Four part series for Discovery UK/Sky 3D, fronted by climber Leo Houlding and biologist Monty Halls.

 

The ambitious brief was for Leo to use his climbing skills to get Monty to places he wouldn't otherwise be able to access, to search for and catalogue wildlife, and hopefully to discover new species.

 

I was originally brought onboard to carry out a recce and feasibility study in the Canaima region of Venezuela, where we hoped to film all four programmes. After a sucessful recce, I was taken on to work as location producer, overseeing the logistics of filming on waterfalls and down cave systems on top of Ayuantepui. Sadly, a week before we departed, the political situation in Venezuela took a nosedive and the trip was cancelled.

 

I then got in touch with a contact in Guyana, Ian Craddock, and within five weeks we had identified several possible programmes, recce'd them, and put in place all the logistics for a three week filming trip. This included 6 days filming a jungle episode, and six days exploring a couple of remote waterfalls - ironically within 20 miles of the area we had planned to visit in Venezuela.

 

The second trip was to the Mulu area of Borneo, home to the world's longest cave system. here, we made one film deep inside the caves, where Leo becamw the first person ever to climb out of a remote sinkhole known as `The Secret Garden' to get a GPS fix for mapping the caves, and Monty surveyed the wildlife that lives in near permanent darkness, including the extraordinary cave-racer snake.

 

The second Borneo film featured a pioneering climb on the massive cliffs of the Melinau River Gorge.