Wildlife Media Magic

[00:00:00] Alex Re: Hello. Welcome to On Wildlife. I'm your host, Alex Re. On this podcast, we bring the wild to you. We take you on a journey into the life of a different animal every week, and I guarantee you you're going to come out of here knowing more about your favorite animal than you did before. In this episode, we won't be talking about a particular animal because we have an extremely cool guest who is an award winning wildlife filmmaker and podcast host.

[00:00:28] Jake Willers. Jake has dedicated his career to bringing the wonders of the natural world into our homes through the use of media. He's hosted 30 wildlife shows with National Geographic and Channel 5 UK. Today, I'll get the inside scoop on his career and how he's making a difference in wildlife conservation through different forms of media.

[00:01:08] So let's get into the interview. Hi, Jake. How are you doing?

[00:01:13] Jake Willers: I'm well. Thank you, Alex. Hey, a pleasure to be on the podcast. Thanks for having me.

[00:01:18] Alex Re: Awesome. Well, thanks so much for coming on. I really appreciate it and can't wait to start talking with you about your career, all of your experiences. So let's just get right into it.

[00:01:29] How did your relationship with wildlife begin and what led you to your career?

[00:01:35] Jake Willers: So it began at a very early age because my father actually started a wildlife park when I was around 10 years old. And it's a bigger story than this. I won't go into all the details, but But basically it turned into a wildlife park.

[00:01:53] It was like an animal sanctuary to begin with, which was taking in sick and injured native UK wildlife. So we were taking in things like blackbirds and jackdaws and hedgehogs and foxes and things like that. And then we had a lot of kind of farm stock animals as well. So we had things like sheep and a cow called Daisy and goats and donkeys and all those kinds of, you know, nice petting animals.

[00:02:17] And so. My parents were actually split up. So I would go over to my, my dad's place at the weekends and I would work with the animals every weekend. And so, yeah, from a young, young age, I was out, you know, taking care, mucking out all these animals, feeding them, and then. I got into building enclosures for them, and my father was actually a builder by trade, and so he was in construction, and we, we built everything there, and as things progressed and we became a wildlife park that started taking in more exotic species, like monkeys, that were being confiscated by the RSPB, or the RSPCA, they would take them away from people that weren't licensed, and ask us if we could house them.

[00:03:01] And so we ended up getting a ZOO license, which was the only thing you could do back in the, this would have been early 80s, uh, to allow us to be able to actually manage it. You know under the licensing rules as a zoo and and it really went from there then we you know, we went from having all of these things like monkeys and lizards and way up to Bengal tigers and gray wolves and Mountain lions and and so it really it just went from you know, it kept going kept growing over the years.

[00:03:33] And then I managed it later on as I left school. I managed the wildlife park and we were open to the public at that point and, and then really looked at how we could build it to start making more income. Cause the, the problem with running. Anything to do with animals is you're always after money. And it was very hard to come by.

[00:03:54] And even with people coming around, the weather's not the best in England all the time. So, you know, if it rains, people won't come and visit an outside park. And so, uh, we, you know, I, I got into the marketing side and over a course of about a decade, we pushed it from 15, 000 visitors a year when I took over running it.

[00:04:12] to a hundred thousand visitors a year. Uh, and now it's one of East Anglia's, uh, most popular attractions in the UK. Uh, and it's also, uh, uh, an exotic or, uh, um, it's a breeding center for endangered species as well for things like lemurs and tamarins and things like that. So yeah, I, I had a very, uh, you know, close relationship with wildlife right from, as I say, about 10 years old.

[00:04:36] Alex Re: That's really cool. And so interesting that you. I grew up really raising these animals, domestic and kind of exotic as well. And I think that people trying to take care of exotic animals that don't necessarily have the training to do so is still a pretty big problem today. Especially with social media, people seeing animals online, thinking they're cute, and then going out and buying them.

