By Jasmine Teo

If you are lucky, you may be able to witness the raw, unadulterated action of an African safari from the comfort of your home at the same time that a group of National Geographic documentary film-makers is seeing it on the ground.

Caught On Safari: Live! is a 14-part documentary series which will air on Nat Geo Wild (StarHub Channel 77) beginning on Sunday, for seven days straight, transmitted live from the game reserve.

Each day, host John Varty and the crew will broadcast two two-hour episodes live of the animals from Kruger National Park, a South African game reserve.

The show is the brainchild of executive producer Peter Lamberti, a South African whose vision for a live global broadcast is a first for National Geographic Channel.

'There are some people who will never get to experience a real-life safari as it is expensive and now we can bring it to their homes. This is a view I've had from a long time ago and could achieve only recently with the technology available today,' says Mr Lamberti via a telephone conference from South Africa.

The 23-man crew will capture everything in the game reserve unobtrusively - from the thrilling drama of a lion stalking prey to intimate insights into animals such as elephants and hyenas co-existing in their primal surroundings.

The video feed will be transmitted unedited and live.

Unedited footage of elephants will be transmitted twice daily over 7 days

Anticipating that the prospect of waiting for the animal drama to unfold on camera might not appeal to viewers, the producers say they already have that covered.

Co-presenters and conservationists Michaela Strachan and Andy Coetzee will be on stand-by in other parts of the reserve to interview experts when no action is happening. The interviews will cover a range of topics from survival in the bush to the ecosystem of the reserve.

For Mr Lamberti and his crew at Kruger National Park, the biggest challenge of shooting a wildlife documentary live is the vast area of the 20,000-sq km game reserve, the largest in South Africa.

'It's such a big game reserve and you don't know where the action is going to be because it happens in little pockets all over the place. So it's about utilising all the eyes and ears on the reserve to locate the action,' says the wildlife enthusiast.

Other game reserves, such as the Mala Mala in South Africa, were also considered for the project. But Kruger National Park was chosen because 'it has the most to offer and has many lions' to provide the action and drama.

Mr Lamberti's interest in wildlife began about 27 years ago when he took up wildlife photography as a hobby while in the army.

He later made a switch to documentaries when he founded a production company in Johannesburg, South Africa, in 1990, specialising in wildlife and underwater documentaries.

If all goes well, there may be other live wildlife documentaries to come.

He says: 'We're hoping that it'll appeal to people and we do have plans to move it to places like Botswana where there's a huge gathering of about 2,000 elephants every day.'

Top picture: Unedited footage of behaviour of lions will be transmitted twice daily over 7 days.

jasminet@sph.com.sg

This article was first published in The Straits Times on Nov 5, 2008.

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