‘Behind the Scenery’

A Production Anecdote

Every other penguin seemed to be gay. And flagrantly so, thought Jerome. It was one of the things he still loved about Antarctica, the way that Nature here so clearly didn’t give a fuck about what viewers deemed picturesque. He lowered his binoculars, sighed, and lifted up his thermos to chapped, grey lips. The flock, or herd or school or whatever, were socializing on the snowy plain beneath him. It was 04h30 but the chalk-white sun continued glowing in the distance as it had for the previous month. He closed his eyes as he always did when he needed to reflect. The test-shots were reassuring, the glare of the ice diminished by a narrower aperture. The horny Emperors looked regal at least. He had now been to every continent, like so many other people, but he felt a strange pride in thinking that he’d also been alone on every continent, could recall so many moments in every imaginable place that were quite like this, not communing with nature per se but for once communing with nothing in particular. He looked behind him in the general direction of base-camp, wishing he could still feel variations of tiredness.

He wasn’t actually alone, of course. For Fauna’s extended shooting-schedule the Beeb mandated a set skeleton-crew of at least five members: a producer/director, a sound recordist, a wildlife expert, a DP and a DP’s assistant. The others changed around occasionally, each of them swapping out and back in again between landscapes and episodes, but Jerome always wielded the camera. If persistently pressed on the issue, most of the series executives would have eventually confessed that this was indeed Jerome’s show, or at least it was far more his than it was Roger Tenderhouse’s. The latter had been vetted as David Attenborough’s prodigal heir- apparent over fifteen years of small-scale environmentalist video reportage, first produced independently and then for the Corporation’s website, steadily gaining more weekly views than the Green Party’s average tally of votes in the national election. He was stringy, blond and still undeniably youthful. His voice had the decadent lilt of a person whose personality had been remoulded by having too often had to address a merely imagined audience. He was a man rightfully in demand, and as such could not afford to waste any of his time on the longer location shoots. Sometimes they would fly him out to Gibraltar or Alice Springs for the majestic money-shots, but more often he would just be green-screened masterfully into the opening vista, introducing this week’s Family and its unique context in the Kingdom, before retreating to the audio booth so as to leave the natural world in complete peace. Thus, for the crew, he was, for the most part, just an enraptured, overhanging voice and hardly any of them had spent enough time with him privately to have anything negative to report. Nonetheless they hated his guts.

Jerome snuck back into his and Daniel’s shared tent just conspicuously enough to wake up his understudy. As he took off his heavy, rustling parka, Daniel poked his head out from under three layers of thermal blankets and a cocoon-like sleeping bag. “Hey, uh, did I sleep through breakfast again? Sorry.”

“No, that’s still an hour away, don’t worry,” Jerome responded, not breaking his descent back into bed.
“Why were you out then?”
“The Emperors start their orgies early. I was just trying to get the perfect view.” Daniel was experienced but still impressionable, and he (Jerome) enjoyed taking advantage of this on occasion.

“Oh. Did you find it?”
“Somewhat. A little distant but if we use the longer zoom it’ll come out well enough in the show.”
“This place creeps me out a little, I don’t know about you. Why did anyone want to come here in the first place?”
Daniel knew this question would be rhetorical. Jerome had just put on his blindfold. He played out the rest of their conversation in his head before laying his head back down as well.