[00:05:05] Jake Willers: Yeah, absolutely. And you know, we actually did a huge amount of outreach education for that very reason, because we would, we would be inundated with red eared terrapins, which I think over here in parts of the states called sliders. Those little terrapins, turtle sliders, and they would buy them for, you know, tiny, they would be like the size of, I guess, a little bit bigger than a quarter, you know, in a pet shop, and then, of course, once they got to the size of a dinner plate, they couldn't home them anymore, so they would either bring them to places like us, or they would go and stick them in the local pond or river, and then people would get them and bring them to us, and we would just be inundated, and so, we had to really start looking at how we could educate people.

[00:05:50] Kids, mainly in schools, to say, look, you know, it's understandable you want to have a pet, but you really need to think very, very carefully before you go and get a terrapin that's going to grow into, you know, up to 12 inches long and then require really a pond, not, not an aquarium. And so, yeah, we did a lot of that with school kids who would come to the wildlife park and also we would go to schools and give talks and, you know, educate on that, that subject.

[00:06:18] Alex Re: That's really great. And, uh, you also host a podcast called Behind the Wild Lens. Could you tell us a little bit about the podcast and what caused you to start it?

[00:06:28] Jake Willers: Sure. Yeah. Well, after the wildlife park, I got into TV and I got into TV as a host for National Geographic Channel. And I made a bunch of shows for National Geographic that went to 147 countries and in 25 languages.

[00:06:43] And, uh, you know, it was incredible. Um, and that got me then behind the camera as a cameraman and. I would then start getting tons and tons of people contacting me wanting advice about how to get into the industry, you know, be like, how did you get to be a presenter? How are you, you know, filming for these incredible networks?

[00:07:01] You know, how do we do this? And I realized that, you know, there's no blueprint really for that industry. And so, you know, everyone's always trying to ask the people in the field, you know, how do you do this? And so I thought, well, what if I started a podcast where I interview all of the top people in the industry, you know, professional filmmakers, whether they're editors or producers, directors, camera people, you know, whatever they are, and really get their take on it.

[00:07:29] And it kind of morphed. When it started out, I had it, it was called Master Wildlife Filmmaking Podcast, and it was very much about how to break into the industry. But then I realized that actually there was only a couple of. Questions within the hour's talk of each episode that were directed really about industry and how to break into it and advice.

[00:07:50] And the rest was really, really interesting stuff from behind the scenes of wildlife, you know, natural history documentary making. And it's a bit like I equate it to like the last 10 minutes of Planet Earth, where they show you the behind the scenes. And I'm like, well, really that's what my podcast is.

[00:08:07] It's behind the scenes. So I actually rebranded this year to Behind the Wild Lens to really start to get a bigger audience and make it more appealing to people who aren't necessarily trying to break into the audience, into the industry. So yeah, it's very popular. We've got over, uh, Gosh, we're over 50 episodes now with, say, everyone from presenters, sound, we just had George Vlad, who's a sound recordist, who did not only sound for a couple of episodes of Planet Earth 3, but he also did the sound for Dune Part 2, right, which just came out, and he did, he went around the world, and he was doing sound of deserts, so that they could put it in Dune, and he also just did sound for Mufasa the Lion King, the new Lion King movie, so, you know, incredible Uh, you know, uh, artists like that, that are part of the industry and then getting their take on how they do those things, but also how they got into the industry.

[00:09:03] Very much like what you're doing, you know, getting their people's backgrounds and then kind of some advice from them. So it's turned into something very popular in the industry and we're trying to broaden it. So, you know, we get, you know, other people who just really want to know about the behind the scenes of natural history documentaries.

[00:09:20] Alex Re: Yeah, that's really awesome. And I, I'm gonna ask you a little bit about that behind the scenes later on. So I can't wait to hear what you have to say about that. Um, and you were talking about planet earth three. So most recently you filmed urban black bears in North America. So, what surprised you about filming wildlife in an urban setting and what do you hope viewers took away from that?

[00:09:43] Jake Willers: I mean, I do quite a bit of urban wildlife filming and the thing that I think really surprised me, well, has surprised me over the years, so I've been filming black bears up and around the Lake Tahoe. Tahoe region, which is the border of Nevada and California. And I've been filming, yeah, for 18 years or so, and I think the most surprising thing to me is that the situation is getting worse, not better.

