I had the privilege of spending some time with Drew Fellman, producer of “Born To Be Wild,” an IMAX 3D film that is an immersive journey into a world where orangutans and elephants habitats and families are being destroyed by humans. 

Two scientists – Dr. Birute Mary Gildakis (from Borneo, studies orangutans) and Dame Daphne M. Sheldrick (Kenya, works with elephants) share about their unique experiences caring for these beautiful creatures and some of the peculiarities of their research and passions in their fields throughout the educational, family film. 

Drew Fellman was kind enough to share about the film, the challenge of shooting in IMAX, and some of his inspirations as a filmmaker.

Christopher: How does someone direct or write a documentary?

Drew Fellman: Every documentary is different, but the IMAX format – the equipment is so big and so expensive.  The camera holds 3 minutes of film at a time.  We can shoot about 15-20 minutes a day.  You really have to have a pretty strong intention of what you are setting out to do.  Of course it’s life and what happens happens, but you really have to be prepared.  In every shot there are cranes involved, dolly’s involved, and there are hours of set-up.  You really have to have thought it out beforehand.

So what we did for this film is we did a few scouting trips and we observed what happens.  These animals are all basically in a rehabilitation program so we just understood what the flow of that program was – where they were in the morning, where they woke up, what’s the first thing they did, what’s the second thing they did and we planned the shoot around their behavior.  We know that if we watched their behavior for 5 days that when we come back next year it will pretty much be the same.

Of course it will be slightly different; maybe the cast of characters will be different.  So we knew what the range of behavior and activities would be so we were able to write it around what we thought will happen.  That doesn’t mean necessarily writing the voices you hear, it means writing the flow of the story.

C: When I hear the term “documentary” I think that there is an experience where someone goes into something objectively and then walks out with a conclusion after the experience.  Obviously with your director having his background in biology there is a lot that comes in with that background.  I guess I am just curious about how the (filmmaking) process gets informed.

DF: It’s different in every project and you have to start out with an intention because in the IMAX format you don’t have the luxury of just seeing what happens because you can’t just roll.  It’s a combination of planning meets reality.  What’s written first is the shooting plan.  That’s written, but it’s more of a guide.  But when you come back, you can write based on reality.

The writing for this is mostly culled from interviews with the women themselves (Birute Mary Gildakis and Dame Daphne M. Sheldrick) and their own words.  It’s all an exercise in condensing the experience into its most distilled, pure form.  It’s condensing their lives and what we are seeing on screen into the most succinct possible way of putting it visually and with sound and that’s kind of the great challenge and is unique to this format.

C: Is there something that you are particularly proud of being at this stage of the process?

DF: I had that moment about a month ago.  It’s hard to watch it – I mean just to watch it pure like an audience member and not be looking for something to change.  I was watching it while we were doing the sound mix and I just sat back and watched it through one time and I just thought, “You know it just makes me happy.”  Just watching this film makes me happy.  I had a real pure experience sitting in the theater and watching these animals and watching what they were going through and it just filled me with joy.  That’s incredible, and that was always the idea from the very beginning.

There are so many films made about wildlife and these issues that are really hard to watch.  There are stories that tell you about all the terrible things that are happening and struggles and can paint a very bleak picture.  But we decided to take the opposite approach because this is largely a film for families.  So we decided to take the approach that we’re gonna show you why we should love these animals, and what’s amazing about them and the richness of their lives and their experience and we’re going to touch on the difficulties that they face.

But that’s not what the film is about, the film is sort of about getting a second chance and the joy of being a young orangutan or a young elephant with a second chance at life.  So, I feel like that really came through and I’m very pleased with that.  You know it’s a real challenge to make a happy, uplifting, honest film about a very hard subject where there is a lot of tragedy involved.  It’s hard to get that balance right but I feel like we did a good job.

C: Many of the things we cover on our website are issues like human trafficking, domestic and foreign poverty issues, etc.  Could you comment more on the human/animal connection you discussed earlier today because I think a lot of people might see the message of the film and say to themselves, “Well, shouldn’t I put my energy more into human rights issues?”

DF: Everyone is interested in different things, and there is no shortage of problems in the world that people shouldn’t get involved in depending on their own interests.  There are always going to be people interested in this story or that story.

