What growing up in
British filmmaker Jeff Wilson has never been surprised that he ’ s made a career of focusing his cameras on wildlife . The co-director of Disneynature ’ s “ Penguins ” hails from the Snowdonia region of Wales , but he grew up in Kenya and regularly traveled around East Africa with his conservationist parents . “ That would instill a real passion in any child , and it really fired me up !”
It also got him to earn a degree in Biology at the University of Bristol , after which he found himself in a right time-right place situation , landing a job in the BBC Natural History Unit ( partially because he spoke Swahili ) as a bag carrier and driver . “ The BBC crew went to the Kenya / Uganda border to film the culture of the elephants there ,” he explained . “ For the next two years , my job was to live in some caves with the elephants when they came in at night .”
Wilson spent many years working on all aspects of wildlife filmmaking with the BBC . “ There ’ s a very small community of people who make wildlife films ,” he said . “ I was very fortunate to be in the presence of absolute legends , and I learned from them . Then about seven years ago , I was able to start making my own films .”