[00:10:10] And, you know, as a filmmaker, I, I spend a lot of time with people who, Biologists, bare biologists from both California and Nevada. And that's how I get, uh, you know, find where they are and get permits to film and things like that. And over the years, you know, those biologists are working extremely hard, tirelessly, to educate people on, you know, how to store their trash because the bears are coming in for the trash.

[00:10:35] And what we have to remember is the bears are there anyway. We're in their territory. So they're not, it's not like they're coming into our territory. They've always been there. And so now though, we're giving them this high calorie diet, which they're not used to. And it's a bit like us getting hooked on, you know, McDonald's, right?

[00:10:51] And so does is it's addictive and it's addictive to the bears as well. And so the most surprising thing to me is over 18 years of filming them. I haven't seen it get a whole lot better, you know, it's kind of still, we're still in a place where we, you know, human beings are not taking enough responsibility for our storage of our trash, and really accessibility of things like dog food, horse food, you know, clearing up fruit from our fruit trees, the kinds of things that are going to prevent them coming in, so that's the most, the most surprising thing to me, and I'm really Part of a team of people who are working to try and mitigate that and use the filmmaking for that.

[00:11:34] Alex Re: Absolutely, and I think the biggest part of that journey is education. Making sure people are aware of what they should be doing and why it's important that they're doing this thing. Like locking up your trash cans. Like in certain areas of the country, you can just leave your trash can outside where there's bears, you can't do that.

[00:11:56] Jake Willers: Yeah, and I think that's the, that's the biggest takeaway is, is trying to show people that there is this, you know, the bears are there, that, you know, you'll meet the odd person who'll say, well, they need to get rid of the bears. It's like, nope, the bears are there, right? And But, you know, the problems associated with it, which I think people don't really realize is that because we offer them this high calorie diet indirectly, they're actually breeding more efficiently, right?

[00:12:24] So they're having babies younger, they're having more babies per litter, right? So their population is growing. at a much higher rate than they would if they were reliant on the foliage and the berries up in the mountains. And so it's making the situation worse. And then on top of that, to compound that, what you have is the mothers who have lived a life in town, they now teach their cubs how to forage in town.

[00:12:56] And so those bears, it becomes really difficult now to rewild a bear that's never really understood a wildlife. life. Because it's literally in town, you know, foraging for garbage all the time. So you take a, you know, a youngster, say a two year old who's been around, now it's becoming a problem and you go and put it up in the wild, it's going to be like, where are the trash cans?

[00:13:18] What am I doing up here? You know, how do I find food here? It literally is changing the way they behave. Uh, and that's obviously a massive problem for coming generations.

[00:13:30] Alex Re: It's unfortunate that humans are changing so much of the bear's natural behavior. Let's take a little break before we dive more into Jake's filming experiences, including talking about some of his favorite animals to film.

[00:13:55] Time for today's trivia question. Which animal has the scientific name Ophiophagus Hanna

[00:14:12] The answer is the King Cobra. Ophiophagus means king. Snake Eater, and Hannah comes from the Greek myth of nymphs that would live in trees. King Cobras are known to eat other snakes, and they build nests at the base of trees.

[00:14:38] Okay, let's get back to the interview. And is there an animal That you're particularly fond of filming. I know you've talked about filming bears a few times. So is there another animal that you're really fond of filming?

[00:14:54] Jake Willers: I mean, first of all, I have to say bears are my favorite to film, um, which is why I filmed them for Planet Earth because I film a ton of them and I have an amazing collection of footage.

[00:15:04] Um, and they're, they're close by and, and they're always just such characters. Um, but yeah, I film a lot of deer, mule deer, because I, I, did a 12 minute show, it's actually available on YouTube if anyone wants to see it, it's called Reconnecting Wild, hyphen, Restoring Safe Passage, and re, re is actually in parentheses, but if you put Reconnecting Wild, Restoring Safe Passage in YouTube, it'll come up.

[00:15:29] And it's all about some overpasses that were put in over the Interstate 80 that goes through Northern Nevada from California through Nevada into Utah. And they, they spent about. 18 million putting in these two overpasses, which are incredible bridge structures that have soil on them, so they look like the landscape to the, to the animals approaching them.

