Meerkat Manor: The Story Begins - Production

Production

Created by Oxford Scientific Films for Discovery Films, Meerkat Manor: The Story Begins is a prequel biography of Flower, the central meerkat of the highly rated documentary series Meerkat Manor. Caroline Hawkins, creator of the series, wrote the script using notes taken by Kalahari Meerkat Project researchers, including head researcher Tim Clutton-Brock. Hawkins notes that Oxford Scientific Films believes the film is the first natural history prequel to be created. The film was directed by Chris Barker and Mike Slee, while Whoopi Goldberg, a known Meerkat Manor fan, provided the narration.

"The television series was specifically shot very low and intimate so you have a one-on-one relationship with the meerkats. We put you in their world immediately and you spend almost all your time at their eye level. But we knew to make a feature film we needed something bigger. We had to bring in bigger toys to expand it. We wanted to give everybody a sense of how big the Kalahari is."

Meerkat Manor normally films episodes using a crew of only two or three people to avoid disturbing the meerkats; the film was shot over two years at the Kuruman River Reserve, where the Kalahari Meerkat Project that the meerkats are a part of is based, and employed a much larger crew. Breaking from the series' pure documentary format, the film does not include footage of the project meerkats depicted in the story. Instead, wild meerkat "actors" represented Flower and her family; Flower was depicted by approximately eight female meerkats. The camera crew sought out appropriately aged meerkats for each scene, then filmed them until they behaved in ways the script required.

While the majority of the meerkats filmed were partially habituated, the cinematographers had to move carefully to avoid scaring the animals. The crew used radios to keep in contact with one another as they followed the meerkat groups around. Although the park normally prohibits low-flying aircraft, the production crew was given permission to film for three days using a low-flying helicopter. Mounted to its front underside was a new type of camera that was not affected by the shaking of the helicopter. Full-color scenes depicting the birth of meerkat pups were obtained by filming captive meerkats at the Cotswold Wildlife Park in the United Kingdom.

Because of the viewer backlash Animal Planet received for allowing meerkats from the Meerkat Manor series to die, the producers of the film debated including the filmed death of a young meerkat who was bitten by a snake. They questioned whether viewers would understand that the meerkats were wild animals and that human interference would disrupt the animals' natural life cycles. In addition, to avoid disrupting the research, crews are only allowed to film within the research area under a strictly enforced agreement not to interfere with the meerkats' lives. The producers ultimately included the scene, but the meerkat's cries for help as it lay dying were edited out. Other meerkat deaths depicted were reenactments. For Viale's death scene, the crew rigged a camera mounted on a platform on the side of a truck. Robin Smith, the film and series main cinematographer, hung partially out of the truck to hold the camera steady, giving the visual impression of a truck bearing down on a meerkat. To provide bird and snake footage, professional handlers were employed, ensuring the meerkats were not deliberately put in danger.

In 2007, the real Flower was killed by a snake bite—before the film and the third series of Meerkat Manor had finished shooting. According to Executive producer Mick Kaczorowski, Flower's death imposed the need for a "bigger" ending to the film than the producers originally planned; Flower's death was addressed and the coda added.