Viewers worldwide were given a unique experience when National Geographic Channel (NGC) broadcast live from South Africa’s Kruger National Park in November. The wildlife channel broadcast four hours of live coverage from the reserve for seven straight days from 9 November. Viewers were offered 28 hours of encounters in real time with lions, elephant, hyenas and other wild creatures that are usually only viewed live through the safety of a car window in the park.
Caught on Safari: Live! was filmed on location at Singita, a safari game reserve in the Nwanetsi Concession area of the Kruger. To capture the wild for this up-close look at life as it occurs in this animal kingdom, non-invasive cameras were set up strategically. With the assistance of the programme’s host filmmaker and conservationist John Varty, along with fellow hosts Michaela Strachan and Andy Coetzee, the elusive inhabitants of Singita were tracked. Singita represents one of Africa’s few territories where large prides of lions thrive, along with many other species including buffalo, leopard, white and black rhino, cheetah and elephant, among others.
To make it possible for viewers to share in the thrill of watching game live from the comfort of their armchairs, the latest technology was employed by the Broadcast division of Inala Technologies (Pty) Ltd, a company that offers turnkey solutions to the broadcast industry in South Africa. In order to transmit the pictures live to viewers for the seven days, Inala designed and built a fly-away system to cope with the harsh conditions of the Kruger National Park.
The system was constructed so that it could be easily deployed to provide the mobile high definition (HD) video link and back-haul HD video link (supplied by Global Microwave Systems) necessary to get the live pictures from the game drive vehicle back to the fly-away final control centre. From here, the feed was captured on an Omneon HD server used for capturing live content for highlights and later playback.
Read more in the Nov/Dec 2008 issue of Screen Africa
