Conclusion

Summary

A conclusion is the logical place to wonder, uneasily, about the flaws, weaknesses, inconsistencies, unfulfilled campaign promises and other problems of one’s effort. The morning prayer from the Book of Common Prayer gets the feeling: ‘We have left undone those things / which we ought to have done; / and we have done those things / which we ought not to have done; / and there is no health in us.’

As for what I did that I should not have done? I leave readers – and critics – to decide on that. Left undone? I would have liked to know more about how husband and wife partnerships worked and work. While the standard model may have been the man photographing and the woman recording sound and taking photos, that was certainly not the case throughout. Perhaps Carol Hughes and Jen Bartlett and the Jouberts will still write memoirs. I struggled to get a complete list of film festival prizes because the American awards, whether of Emmys or of other major festivals, proved hard to find.

I would have liked to know more about audiences and the countries where people watched these programmes. Tol Pienaar claimed that Norma Foster’s Wildlife in Crisis had been viewed ‘behind the iron curtain’. Where and what did those viewers make of it? How many people watched WildEarth broadcast in China and what effect might those viewings have? How reliable are claims that some programme was the most watched or the most popular? For whom, when, compared to what? And what effects do wildlife films have on audiences?

And, for a book invoking Latour, where is there a consideration of editing and special effects and all the other people who help produce the final product? What of the role of somebody like David Dickie who brought Pink Floyd into Namib and edited so many of these films? What might there have been that made them ‘his’ films? Though I managed to interview Elmon Mhlongo, what about the many other African figures involved, particularly the San? Surely more should have been said about joy in nature, whether primal or Wordsworthian or in San hunting?