishment for me in this film were the nocturnal birdlife included, especially the owls. While we wanted to find Masked and Sooty Owls as well, the suite of Tawny and Marbled Frogmouths, Australian Owlet-Nightjar, Barking Owl and finally Powerful Owl is still something that I think we should be proud of (the righteous kind of pride, now, obviously). I'd had one pretty amazing encounter with a pair of Powerful Owls and their chicks in 2016, where I saw the parents bringing Ringtail Possum and Sugar Glider to the chicks, decapitating the possums for them and then letting the chicks swallow them whole. I had sweet dreams that night, but the footage of the behaviour wasn't great, and nor were the images - the birds were high in the canopy for the most part. This time Matt knew where to find them in the daytime, as well as where to find courting males and females (thus the footage of them hooting). I collected a number of shots, still and video, that I was quite happy with, which is glorious, because until less than a year ago I'd never even seen them in captivity, let alone the wild. Below is an image of one of the Powls.

One of the final species that I'm most pleased with having managed to include in the film, I'd actually filmed before, for a previous film - 'The Skinnet Grin' (watch below - another full screen & res situation) - the Spotted-tailed Quoll. Anyone who's talked to me about animals would be able to tell you that, once you'd figured out that we all mutually know each other, then happened upon something in their conversation that would cue you onto the fact that they might enjoy ecologically-themed conversations, then put two and two together to get the four that they'd probably talked to me about nature, I love quolls. There's just nothing else in Australia, and for the most part the world, that is anything like them. Except rhinoceroses - they're pretty close. And goats, also Andre 3000 and Big Boi from the left or North-North-North-North-North-West. Anyway, due to quolls endangerment, sightings in the wild are astoundingly rare - fortunately we discovered a place around the Queensland/NSW border that can provide relatively reliable and dazzlingly intimate settings with wild quolls - a real thrill for me when filming for the previous film. Happily I was able to get a bit of mileage out of the footage with this project.

When Matt first contacted Callan and me, I went through my normal anxiety before opening any Messenger-sent message, which is to read the preview a couple times then wait a number of hours until I can mentally and spiritually handle digital social contact. When I finally read it, it was essentially exactly what I was hoping for - somebody was asking me to make wildlife films. And now I've made a small one. And that's a brilliant feeling. It was also great because in the past the vast majority of my shooting has been either done alone or with people who, regarding the filming, are ostensibly there to help me (probably the most nauseatingly ungrateful way of describing your parents). Mum, you're great at holding a torch. Dad you're a great driver but if you'd lingered with the light on the wombat that one time that would have been GRAND. Anyway I'm demonstrably not bitter The point is that doing this with a local wildlife expert and tour guide was an immense learning experience. Having done a degree in Wildlife Science I know a fair bit about wildlife, sure, but so much of that was theoretical and general - now I'm finding ways to learn practical, field-applicable knowledge and meet people who can teach me these things and join me out there. It's a riot of a time and I can't wait to see where it leads. God bless homes