[00:15:53] Um, and I filmed that and had filmed deer before that, but it's Now I'm getting a lot of interest from that. So, uh, there's a new mammal show coming out with the BBC that they, they asked me to film that for them. And so deer as well, I'm kind of, you know, something fascinating about herd creatures, like the bears do their own thing.

[00:16:12] They're out there on their own. You'll see a mom and cubs and then you'll see a, you a male come through on his own. They're real characters. Deer, you know, there are, they have a herd mentality. They come across in, in groups and they can be small groups of like three or four or, you know, a hundred at a time.

[00:16:29] And that's fascinating in itself because as a Filmmaker, you're always having to, you know, think about, okay, how am I going to film this? Here come three deer. I've been, I'm sat in a hide, really quiet, waiting for them to come over the overpass and, you know, and, and three deer come over. So you, you frame them differently and then, of course, a hundred come over and now you're like, okay, how do I, you know, how am I gonna film this to, to best show what's going on?

[00:16:53] So I really enjoy that too, but you, you know, there's, I mean, I just love being out filming. So I really don't mind what it is. If I'm out in the wild. Sat with my camera. I'm happy.

[00:17:04] Alex Re: That's great. And do you have any really memorable experiences while you were out filming?

[00:17:10] Jake Willers: Yeah, I think, um, I mean this, this is actually going back to when I was presenting, but it was myself and a cameraman.

[00:17:16] The most incredible experience I've had, by far, is the filming the Sardine Run off the coast of South Africa. Sardine Run, for anyone who doesn't know, is the largest school of fish on the planet. It's Something like 10 kilometers long by two or three kilometers wide. From space it looks like an oil slick and it travels around the Cape of South Africa following currents, cooler currents.

[00:17:43] And because it's so large it then creates the largest gathering of marine mammals on the planet that come in and feed on them. And so at the time when we were looking to film a bait ball for a show we, we did years ago on National Geographic called Wild Events, which was the largest spectacles of wildlife on Earth.

[00:18:01] We found a bait ball, we got in, we went down and there, the skipper of the boat told us he estimated there were about 400 dolphin in the water with us. Gannets coming in from the surface, dive bombing. These Gannets will go down, you know, five meters or so with their wings. pushed backs. They're like lawn darts and they're a big bird.

[00:18:22] And I remember, I remember I'm swimming through, I mean, I'm diving, right? So I'm, I'm kind of flippering through the bait ball of fish coming out towards the camera. And then dolphins are jetting through there. What seems like a hundred miles an hour. I mean, it's chaos, complete chaos, but it's, it's choreographed chaos, right?

[00:18:42] And then you've got about 20 Bronze Whaler and Blacktip Sharks below you, which are picking up all of the bits and pieces down below. And then you've got tuna, huge tuna coming through. So it's, it's an amazing, it's just an astounding experience. But then I remember, you know, there's bronze whalers, they can be pretty big.

[00:19:01] Pretty dangerous sharks, but they're not interested in you because there's so much food and it's kind of alarming when the Dolphin are coming through right by you really fast. You think if they hit you they're going to snap you in two, right? But the most alarming part were the gannets Because when the gannet, I had this one gannet hit the water above me, they're coming down all over But this one came down it went right in front of my face about a foot like this in front of my face and its beak is like this long and you Pinpoint sharp and I thought if they hit me in the top of the head It's gonna go straight into my brain and probably quick kill me pretty quick So so I decided to get lower below the Gannetts I'm sure they wouldn't hit you, but I don't I've never heard of anyone being hit but But I remember thinking, you know, I think I'm safer down with the sharks than I am up near these gannets.

[00:19:52] So that was by far the most incredible experience. I mean, there's nothing comes close to that, but I have, you know, I've traveled to 38 countries filming a lot of different species, and I could tell you a story about every, every species, but we haven't got time for that.

[00:20:09] Alex Re: In a perfect world, I'd love to hear all of them.

[00:20:12] That's great. That sounds like such an amazing experience. And then. I'm interested to know, is there something that audiences don't see, uh, behind the scenes when they're watching wildlife documentaries?

[00:20:26] Jake Willers: Yeah, absolutely. I think there's, there's the obvious stuff, which I think most people are aware of, and that's the time limitations and the time that it takes to get what they're seeing.

