Complete each sentence with the correct ending A-G from the box below.
Write the correct letter A-G next to questions 22-25.
Only the Eagle-Eyed Will Spot a Fake
1. Do natural history programmes distort reality? Of course, they do. Go for a walk in a tropical rainforest after watching a programme about one, and you will be in no doubt of that. On television, all kinds of animals appear continuously all over the place. In reality, you may be lucky to see a single bird or monkey.
2. But are there distortions that are more serious than that? Does it matter that a programme about the life of a polar bear, filmed for the most part in the Arctic, includes shots of a mother bear giving birth that were taken in a zoo - and that the commentary did not say so? That depends on the programme. If the programme claimed to be recording the actual adventures of an Arctic explorer, then that would clearly be wrong. But if its aim is to document the life history of the polar bear, then I believe that could be acceptable. Filming a polar bear birth in the wild is virtually impossible. Trying to do so might well endanger the lives of both the cameraman and the cub, were the mother to be disturbed. So, the only way to include shots of that crucial event in a bear's life is to film it in captivity.
3. Is it acceptable - on occasion - to use film to suggest that something happened which did not? Sometimes it is. That swoop by a peregrine falcon did not, in fact, result in the death of a grouse. The puff of feathers rising into the sky was thrown into the air by one of the film crew. With such a shot at his disposal, the skilful film editor was able to create a sequence representing a successful peregrine hunt - without it costing the life of a bird.
4. But such staging must be done with care. Sometimes a film shows an event that not only did not take place on that occasion but has never happened - ever. The most notorious example comes not from television but from the cinema. Producers working on a natural history documentary for a well-known film studio made a film about the Arctic. Its highlight was a sequence featuring lemmings. Every few years, according to a widely believed story, lemming numbers increase to such an extent that the animals, swarming over the tundra, eventually deliberately commit suicide by swimming out to sea and drowning themselves. So, the film team working in northern Canada paid local children to collect live lemmings. A few dozen were then taken down to an enclosure on the banks of a river and filmed in such a way that a few dozen appeared to be a plague. They were then chivvied until they came to the edge of the riverbank and tumbled over it into the water. And the filmmakers had their sequence.
5. The need for such tricks has, over the years, become less and less. Lenses have become more powerful. The large film cameras are driven by clockwork that we had to use a few decades ago have been replaced by electronic cameras, some no bigger than a lipstick, that can be strapped to an eagle's back or lowered down a mouse-hole. We can now, with infra-red light, record what goes on in what appears to both animals and ourselves to be total darkness.
6. But, paradoxically, these huge advances in our ability to record reality have coincided with other developments that enable us to falsify more convincingly than ever. Just as computer imaging can bring long-extinct dinosaurs back to life, so the same techniques could also make living animals appear to do things that a cameraman failed to film in reality - maybe because he was unlucky or because, in spite of what some book says, the animal in fact never behaves that way. We can now combine pictures so perfectly that a natural history presenter could appear to be crouching within a yard of a ferocious animal that he has never ever seen. That has not happened yet, as far as I know. It would be nice to say that if you or I looked closely enough, we could spot it. But electronic techniques are now so ingenious that such deceptions could be almost undetectable.
7. In these circumstances, television producers and the organisations which transmit their work have to guard their reputations for honesty with greater care than ever. The BBC Natural History Unit in Britain already has a code governing the treatment of animals during filming. The welfare of the subject is more important than the success of the film. There should be no lighting that makes it easier for one animal to hunt another. It also lays down rules about deceptions. Telling the story of an animal identified as an individual, but using shots of several, is now impermissible. Other tricks and techniques we have used in the past, no matter how well-intentioned, are no longer acceptable.
8. As filmmakers trying to illuminate the natural world, we must be allowed to manipulate images and use all the devices that recent technological advances have given us. But we must also recognise our responsibilities to scientific truth. The events and the creatures we chronicle are more than just entertainment that can be jazzed up to taste.
| A | B | C | D | E | F | G | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | A programme about the tropical rainforest | |||||||
| 2 | A programme about polar bears | |||||||
| 3 | A film involving a bird of prey killing another bird | |||||||
| 4 | A film involving an eagle in flight |