蜜芽传媒

By Jeff Wilson and Olly Scholey

Not all parenting happens on dry land, of course. Across the global locations featured in Parenthood, some of the most interesting behaviours we uncovered happened exclusively underwater - under the ocean waves, but also in rivers, and in some cases, within specific pools deep within the rainforest. The challenge became how to capture these relationships without disrupting the intimacy of the moment. On land, one can rely on telephoto lenses, but not underwater. In this realm you need bespoke technology and careful planning!

Although they cover 71% of the Earth's surface, oceans are a remarkably hard place to find parental investment stories in the natural world - the vast majority of marine creatures below the waves do virtually no parenting at all. Instead, most opt for releasing their eggs and spawn into the water - albeit in vast quantities - and hoping that the sheer volume of their efforts result in success. It’s a numbers game, and not one that converts on our idea of parenting - so our expert researchers, directors and cinematographers had their jobs cut out from the outset.

However, by tapping into our vast network of scientists and experts around the world, we uncovered parenting behaviours that are perhaps even more fascinating than that of terrestrial parents!

Once the stories were identified, the real craft of how to film these mind blowing and rare behaviours tested our teams to the very limits of their knowledge. Unlike work on land, finding the animals behaving as documented by scientific research is, in itself, extremely difficult. Visibility underwater can change on an hourly basis, and unlike the plains of the Serengeti, one cannot turn to binoculars to scan the surrounding areas for signs of life. Our divers have to physically move through their arenas in search of the story.

Once we knew how to be in the right place at the right time, the underwater teams then have to adapt their specialist equipment to suit each and every scenario. You can’t buy the type of cameras and housing we need to capture these behaviours, so nearly everything is bespoke. And even then, once the where, when and how is figured out, the teams then have to solve how to spend the maximum amount of time underwater to allow for the behaviours to play out. Our cast of characters don’t read our scripts (the ink would run underwater even if they did), so even at 30ft below the waves, patience is still a factor - though not as much as the amount of oxygen you can carry with you! Rebreather equipment has transformed the amount of time we can spend, meaning our crews often spend six hours per day sat on the seafloor. But even the most experienced divers have their limits.

With this narrowing set of parameters, the magnitude of what our teams achieve never fails to amaze, and Parenthood Ocean captures some of the most extraordinary parental behaviours in the entire series.

The greatest challenge for the Parenthood Ocean team by far, was telling the story of how killer whales use their parenting prowess to achieve the seemingly impossible - hunt a blue whale, the largest animal that has ever lived on our planet.

Everything about filming this event was hard. These hunts are extremely rare, but there had been several observations of hunts in a relatively small area of ocean off the coast of Bremer Bay in Western Australia, known locally as “The Patch”. Families of killer whales are also seen in this location on a near daily basis during this time of the year - but there was a catch! “The Patch” is 30 miles offshore, where average wave heights are the height of a single story building - and often greatly exceeding this - with fast ocean currents and unpredictable winds.

There was no way we could achieve this mission without the support of some extremely dedicated and talented Australian scientists. John Totterdell has spent the last 15 years studying the two populations of killer whales found in Western Australia. The crew was also joined by Grace Russell, who has the unique combination of a PhD in marine science, whilst also being an accomplished aerial cinematographer. The crew that arrived from the UK had the sole intention of capturing the story of these orca from beneath the waves. We designed a marinised gimbal for this shoot, as well as making a tiny little “tow cam”, that we could tow behind the boat and get shots of the orca swimming towards the camera. Away from the tech and toys, we also came with the intention of being some of the first people ever to dive with the Bremer killer whales.

After many grueling days at sea battling Bremer's unfavourable conditions, John and Grace uncovered something truly remarkable. The crew found a group of orca thrashing at the surface, which looked like they were hunting, but Grace was confident that the whales were doing something entirely different. In previous years spent studying the orca in Bremer, both her and John had caught glimpses of similar behaviour to this, but never with so many animals. As Grace flew her drone over the top of the killer whales, her suspicious were confirmed - she captured a seething mass of killer whales, all focused in on a single point - which would normally be a prey item, but in this instance there was another orca. The whales were exhibiting the exact behaviour they use to hunt smaller whales - such as beaked whales - but no hunt was happening. It's very difficult to draw conclusions about what they were doing, but to all intents and purposes this looked exactly like the orca were practicing their hunting strategy on one of their family members. Both John and Grace were astounded by what we captured, and fascinated by this small insight into the complexities of orca parenthood.

Our Freshwater realms presented very different challenges across our filming locations. Though the specific freshwater locations are easier to pin down, they are entirely dependent on the seasonal availability of water. Droughts and floods were a common occurrence throughout the filming of Parenthood, and for the teams who were devoted to filming in the freshwater environment, it was a constant and unpredictable challenge - but one that presented a unique opportunity to tell how the changing world is affecting parents.

