Wildlife Documentary Quotes

Steve was so wonderful to bring wildlife into our living rooms and let us see that animals we used to be afraid of are so important.

My number one rule is to keep that camera rolling. Even if it's shaky or slightly out of focus, I don't give a rip. Even if a big old alligator is chewing me up I want to go down and go, 'Crikey!' just before I die. That would be the ultimate for me.

I wasn't trying to be a scientist. I only ever wanted to be a naturalist, like a David Attenborough.

If you're going to make a lot of films about a particular group of animals, you might as well pick one that's fairly common. And octopus are: they live in all the oceans. They also live deep. And I can't say octopus are responsible for my really strong interest in getting in subs and going deep, but whatever the case, I like that.

'Born Free' was the first film I ever saw. I just fell in love with the idea of people having that bond with a wild animal.

If you don't work near a water cooler and hanker for the company of fellow natural history enthusiasts, 'The Blue Planet II Podcast' has Emily Knight and Becky Ripley enthusing infectiously about and delving deeper into the most recent episode.

I'm driving down the freeway the other day, on my way to Knott's Scary Farm probably, and I hear this report on NPR that the whole lemmings thing was faked in the 1950s. They were shooting a wildlife documentary in the '50s, they found a group of lemmings, and the crew chased them all off a cliff. No lemming has ever jumped off a cliff, purposefully, ever. Isn't that unbelievable?

I had travelled pretty widely around the world even before then, so I knew where to go to film wildlife.

The first time I ever had the opportunity to dive on the Great Barrier Reef, it was while filming 'Oceans Deadliest' with Steve Irwin. I remember just how awestruck I was by its beauty.

Since writing JAWS, I've been lucky enough to do close to forty television shows about wildlife in the oceans, and yes, I have been attacked by sea creatures once in a while.

I grew up in a family of filmmakers, so I always wanted to make films about animals, especially comical films. Something about animals amuses me. And they have a great mystery. It's the same mystique some people might feel looking at the stars or the ocean.

I'm 100% proud of the TV work I achieved. The work I did on shows on insects and Great White sharks... stuff that's in school curriculums in England. Now they are showing up on Discovery Channel.

If you're a wildlife filmmaker and you're going out into the field to film animals, especially behavior, it helps to have a fundamental background on who these animals are, how they work and, you know, a bit about their behaviors.

So as long as I can do something like this kids show or I can go off and film polar bears or I can do some radio and stuff, and sort of keep other strings in my bow working, then it's good.

I would never dream, for example, of going to The States to photograph your wildlife.

At one point, I wanted to be a wildlife photographer. I also love to travel, so maybe I'd do travel writing.

David Attenborough's 'Life' series is phenomenal. He's a wonderful modern soothsayer.

You have to check out 'March of the Penguins'. Penguins are the really ideal example of monogamy.

'Planet Earth' was such an extraordinary series and the 'Making Of'... is fascinating: the creatures and stories behind the camera are just as fascinating as those in front. It's a bit of a dream come true to be a part of the team in some small way.

The process of making natural history films is to try to prevent the animal knowing you are there, so you get glimpses of a non-human world, and that is a transporting thing.

We've evolved from sitting back on our tripods and shooting wildlife films like they have been shot historically, which doesn't work for us.

A lot of people who work with wildlife work with wildlife to satisfy their own egos. And I don't really agree with that. What I do is get in nice and close to the animal to make the animal look good. My aim in this world is to make that brown snake, that crocodile, that koala, that red-backed spider, that black widow, look good. That's my job. I have absolutely no problem with my ego or my staff's ego.

More and more, as it becomes necessary to preserve the game, let us hope that the camera will largely supplant the rifle.

I'm a big fan of David Attenborough, who I think is the most adventurous of the nature program presenters.

I'd really likely to shoot wildlife documentaries. I watched so many of those as a child, and I'm quite into wildlife and love photography as well, so that's something I'd like to do.