Wow!!

Spent the day in a helicopter filming aerials over the park with a Cineflex. Incredible. It was like watching a 3D of Planet earth!

We had just under two hours of flying time to get everything that we needed to film. Everything had to be planned with the Pilot, with Dave the Cineflex operator, Luke, the elephant orphanage, the park rangers etc.

We started by filming Luke and James from the elephant orphanage, driving around, stopping and looking at wildlife, then we turned off and filmed some wilder beasts and zebras, which were running around like headless chickens, one way this and one way that. Despite being quite high up, the noise of the chopper was disturbing the animals. We couldn’t go any higher as the helicopter was to heavy and the winds were too strong.

We spotted a herd of elephants alongside the road to the airstrip; there were about a hundred or so. It was incredible. To think the amount of times we had driven along that road knowing there were elephants there, yet  we couldn’t spot them for the dense burnt trees.

Once we had elephants in the can, we veered north towards the lake. The idea was to head towards where we had filmed the dead buffaloes, but fuel was going fast and we didn’t want to miss out filming Luke at the elephant orphanage.  So we circled around and got some shots of some hippos ducking into the water, some impala’s and buffalo and headed back south to the elephant orphanage.

When you’re up in the air over the park you begin realize its size. It stretches for miles in to the horizon. absolutely stunning. What a privilege to have been able to do and see that!