One such sequence involved Amazon river turtle mothers in Brazil - who lay their eggs under sand to protect them from drying out - only to return to their hatchlings to call them into the safety of the nearby river. The unpredictable level of their river water home means it is a gamble for the mothers at the point of laying. Get it wrong, and their eggs will be swamped and their young will perish. Get it right, and they survive. It was such a fascinating dilemma, that we knew it was a story that must be told.

The sensitive condition of the unhatched eggs underground meant that we couldn’t, in this case, film in situ. To do so would mean risking the survival of the young themselves. Instead we needed to work hand-in-hand with the scientific researchers and their incubation unit to create a specialist environment where we could capture the moment of hatching that was crucial to the story. Luckily, in the year that we filmed on location in Brazil, the river waters did exactly as the mothers predicted, and we were able to capture the unbelievable spectacle of hundreds of thousands of young turtles following their mothers calls to the safety of the river. It is a scene of such scale and significance, that it became a seminal moment for this film and the theme of unpredictability in a parents' world.

Many marine parents are entirely dependent on the seafloor habitat in which they live, to raise the next generation. It was hugely important to us to be able to establish this relationship, and in a search to do some, we came across an incredible location in Australia, which had two parenting stories in the same place.

Port Phillip Bay in Australia is globally recognised as one of the best places in the world to dive. The key for us achieving so much in this place, was working with a local Australian called Pang Quong. Pang is a retired PE teacher, well into his 70s and stills goes SCUBA diving almost every day of the year. He works for the Melbourne aquarium hand collecting tiny mysid shrimps from the sea, and in spending thousands of hours diving in Port Phillip Bay, has uncovered some remarkable animal behaviours. Our team spent a full 10 weeks with Pang and we had the utter privilege of being shown this location by the most experienced of experts.

The first scene we captured with Pang was the breeding story of weedy sea dragons, mythical creatures that are endemic to Australia. Dragon dads must hide their bodies - which they attach a female's eggs to - within their seaweed home, to avoid the attention of the bay's gigantic sting rays. As we observed newly hatched baby sea dragons living within the seaweed, Pang showed us a single piece of weed that was teeming with tiny parents - skeleton shrimps. These whacky little creatures were brawling amongst themselves, fighting for every inch of space on the weed. Some of the skeleton shrimps seemed to be covered in tiny hairs, which were in fact the babies of mother shrimps! By using a specialist filming environment, we were able to use microscope objectives to get stunning images of these tiny little baby shrimps, and tell the story of a mother skeleton shrimp for the first time in a natural history documentary.

Across the series, all of our teams were dealing with perhaps the most sensitive time in an animal's life - the intimate relationships between parent and their offspring can be easily upset. In the world of wildlife film making, affecting the behaviour of your subjects is a line we work hard not to cross, and these parenting relationships are incredibly fragile. In many cases, across the series, we are also dealing with species that are no bigger than a thumbnail - the scale on which their drama is happening is so minute, and the difficulties of following these parents across their world so hard, that we needed to design the sequences with specific macro technologies and careful use of light. So often, teams filming in these situations needed to tread carefully, or in this case, paddle carefully - and at times, we were forced to use specialist filming tanks to ensure that we got the balance absolutely right.

We were desperate to find a coral reef parent for the Ocean episode, and researcher Mae Dorricott stuck gold when she unearthed the parenting story of Banggai cardinalfish from scientific literature. These fish raise their young using a process called ‘mouthbrooding’, where a female deposits her eggs in a willing father's mouth, within which they hatch. It seems like a rather extreme strategy, but in a world where a nest could easily just float away, and predators lurk in every corner, there are few safer places than being concealed inside dad's chops!

Mae led a team of cinematographers to Banggai Island in Sulawesi, a 72 hour journey from the UK. They stayed in a local homestay, with the sea just metres from their doorstep and the "Banggai" (as the crew called them) living in the shallow water just a two minute swim from their home. We knew that the hardest part of this story would be filming the beginning and the end – the moment when the dad receives the eggs from the mother, and the moment the babies leave the dad's mouth. It was to Mae’s complete delight however, when after the very first dive, cinematographer Jeff Hester emerged from the water and nonchalantly told her “we filmed an egg transfer”. It all seemed a bit too easy, but this would be the first and last egg transfer they filmed.

Following this early success, the crew spent over six hours per day underwater with the Banggai, watching as mouthbrooding dads would go from urchin to urchin, trying to find a place on the reef that wasn’t too crowded, where they could release their tiny offspring. By using a specialist filming environment, the crew were able to capture extraordinary close up shots of the tiny little babies peering out of their father's mouth, viewing their home for the very first time. With patience and persistence the crew finally managed to see the moment when the dad released the young onto the coral reef, in one of most charming tales of parenthood witnessed in the whole series.

Watch Parenthood from Sunday 3rd August on 蜜芽传媒 One and iPlayer.