Doug's Book Chapter 1

For the last seven months, as well as filming, I’ve been writing a book. Well I say ‘seven months’, but actually it’s been brewing in my head for a lot longer than that. In these coming weeks until we come off the presses in early February 2012, I’m going to tell you it’s been the biggest fun I’ve had in a long time, why it’s felt real good to have finally done it, and therefore why you should all rush out and buy a copy please! But more of that later, if I take you back to the beginning you’ll get more of a feel for how it’s come about.

April 1982 and I’ve just started my third contract with the British Antarctic Survey (BAS). No diving this time, instead I’m preparing to head for Halley down at 75 degrees south on the east side of the Weddell Sea, where it’s all ionospheric science. No biologists for a hundred miles in any direction, no rocks either, it’s on an ice shelf. But there are Emperor Penguins ……….. though this isn’t the place to talk of them either. Buy my book for that. Right now 29 years ago I’m in Ross on Wye, helping to test build a unique design for the new Halley station in Antarctica. But I have literary creativity on my mind as well. I’ve been back in UK for twelve months after finishing a two and a half year spell as a diver and scientist with BAS on Signy Island, and I’ve been putting together my ideas for a picture driven book about the experience. Twelve chapters, one for each month of the natural year. And Aurum Press have shown interest – could I do a sample chapter? Any month, my choice, about 7000 words. So I’m thinking my way through October, writing about the Adelies return, the water still clear for diving, the Weddells just left. They want four copies so I’m bashing hard on the keys of the typewriter to go all the way through the carbon copies. If you’re younger than 30 and reading this you likely won’t have a clue what I’m writing about.

I did my chapter, they took it, they rejected it and that was the end of attempt at book mk 1. And you know, I wasn’t that bothered. That many words x 12 would have been very very hard. Doing is easy, writing is a whole different ball game.

More winters passed down south, I took up an Arriflex rather than a Nikon in 1984 for a change of direction to full wildlife film making. Life in the Freezer, Life at the Edge, Polar Bear then The Blue Planet and beyond. Increasing interest from the public in what we camerafolk do, more public lectures from me, where people said afterwards “You must have so many stories! You should write a book!”. So ever the self publicist, I decided in 2004 to try again. This time I’m better prepared, I’ve pitched ideas for TV shows, I think a book must be the same. Think pithy titles, Jamie Oliver’s in his prime, so my new pitch is The Naked Cameraman And here’s my offering back then :

The Naked Cameraman

Stripping off the covers of his personal and professional life, Doug Allan reveals the real life dramas behind the world of wildlife film-making. Wildlife filming has taken him all over the world — from the scorching deserts of Namibia to the steamy jungles of Madagascar — underwater with whale sharks in Belize to the upper slopes of Everest — camped in a colony of a million penguins in Antarctica then seeking out the elusive solitary snow leopard at 18,000 feet in Ladakh - and much more.

(1) The Early Days- first diving, pearl diving, Red Sea depths, touching photography, and finally a big chance with the British Antarctic Survey.

(2) Love for the Poles – 10 years with BAS as a biologist, ice diver, photographer and base commander, crafting my photography, Polar Medal and Fuchs Medal, a meeting with Sir David Attenborough leads to my first attempts at filming for the BBC through a winter with Emperor penguins.

(3) Breaking Out and Breaking Through – the decision to go for wildlife filming full time, early shoots, increasing successes, Trials of Life, to Madagascar, Lake Baikal, Siberian Tigers, Andes, Bhutan and many others before Life in the Freezer down in the Antarctic, National Geographic in the Arctic, then BBC Wildlife Specials and Polar Bear.

(4) In Pole Position- Blue Planet and other award winning series since.

Not bad I thought, not bad. Jonny Geller, an agent at Curtis Brown, lined me up to meet three publishers. I went to talk with them, and quickly realised another similarity between pitching books and movie ideas – I could see publishers like film commissioners often don’t actually read the idea. No I didn’t want to do a book on conservation in Antarctica as one suggested, nor an identification book on polar wildlife as the second had in mind. Nor even a simple book of pictures as per the third meeting.

So I drew in my horns again, put it all on the back shelf of my mind, busied myself with A Boy Among Polar Bears and sequence shooting for Planet Earth. But I must have gone back to my subconscious mental drawing board. Because these negative meetings with publishers helped to crystallize my own thoughts. It was actually the straightforward approach of my ideas that I was unhappy about. I was taking myself in my Naked Cameraman down a path that had too many words. I knew inside that I couldn’t face trying to write 100,000 words in a linear fashion, the prospect was way too scary. I’d never sustain it. I knew I had good stories, I knew I had good pictures – but how to combine them in a way I could handle? A mental picture slowly emerged of the kind of book I wanted to produce. I had to get the balance of words and pictures right, it had to look and feel good.

It took another four years, but in 2008 I pulled the idea out and dusted it off once more, only this time it was to have a different outcome ……………