Something we try to address in the film, but we have a limited period of time so we do our best, is that this isn’t a story about one animal.  It’s not a story about one rescued elephant or one rescued orangutan.  It’s really about; how do we as humans want to exist on this planet?  What kind of role do we want to take as people who share this planet with orangutans and elephants?  Do we just want to wipe them all out so we can make bracelets, earrings, piano keys or soap?  Or, do we want to have a planet that has elephants and that has orangutans?

If we want to be people that live on a planet that has other animals, then we have to do something about it because the forces that are trying to destroy them are huge and powerful.  It takes a lot of money and effort to push back against that and orangutans can’t do it for themselves.  So, if there is anybody out there that believes that that is something important, then these causes are something to get involved in.

C: In terms of your process with the film, how did you get connected to it and get interested in it?

DF: It’s a story that I originated and that I pitched to IMAX.  It’s something for me that came from an experience that I had a long time ago.  I was backpacking through South East Asia in 1994 and I stumbled upon camp Leakey, which is one of the locations in the film, completely randomly.  At the time, the orangutan orphanage that you see in the film – that part of the program was still happening at Camp Leakey.

So it was this really interesting experience where you travel up river on some boat into the jungles of Borneo and you really feel like you’re going deep into the jungle.  You pull up at this jetty and there sitting on this jetty are a couple of orangutans.  You get off your boat and there’s no people around and this orangutan gets up and starts waddling over to you and takes your hand and climbs up into your arms and there you are standing there holding the most incredible creature.  He doesn’t know you and you don’t know him and you have this incredible connection.  It’s not necessarily a lifelong connection, but there is some interaction that’s quite unlike anything you can have with another animal that’s happening.  And you realize immediately how unique and incredible these orangutans are and how benign and thoughtful and how close to us they are in so many ways, that it’s something that unless you go there, you’ll never quite get it.

The great thing about a film like this, especially using IMAX 3D, is that you can convey that experience.  You know, you see something on TV, it’s not going to affect you in the same way.  It doesn’t affect you deeply – physically and emotionally.  Maybe you understand it in your mind, but you don’t really feel it.  I’ll never really be a true audience member of this film so I’ll never know, but I believe that there are some shots in there where you really feel like you are really right in there with those little orangutans and you feel like you understand them on some level that’s deep.  That’s the thing I wanted to convey.

C: Which you did a really great job of – as much as film can impart that, and especially with the addition of IMAX 3D.  I thought you did a great job with that.

DF: Thank you

C: For someone who lives in Los Angeles or Southern California, they see it on screen with this amazing story and these researchers and scientists doing all this great work.  But I walked away asking myself what is a practical way I could respond to it because I feel so removed here in the city.  How could you respond to that?

DF: I’d say there’s two things – There is one part of that answer which is, well, what can you do to help orangutans and elephants?   I would say because we are far away, really the best thing to do is to support the people that are actually out in the field working.  One way to do that is by adopting an elephant or an orangutan.  Certainly you can make a donation to the organizations, but the adoption program is a way where you give 50-100 bucks a year and you get all the information about a particular elephant or orangutan you are sponsoring and you kind of follow their life for awhile and understand what they are going through.  People really love that and they get a connection to those animals.

But I’d say the other answer is that both of these people are someone who…well, neither of them went to these places to do what they are doing.  Birute was there studying orangutans and working on her Ph.D.  Daphne was born in Kenya and that was her life.  So, they are both 2 people who looked at the world around them and saw something really terrible happening in their backyard and they’ve spent their lives trying to correct it in some way.

So, we all have something terrible happening in our backyard’s unfortunately, and so I’d say one of the takeaway’s is to maybe emulate the way they’ve lived their lives – to be someone who when you see something wrong that you think you can make a difference about in your own world, to step up and take some responsibility for it.  That’s what they’ve done.  Part of it is how can you help them, but the other part of it is what are the other things you can make a difference on.

C: Are there other nature documentaries that you particularly look up to, or you consider the benchmark?

DF: Certainly in the IMAX format, I am a huge fan of Toni Myers films and Howard Hall’s films because they both bring this reverence not only to the medium but also this reverence to their subjects.  Howard Hall makes underwater films, Toni Myers makes space films.  Those are both experiences that normal people in their daily life can’t have.  None of us are going into space, I’m never going into space, I know that. I’ve gone underwater and I’ve worked for Howard a bit, but I’ve certainly never gone into space.  They’re both people that bring these environments that are often out of reach for us.  They create a very true, reverential experience about these environments and they allow us that insight into worlds we’ll never see.  Other documentaries I am a huge fan Errol Morris and his films.