A Tale of Two Lakes
A short film about two lakes (duh!)
TITLE: A Tale of Two Lakes
ROLES: Director, Editor, and Animator
AGENCY: The EDGE
CLIENT: Aramaco
Brief:
This project was a genuine pleasure to work on. Hard work, yes, but worth every minute. The brief began with the treatment stage: I was one of three directors in the running to make this five-minute film about two man-made lakes that Mother Nature decided to reclaim. Positioned perfectly for migratory birds, these lakes have become a vital pit stop for food, rest and habitat as they travel.
The pitching process involved gathering ideas and examples of the direction I felt the film should take. There was a lot of talk about AI and how it might help the process. My worry was that AI would over-promise and under-deliver, especially given the tight timeframe and budget. And, as it turns out, that scepticism was justified. It can help, but it is nowhere near a magic wand.
Once we won the pitch, the excitement quickly turned into: “Right… how on earth do we pull this off in time?”
PRODUCTION
Jack Coulter, the producer, had the epic task of orchestrating everything. The plan looked simple enough on paper: Jack and wildlife cinematographer Barrie Britton (BBC Planet Earth, Life on Our Planet) would head to Dhahran, capture whatever they could, send the footage back to me each day, and I’d start editing and “directing” from afar. Well… as much as anyone can direct birds.
I created a storyboard from Louisa van den Berg’s script, pulling imagery that set the tone and compositions I hoped for. Because we had no idea which birds we’d actually manage to film, we put together a backup list of species that visit the lakes but might be harder to catch on camera. The storyboard doubled as a useful guide for Barrie and helped us decide which birds I’d animate, not just to enrich the film, but to fill any inevitable gaps from the shoot.
In late October, Barrie and Jack flew to Dhahran for an intense 10-day shoot. Filming twice a day, at dawn and dusk, they eventually collected more than 13 hours of footage. Barrie’s ability to predict a bird’s intentions and capture the moment is something else, proof of why he’s one of the best.
Directing from afar was its own challenge. Birds don’t take direction, hit marks, or repeat takes. One minute, Barrie would be on a kingfisher, and seconds later, he’d whip over to an eagle. As I started assembling small sequences, I could feed back suggestions, shots that would help, ideas that might stitch the story together, and moments I’d love to get if the birds happened to play along.
POST
Animating the selected birds became its own adventure. I gathered reference images and videos, then mixed all the tools I had: ink and watercolour textures, Procreate for hand-drawn animation, After Effects for additional movement, and yes, even some carefully supervised AI for the more tricky 3D moments.
What I hugely underestimated was the sheer amount of editing. Sorting through effectively two days of rushes every day (morning and evening shoots) was a huge task. Birds don’t read scripts, so a good deal of my time was sifting through the dailies and stitching together these moments into meaningful mini-stories, something we had discussed attempting to do at the very start of the project.
I found myself waking up early and getting into the studio just to hear the latest sightings. It was incredibly rewarding hearing the news from Jack that Barrie had captured a pied kingfisher skimming across the water or a heron chasing a harrier for its freshly caught fish.
I ended up building the edit in two ways: first, matching the storyboard and animatic (of course I made an animatic, you know me), and then creating separate sequences built around the strongest mini bird stories. The script was flexible and could shift to support whichever stories we managed to capture. It felt like sculpting clay that kept moving.
By the end, I was immensely proud to be part of this small, dedicated team of five: Jack (producer), Louisa (writer), Ed (sound), Barrie (cinematographer), and me. Together, we made one of the best films I’ve ever worked on.
I’m now fully hooked on wildlife programmes and have levelled up my bird-watching game.