Chris Palmer’s New Book, ‘Confessions of a Wildlife Filmmaker’
Chris Palmer announces the release of his new book, Confessions of a Wildlife Filmmaker: The Challenges of Staying Honest in an Industry Where Ratings Are King, which comes out this month.
Here is a review that appeared a day or so ago in TakePart.com. The book has received lots of advance praise from VIPs like Jane Goodall, who has written a forward.
Below is the Table of Contents (including my ten confessions) and the Preface.
The book is available here.
If you’re in DC, Chris warmly invites you to the Environmental Film Festival launch of the book on Tuesday, March 24 at 7pm at the Doyle/Forman Theater at AU.
​TABLE OF CONTENTS
Foreword by Jane Goodall, PhD, DBE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .ix
Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .xiii
Confession One: I Knew Almost Nothing about Wildlife (and Even Less about Making Films)
Chapter One: Wildlife Nightmares . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3
Chapter Two: A Distressing Introduction to the Natural World . . . . .11
Chapter Three: Politicians and Other Wild Animals . . . . . . . . . . .19
Confession Two: I Put Ratings above Everything Else
Chapter Four: Dumbing It Down . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .29
Chapter Five: The Boring Crusader . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .33
Chapter Six: The Ardent Pursuit of Ratings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .37
Confession Three: As I Learned about Filmmaking, I Was Still a Clueless Dad
Chapter Seven: Conserving My Home Environment . . . . . . . . . . .47
Confession Four: I Joined an Industry that Accepted Animal Abuse
Chapter Eight: Ethics and Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .55
Chapter Nine: The Murky Morals of the National Audubon Society and the National Wildlife Federation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .67
Confession Five: I Was a Hypocrite Who Enjoyed Watching Shamu Perform
Chapter Ten: The Pleasures of SeaWorld . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .79
Chapter Eleven: The Cruelty of SeaWorld . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .85
Confession Six: I Didn’t Resign, I Got Fired
Chapter Twelve: Undiscovered Country . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .95
Chapter Thirteen: Letting Go . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .109
Confession Seven: I Was a Professor Who Didn’t Know How to Teach
Chapter Fourteen: Teaching and Preaching . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
Confession Eight: I Tried Stand-Up Comedy and Got the Boot
Chapter Fifteen: Wildlife Filmmaking Is Easy, Comedy Is Hard . . . 125
Confession Nine: My Own Mistakes Pushed Me to a Tipping Point
Chapter Sixteen: My Own Mistakes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
Chapter Seventeen: Going Out on a Limb . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
Confession Ten: I Don’t Have All the Answers (but Am Still Searching)
Chapter Eighteen: Deceiving and Misleading Audiences . . . . . . . . 151
Chapter Nineteen: Failing the Conservation Test . . . . . . . . . . . .163
Chapter Twenty: Harassing and Harming Animals . . . . . . . . . . 183
Chapter Twenty-One: Where Do We Go From Here? . . . . . . . . . 203
Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .223
Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .233
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .237
About the Author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .247
PREFACE:
HERE IS THE FIRST confession in a book of confessions: I haven’t always lived up to my responsibilities as a filmmaker. I’ve been as guilty of fabricating phony wildlife scenes as those I now criticize. That’s just the way it is done in this industry, and I’m ashamed of how long it took me to realize this practice was wrong. Now, as you will see in this book, much worse things are being done in the chase for ratings.
Over thirty years ago, I began producing wildlife films when I realÂized that film and television are some of the best tools society possesses to protect the environment and encourage conservation. I’ve spent my career trying to create films that people would want to watch and that will help the environment and wildlife. Sometimes—through the magical combination of funding, incredibly talented colleagues, and luck—I’ve been successful.
But amid this success, it has gotten harder and harder for me to ignore the dark side of wildlife filmmaking. My first book, Shooting in the Wild, published in 2010, looked behind the scenes of wildlife films, exposing an industry undermined by sensationalism, fabrication, and sometimes even animal abuse. I described how, over the course of producing many films, I became haunted by the measures sometimes taken by broadcastÂers and filmmakers to capture compelling images. Were filmmakers doing more harm than good by staging “money shots” to capture more dramatic footage and achieve higher ratings at the expense of the animals and truly natural behaviors?
This new book is a memoir about my unusual childhood in England, my stern and demanding father, my emigration to America, my flaws as a dad, the superficial world of television, the foibles of environmental groups, the cruelty of SeaWorld, and the mistakes I made while struggling to excel as a film producer, stand-up comic, and teacher—and how all of these experiences shaped my views on wildlife filmmaking. It’s also about how networks like Discovery, Animal Planet, and National Geographic are failing in their responsibility to produce and broadcast programs that are not only entertaining but also consistent with their founding visions. The networks are full of honorable and ethical people who care about wild places and animals, but the business side of television seems to coerce them into behavior that sometimes harms wildlife, spreads misinformaÂtion, and coarsens society’s appreciation of nature.
Suppose you want to produce a wildlife documentary and you’ve scraped together some financing. You don’t have much time in which to make this film. Of course, you want your film to achieve high audience ratings when it airs. Those high ratings will help get you rehired and give you the income you need to put food on the table and send your kids to college.
As you set out to shoot your film, certain questions will arise in your mind: To save time and money, can I stage some shots? Will it be easier to film if I rent captive animals? How close can I get to wild animals to capture dramatic behavior? Can I bait or entice wild animals to get them to act in ways that I want? Should I ignore conservation because the average viewer is not that interested in it?
In this book, I tackle these questions and challenge those in the enviÂronmental media industry to reconsider their own choices and obliÂgations. I also hope that these behind-the-scenes reports will serve as a wake-up call to viewers who may not fully realize that they are watching unethically made wildlife programs and are thereby encouraging continÂued exploitation.
I am writing this book to try to change the industry by being open about my own challenges and failings as a human being and as a filmÂmaker. I want to show the complexities of making wildlife films in an ethical manner. It is not easy to pull back the curtain on the industry’s failÂures—and even harder to reveal my own—but I believe the time has come for wildlife filmmaking to move in a healthier direction. We, as a society, cannot afford the malignant race for ever higher ratings to further corrupt the quality of these programs.
I believe that wildlife filmmakers have at our disposal one of the greatest tools ever conceived to sway public opinion—a tool so powerful that, with its influence, we can actually change the future for all life on this planet. Film gives us the potential opportunity to educate and inspire every single viewer to move closer to nature and to treat the other inhabitants of this planet with more dignity and respect. Let’s seize this opportunity.
Professor Chris Palmer
Author of Confessions of a Wildlife Filmmaker (Bluefield Publishing, 2015)
and Shooting in the Wild (Sierra Club Books, 2010)
Distinguished Film Producer in Residence
Director, Center for Environmental Filmmaking environmentalfilm.org
American University School of Communication
