Wildebeest's Migration Tracked Over 2 Years With 200-Pound Camera

George Casey's latest IMAX documentary, "Africa: the Serengeti," began more than three years ago, when the Houston Museum of Natural Science asked him to create a super-70mm production about animal life on the plains of Kenya and Tanzania.

"Sometimes you're very lucky to be interested in the subject matter," he said while introducing the film at the Pacific Science Center's IMAX theater. "This happened to be one of those subjects."

While Casey has made several kinds of IMAX productions ("The Great Barrier Reef," "Probes in Space"), he calls himself "a volcano junkie." His specialty has been IMAX volcano movies ("Ring of Fire," "Genesis," and "The Eruption of Mount St. Helens").

"Serengeti" begins with a volcano filmed elsewhere, which is used to illustrate the creation of the plains millions of years ago. But the rest of the picture was shot entirely in the Serengeti park, where Casey and his family filmed the northern migration of the wildebeest over a two-year period.

They stayed long enough for his daughter, a sound recordist, to get a marriage proposal from a Masai tribesman who offered Casey 20 cattle for her.

"While I was out inspecting my herd," Casey smiled, "my wife discovered that he already had one wife."

One of Casey's sons is a 35mm photographer whose smaller, more mobile camera recorded several of the movie's more intimate shots of animal behavior. They were later blown up to 70mm to fit the larger IMAX format.

"The IMAX cameras are very heavy, up to 200 pounds with a tripod, which makes it difficult to carry," said Casey. "When a lion was attacking a wildebeest, my son was able to get there before the IMAX camera did, so that's his footage you see in the film."

Casey ended up shooting 250,000 feet of negative, with a 20-to-1 shooting ratio.

"We spent an awful lot of time waiting. We had only one camera, and we depended on it staying healthy. For the point-of-view shot of the cheetah running, we waited until we knew it would be our last shot on that trip. We knew the camera would take a beating, and the magazine did break down."

He said he was surprised how closely the finished film resembles the storyboards he created as a kind of visual outline for what he expected to shoot. One memorable scene at the end, with a wildebeest calf struggling to get on its feet, was always part of his plan, though he couldn't manipulate the animal in any way.

"You can't interfere with what's happening or you'll be thrown out of the park," he said. "The storyboard is as much a menu as it is a firm structure, which we change depending on what develops. The final film is always a mixture of serendipity and disappointment."

Two regrets: He ran out of time and money before he could shoot a sequence about evolution and the discoveries at Olduvai Gorge, and he never could get a sleeping lion to behave for the camera.

"He was moving his paw as if he were running. But every time we'd start the cameras he'd stop doing it. I never got that shot.

"The lions when they're asleep are very approachable. We were just 18 feet away when we did that scene, but we used the telephoto lens an awful lot for the rest."

Casey doesn't believe he forced any of the behavior in the film, although he admits that the behavior of stampeding wildebeests was sometimes caused by helicopters used to shoot overhead sequences.

"They're running for various reasons. A fair amount was because of the aircraft. We also took about a dozen hot-air balloon trips, but I think we were generally unobtrusive."

He feels fortunate that he got the footage he did, particularly in contrast to his experiences on "Alaska," an IMAX film he's working on for 1997 release.

"The animals were acclimated to vehicles in Africa," said Casey. "That's not true in Alaska. The sea otters have been so persecuted that they're quite wary. I've just spent 14 weeks there, doing what would take four weeks in the Serengeti."

"Africa: the Serengeti" cost about $3.5 million; some of the more elaborate IMAX movies have reached $20 million. When Casey started with IMAX in the late 1970s, theaters were few and the budgets sometimes hovered around $500,000.

"Since I was last here, to present `Ring of Fire,' the number of IMAX theaters has increased from 70 to 140," he said. "That's double in the past four years. There's a very large audience for these films now. Twenty-five million people will eventually see `Africa: the Serengeti'."

Casey does a lot of market testing, though he doesn't always follow the results.

"We asked people what they'd prefer in an African film, and the balloon safari was the most popular choice."

He admits that he never quite adjusted to the carnage they witnessed daily.

"We're so insulated from predation," he said. "I did get more used to it toward the end. It's a cycle. You have to look at it that way."