[00:20:38] And I think most people are aware of that. You know, we can spend a lot of time in a field and get nothing. We can spend a lot of time and get just a few seconds. So that, that is certainly something that they don't see, but I think they're aware of. I think the thing that people are not So aware of is the skill and the respect and the ethical behavior that we have as wildlife filmmakers to get the sequences that we get, you know, years and years ago, there's been a lot of backlash over the last few decades about ethical wildlife filmmaking.

[00:21:15] Uh, meaning that could be anything from getting too close to wildlife, altering its behavior, feeding wildlife, you know, doing things to alter their behavior to get the shot. That isn't done anymore, right? Ethics are a huge part of wildlife filmmaking, and And so they should be. And so when you're watching something, say on planet Earth, including the bears that I filmed, and you see them close up, and you're like, holy cow, this, you know, the, the camera person must have been right on top of them, or right in front of them, or, you know, um, right there.

[00:21:48] Well, of course we're not. We're, we're a long way away using, you know, ridiculously, uh, you know, Long focus lenses. We typically use like a 50 1000mm CN20, it's called. It's a 70, 000 Canon lens that it was built specifically for filming wildlife. And with 1000mm, you can be a long way away. It actually has a doubler so you can get 2000mm out of it.

[00:22:13] So you can be a long way away. The point is that when we do that, we're very, very aware of distance, safety for ourselves, but also not altering the behavior of the animal because what you're after is you're after seeing that natural behavior and learning from it and helping scientists learn from it in some cases if it's behavior that's not been seen before.

[00:22:37] And so I think that's the part that the audience misses is, I think a lot of the time they just think, wow, they must just walk up to wildlife and stick a camera in his face, you know, and that's, that's absolutely not the case. So I think, you know, part of doing the podcast is really to help them. People understand that as well, you know, talking about those ethical issues.

[00:22:56] And I, one of my guests early, early on was Chris Palmer and Chris Palmer is the author of a couple of books. One is Confessions of a Wildlife Filmmaker. The other one is I think called Shooting in the Wild and they both deal with ethical filmmaking over the years and, and how he has seen it change over the last few decades.

[00:23:17] Uh, really good books if anyone's interested. That's Chris Palmer. Yeah.

[00:23:21] Alex Re: Wow, that is really interesting and something that I think is really important for people to hear just because if somebody wants to go out and film wildlife for themselves, maybe not professionally, just on their own, they want to take into account how to be respectful of wildlife and how to really film their natural behaviors and not something that you're forcing them to do, which I'm sure a lot of people do.

[00:23:50] Old wildlife documentaries were like that.

[00:23:54] Jake Willers: Yeah, absolutely. And it, you know, it can be hard. I totally understand it. When you're starting out, you don't have, well, I just mentioned a 70, 000 lens. Well, I don't own one of those. We rent them, right? We rent them. The BBC owns them and sends them when we need them.

[00:24:09] You know, Not everyone has accessibility to that kind of gear. And so I can understand it can be frustrating. However, I think we're at a turning point now because if you take the latest iPhone, I mean, it's insane what you can do with an iPhone, how far you can zoom in and how clear that image is. So I think there's really.

[00:24:28] There's no excuses. The most important thing is staying safe and not altering behavior. If you're having to question something you're doing, going, hmm, is this altering the behavior, then I think you're, you're, you're too close or you're, you know, you're doing something wrong, so.

[00:24:43] Alex Re: Absolutely. That's great to hear.

[00:24:46] And how do you think wildlife documentaries and other forms of media impact animal conservation?

[00:24:53] Jake Willers: You know, I think they're extremely important because without, a world without wildlife shows, natural history shows, I think would be, would leave a huge void for people having any understanding about any wildlife.

[00:25:10] You know, really, we would then only have an understanding of the wildlife maybe directly around us. And even then, I mean, even in a world like today where we've got all these streamers, we've got incredible shows everywhere. I still meet people regularly who do not watch any form of natural history content, and this surprises me in this day and age.

