The Making of O'Shea's Big Adventure

Natural History film crews are generally quite small for ease of mobility and minimum impact on their surroundings.

The O'Shea's Big Adventure crews typically numbered five, occasionally six, persons from the UK with additional people from the host country being also involved on location.

A crew On Location might comprise the following:

The crews for each of the OBA films are listed here.

The Director is the person in charge of filming who directs the crew and presenter and makes the day to day decisions on location. He/she is also the person who works with the Editor in post-production when the footage shot on location is molded into the finished film, hence the term 'director's cut.
The following 8 Directors worked on the 34 OBA films: Martin Belderson (3), Hugo Smith (8), Roger Finnigan (6), Andrew Sheldon (1), David Wright (3), Jon Stephens (7), Julian Dismore (4) and Mark McMullen (2).

The Producer may be more concerned with the schedule and budget than the positioning of cameras and presenters. Usually on location the roles of Director and Producer are combined into Director/Producer.
The following 2 Producers worked on 6 OBA films when the Director was not a Director/Producer: Alice Keens-Soper (5) and Thomas Viner (1).

The Associate Producer or AP is often a trainee Producer or Director, the step up from Researcher. On location this person is in charge of getting things down outside of the filming ie. taking charge of equipment, ancillary personnel, transport and accomodation and also keeping an eye on film or video stock and communications. The AP, Producer and/or Director may also conduct recces to determine suitable locations and contributors before the main crew and presenter arrive to begin filming.
The following 7 APs worked on 22 OBA films: Robert Pendlebury (7), Stephen Shearman (3), Justine Watmough (3), Matthew Catling (4), Emma Ross (1), Amy Lansdown-Nasson (2) and Anne Breeze (2).

The Researcher researches the story-lines, checks out transport and accomodation for the crew in advance as they learn the ropes in television. If they are lucky they may even go on the film shoot in the AP position.
Several researchers worked in the YAP offices but only one went on location. Mark McMullen worked on 6 films in Series One and came back in Series Four as a Director.

The Presenter is the link between the viewing audience and the story-line. He/she has to be able to communicate what is going on and what he/she would like to see going on, either directly to the camera or while engaged in other tasks that require attention and focus, such as milking a venomous snake.
Mark O'Shea presented all 34 OBA films, Series One being presented to the side of camera, Series Two-Four being presented directly into the camera.

Contributors are usually expert from the host country or scientists with a specialist knowledge in the subject. Some films will have one contributor who accompanies the Presenter throughout, others have a number of contributors who come and go. There may also be local people who become involved in the story-line either by design or accident.
Contributors were involved in 33 of the 34 OBA films, the only film without a contributor being The Magic Man which featured Mark's own fieldwork in Papua New Guinea. Contributors will be introduced on the relevent expedition/film shoot pages.

The Camera Operator is the main cameraman or woman. On OBA camera operators knew to keep running as we never knew when something interesting might happen and we did not want to miss catching it on camera. Following an incident in Series 2 where we almost missed a critical event we included a Second Camera on any shoot involving diving and also on shoots where having a second camera might be handy to obtain blue-chip natural history footage at the same time as the crew were off filming somewhere else. Additional cameras were also available for the Producer and or Director to use.
The following 4 Camera Operators worked on the 34 OBA films: Richard Edwards (10), Des Seal (18) and Mark Stokes (6), with Jon Pinkney (3) as second camera.

The Sound Recordist records not only any dialogue between the Presenter and his Contributors, and action as it happens, but also ambient sound to help edit sequences together. These are called "wild tracks".
The following 4 Camera Operators worked on the 34 OBA films: Mario Mooney (6), Ross Neasham (4), Ian Dorrington (1) and Terry Meadowcroft (23).

The crews for each of the OBA films are listed here.

Not all shoots require a Location Manager, commonly called a Fixer, but sometimes productions in remote or non-English speaking countries or countries with conflex bureaucracy when it comes to filming, will benefit from having a local expert along to smooth border crossings, clear permits, oversea local assistance and ensure people and places can be filmed as promised.
The following 3 Camera Operators worked on the 6 OBA films: Fernando Setta (4) in Brazil and Argentina, Namfon Boontua (1) in Thailand, and Deborah McLauchlan (1) in Peru.

Also included on location were doctors, dive-masters, climbers, pilots and othe specialised experts in their fields.

There are also a number of people involved back at the Production Company's office in UK, both before, during and following filming.

The Executive Producers are the people who make the ultimate decisions about projects such as which story-lines will be adopted and how filming will be financed. They interact with the Broadcaster's Commissioning Editors and the Executive Producers of other companies involved in the project. They also hire staff and crews.
The Executive Producers of YAP Films, and therefore all four series of OBA, are Pauline Duffy in Leeds and Elliott Halpern in Toronto.

The Series Producer overseas the whole series and coordinates the various individual film projects with their Directors. Often the Series Producer is the most senior person from the Production Company to go on location.
Only Series Two had a Series Producer, a position shared between Roger Finnigan and Hugo Smith.

The Production Manager and Production Assistant are the first point of contact back at home, for a crew on location. They sort out visas, flights and accomodation before the crew departs, make sure everything is set up to allow the production and crew on location to work as smoothly as possible, and trouble-shoot any problems as they occur.
The Production Manager for Series One to Three was Sue Edelson, with different Production Assistants ie. Jane Swithenbank on all the films of Series One except one, which was handled by Joanna Wilcock, and Edwina Sheridan who was Production Assistant on Series Two and Three before taking over as Production Manager on Series Four, which had no Production Assistant.

Several people work with the Director and Executive Producers in post-production.

The Editor will edit all the footage obtained during filming into an 'editor's cut' and when the Director is available they will work together to produce the 'director's cut' which then goes to the Executive Producers of the Production Company and the Broadcasters for their input.
The following 6 Editors worked on the 34 OBA films: John Watts (4), Brian Tomkins (3), Barry Spink (10), Barry Reynolds (6), Stephen Shone (10) and Gary Westmoreland (1).

The Dubbing Mixer makes sure all the sound tracks and dialogue, including the narration, is in sync with the pictures and is as near perfect in quality as possible.
The following 7 Dubbing Mixers worked on the 34 OBA films: Chris Rayson (5), Rick Williams (13), Daniel Pugh (3), Dave Aston (4), Richard Lee (2), Adam Severs (6) and Patrick Morris (1).

The Narrator does the voice-over, known as VO. Often this is someone with a suitably reassuring voice or it may be a personality or actor with a well known voice.
Series One of OBA was narrated by Jack Roberts (10) and actor John Simm (3) while Series Two to Four were narrated by Mark O'Shea himself.

The final film also requires Music, a theme-tune and background music, and animation and credits will be provided by a Graphics Company. The music on the Series One was provided by Adrian Burch and David Whitaker while Paul Farrer composed the music for the other three series. Dark Horse Graphics provided artwork for Series One while Peppiate-Sharpe were responsible for Series Two to Four.

Finally, despite not knowing how and OBA film may actually turn out, the films do require a Writer in the early stages, who will prepare a treatment outlining the aims of the quest for the Executive Producers from the Broadcasters and co-producing companies. One writer, Kenny Scott, wrote the treatments for at least 20 of the 34 OBA films.