Bees And Birds

9th April
I’m getting a lot of flak from The Director, he says that I’m giving the impression that it’s all studio filming here. So, lets get this straight, most of the filming is outside, mostly nearby but some of it involves packing up a car and driving for an hour or so.

These kind of trips usually need two people – a camera person and an assistant, sometimes, someone gets the short straw and has to take me out with them. I’m good at all sorts of things but I can’t get the hang of camera stuff or technology and all the cabley/connector-ey/knobby stuff that goes with it. I only get picked for camera assistant if there is no other option.

Recently, The Director had to take me with him to film the relationship between solitary bees and bee orchids. We drove the car as close to the spot as we could and then fought our way on foot through scratchy bushy stuff the last few miles uphill to the filming location.

Loaded with unwieldy cases, tripods and rucksacks, we decided not to completely empty the vehicle – that would’ve been silly, we just made a couple of trips carrying as much as we could. As the day wore on, if a different tripod or lens was needed, the assistant would run back to get it.

Insects really hate being breathed on so you need to stay as far away as possible for them to keep doing their thing - as an assistant you can’t really see what’s going on.

It wasn’t until I saw the material being logged that I realised what had been filmed that day. When the male bees hatch and emerge blinking into the sunshine they’re not sure what a girl is exactly - like excitable boys they experiment with the nearest likely object. The bee orchid, growing cunningly near the bee colony, has a flower that is a bit like a female bee, the male bees snuggle into them and rub themselves around while the orchid plants yellow deeley boppers of pollen on their heads. After a while the male bee meets a real female, then he feels a chump for having been fooled earlier and he doesn’t visit the orchids quite as enthusiastically any more, but by this time he and his mates have pollinated the orchids ready for another year’s April Fool.