the noise was absolutely incredible when
they hit
each other it was so loud the thing
about that fight which was
amazing was that you could smell it the
noise and the tension and the smell of
that
event i’ll never forget
i’m emma nappa and i was the director on
the kangaroo sequence for life story the
life story
followed animals in different life
stages so
from being born to growing up to gaining
power or dominance and then eventually
becoming parents themselves
the kangaroo fight was part of the power
episode where we wanted to show
how important it is for animals to gain
dominance in a group and
how different animals go about that to
get to the top
he must become a fighter
the battles are so brutal that males
need years of training
to prepare
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the effort is worth it because a
champion fighter
wins privileged access to the females
the kangaroos for this shoot were filmed
in kosciuszko national park
in eastern australia i’d never been to
this part of australia at all and i’ve
never seen kangaroos in the wild and
there were two things that took me by
surprise first of all is that kangaroos
are real animals i think we
in the uk we grow up with them in books
but to see them in
real life you’re like wow that really
does exist it’s crazy the other thing
was that we went to australia right
australia is warm
i’ve seen that on tv as well it was
freezing it was we had snow storms we
got stuck on the mountains we bought
shorts and
walking shoes and t-shirts and uh yeah
day two we had to go and find a shop and
buy jumpers
this area is grasslands with forests
that was actually really helpful for
filming the kangaroos because they
actually
disperse quite a lot at night and then
during the day they come back into these
quite contained areas
and they’re kind of forced to do that a
little bit by the environment the area
where we’re in is mostly females and
jerry’s then half grown
males this meadow is a boot camp for
aspiring boxers
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training starts as soon as a youngster
is out of the pouch
its mother is a handy opponent for a
young joey
learning the basics
i think hungary’s a bit bigger than i
expected them to be anyway but we got
used to seeing the size of the females
and the babies and every so often a male
would would come in and we’d say is that
a big male oh yeah it does look a bit of
a big male
but um when the dominant male for that
area turned up because he wasn’t there
every day
when he turned up we were suddenly like
yes that is that is a huge animal he was
absolutely incredible so big and
so muscly and yeah the size of his his
neck and his arms and his
tail i mean he’s a giant animal
incredibly impressive and slightly
intimidating
this male alone rules the meadow
he stands eight feet tall his muscles
hardened by
years of sparring there’s a shot in the
sequence where he just stands up
he wasn’t looking at us he was looking
at other males that were
a long way off behind us but he was just
looking up to see what was going on
but when he went from being on all fours
to that moment where he lifted himself
up in front of the camera
i mean i don’t know how the the camera
operator didn’t
didn’t run that was an incredible
incredible moment i remember
sitting there looking at the screen
thinking wow what an amazing shot and
then looking up and thinking
oh that’s quite close isn’t it luckily
they’re not intimidated by people and
they’re not aggressive to people
so it was a nice situation for being
able to observe
natural behavior without interfering
with them at all we had both of our
camera operators
um filming the dominant mail and then we
saw the rival mail
appear into this arena the dominant well
was a little bit away from us
and the rival came towards him and both
camera operators and myself we just
stayed
very still when two males square up it’s
time
to clear the arena
then this fight started happening and
then it came closer and closer and
closer and closer to where we were the
fire went on for
probably two or three times longer than
it looks like
in the in the final cut it was a big a
big fight and
the noise was absolutely incredible when
they hit each other
it was so loud they came they came in
the end within sort of
five or ten metres of us and it was
incredibly loud the thing about that
fight which was
amazing to me as well was that you could
smell it both males
smell really really strongly as soon as
they started fighting
the noise and the tension and the smell
of that that event i’ll never forget
that the dominant male skill is already
telling
suddenly it’s all over
the champion has beaten off the
challenger at least for now
so when it had finished and the rival
disappeared
and the mail wandered off and went back
to eating whatever he was doing
there were patches of fur all over the
ground
and i went and picked one up and it
smelled of a smell of coffee
it’s not a really strong coffee it was a
really quite a nice
smell but we did our best to to show how
full on that fight was in the sequence
but uh
yeah i’ll never forget the kind of the
noise and the smell of being there
those big fights don’t happen very often
at all we were really lucky even given
that time to
to be in the right place to capture that
but it allowed us also to show
all the behaviour of the babies learning
to box the thing that i
found quite charming about the kangaroos
was
they’re not threatened by people they
get on with doing their own thing i’d
also say they’re not
they’re not super bright but they’re
very very curious so
i really enjoyed on that shoot as well
sort of quiet moments where you would
sit and we’d be filming the young
learning how to box and things like that
and they just
they just sort of come closer and closer
and closer to you and
like kind of curious puppies and you’d
end up turning around and there’d just
be one sort of
essentially directing over your shoulder
just looking at the camera or looking at
what you were doing or kind of
you know seeing what was in your bag
there’s all that violence but they’re
incredibly curious
gentle things most of the time
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you
