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NEW YORK (AP) – Forty years ago, PBS programmers were keen to experiment, so they took the risk and started a new series on animal behavior called Nature.
The show featured hour-long documentaries of natural landscapes around the world and initially didn’t even have a comment, so it could be sold on any television market with no language barrier. It was a hit. “Nature” is celebrating its anniversary this season, which includes an expanded view of the Rocky Mountains, American horses, a close look at bees and of course some cute penguins.
As the series has evolved over the years, there is one person who has been with it from the start. Fred Kaufman started out as a production assistant for three months and has been the show’s executive producer for 30 years.
Kaufman says Nature just got more appealing to viewers because science, filmmaking, and technology are better. He also prides itself on the show’s storytelling and attention to global warming and the environment. In a recent interview with The Associated Press, Kaufman spoke about the show’s evolution, the stories that had the most impact, and how viral videos helped the genre.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
AP: How has technology changed the show over 40 years?
KAUFMAN: When HD came out it was like ‘Whoa!’ Suddenly you saw details that you hadn’t seen before, so that was a big difference. Lenses have gotten better and more diverse. That’s a big difference. Drones! Years ago, if you wanted an antenna, you had to rent a helicopter for $ 400 an hour and pay for the fuel and an operator, and just pray that you could get what you wanted in an hour … that was a big deal. Now you build a drone, one person flies a drone: Rocksteady Shot. It really allows you to see a landscape, gives you a new perspective on animals and places. … But I think one of the most important developments is that wildlife movies, behavior, and snippets on social media have gone so viral. I mean, they’re fun, they’re dramatic, they’re exciting. You have probably never seen this before.
AP: How does the show deal with which places and animals?
Kaufman: Everything we do is from the animal’s point of view. It’s from the perspective of wild places and wild lands. How does the animal feel about it? You show it from the photographer’s perspective, but can we move and do it from the animal’s perspective? So it’s a way of calibrating your thinking and scripting because it represents the animal’s point of view. What do you need? What are the resources for a healthy environment? How are agriculture and climate change affecting them? So this is what we do when we think about a topic and review the film. Are we a voice for nature?
AP: How did you observe the effects of global warming?
Kaufman: The most obvious visuals are the shrinking polar caps, especially in the Arctic. We see that polar bears spend more time swimming than on ice rivers because there are fewer of them. So you’re more likely to be in the open sea. And this leads to fatigue and they need more food to eat. And they suffer from it. And that’s the most obvious example we all see. But climate change is affecting migrations, and birds, for example, migrate on the paths of flowers and food sources that come out, because when that day gets longer and the sun is shining and it is warmer and plants are in bloom, etc., birds will follow those paths. Now, with global warming, some of these events are happening earlier than usual. So the birds come too late or too early and that messes up the diet and forage they need for their migration.
AP: Which shows had the biggest impact?
Kaufman: One thing I’m very proud of is that many, many years ago we were the first to raise awareness of the colony collapse disorder in bees. And so it became a very big story, and it’s still a story.
AP: What still fascinates people about nature?
Kaufman: The most exciting thing about nature is probably an African safari that cannot be compared to anything else in the world. I mean, you feel insignificant when you’re out there and getting up close and personal with these big, beautiful, iconic animals. It’s surprising how close these animals get, and you see these magnificent landscapes that stretch for miles. It is impressive. It really goes inside you and stays with you and you know you get goose bumps. We were sitting in a vehicle in the midst of a herd of about 60 elephants in Africa and my heart was racing. I do not know why. It was just a reaction to being among these great wildlife – and elephants are in a class of their own. And of course, you feel like they perceive you in a way that other animals do not. There is a consciousness. And so there are moments like this, I think everyone experiences, whether in Yellowstone National Park or even Central Park, where it just has a calming influence.
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