[00:25:31] But there are people out there who just don't, you know, they watch sports and that's it, they don't get involved with anything else. But saying that, you know, there's a massive amount of people who do watch it, I mean there's billions of people who have watched natural history shows, you know. And that is making a difference because it's helping understand, it's creating awareness, without that it would be a very different world.

[00:25:53] So I think they're essential. I think the, you know, the way the stories are told is so very important because, you know, there's a lot of TV, I would say in the last 15 years, you know, we went through a stage where reality TV really crept up there and got big, and it crept into the wildlife filmmaking genre, and I think there was just a lot of bad TV made at that point.

[00:26:20] A lot of stuff that was infactual, you know, stuff that you couldn't trust, and stuff that was really, you know, going back to ethics, there was no ethical filmmaking associated with it, it was just, you know, taking advantage, and And I think we've got away from that now, thank goodness. And there is more respect and more emphasis on conservation.

[00:26:42] And that's great because I think awareness is there. And now if we can really get conservation in, that used to be a dirty word when it came to wildlife filmmaking, right? Networks didn't want to talk about conservation. Now they do because now they know that there's an audience for it. So it's essential.

[00:26:57] And I think what is also essential is good storytelling, you know, cause that's what people want. Good storytelling keeps people watching a show, and so coming up with great stories, great ideas to tell them is, is really what is needed.

[00:27:12] Alex Re: Yep, I completely agree, and I think just knowing about certain animals and what challenges they're going through in their natural environment and then from humans can really change somebody's mind about how they view animals as a whole and How they want to help these animals.

[00:27:36] I just go back to thinking about in the early 1900s when people didn't really know about the harm that whaling was doing. And then when these documentaries about whales came up and people started realizing like, these are intelligent. Animals, that's when they started protesting and working to make sure that whaling was outlawed.

[00:28:01] Jake Willers: Yeah, and you can see that in, in today's TV where you're seeing now, you know, action on the ground taking place and things changing. I mean, I think Blackfish, you know, sent the, Blackfish sent SeaWorld's stock price crashing, you know, because people reacted to what they were seeing. And when they realized That these intelligent creatures are being kept in such small, you know, areas.

[00:28:25] I mean, we could go all over the place here, but it's a bit like eating meat, right? And I eat meat, but it's one of those things where it's easy to eat meat when you don't have to prepare it, right? When you don't have to do, when you don't have to cut the animal up and skin it or go and kill it, it's easy to eat meat, right?

[00:28:41] If you get it in a burger, it looks nothing like an animal. It's just this red pasty stuff that you buy and you eat. You eat it. If people had to go out and kill their own animals and eat their own, you know, eat the stuff that they prepared, I think a lot of people would stop eating meat immediately. And I think there's, you know, a real correlation with that is once they see something and understand what it takes to to do it, like, you know, the harm being caused or You know, just behind the scenes of something like SeaWorld, then they have something to relate it to and they can start to say, okay, this, this isn't right.

[00:29:17] You know? So yeah, it's taking responsibility. And I think TV has a great way of showing that and helping people make those decisions.

[00:29:25] Alex Re: Yeah, definitely. And I'm also interested to know if you have any upcoming projects that you're really excited about.

[00:29:32] Jake Willers: I do. You know, it's always hard to talk about projects because a lot of time we have to sign NDA, you know, non disclosure agreements, say we won't talk about them.

[00:29:40] So I do. There's a couple I can't talk about. I've got some exciting projects with National Park in particular, I can't say which one, but which is looking at education content. And I love doing that kind of stuff because it has multiple facets to it. So we're creating content that will be used at the park.

[00:29:59] used online, used in shows, you know, and used for educational outlets as well. So, you know, it's great when having a mix of, uh, a variety of, of, you know, how that the distribution of that content. I love that. And yeah, and other things in the work. So, you know, we, I always have. Passion projects in the works that I'm, I'm working on, you know, quietly in the background.

[00:30:25] I'm always out filming bears. That's something that I do as a regular thing, building a stock library up of that footage. And then, yeah, network stuff that I say, you know, we're always have to keep that stuff under wraps until it comes out, until it's aired. So I can't talk about any of that, unfortunately.

[00:30:42] Alex Re: Understandable. Great. And how can people support you and where can we find your work?

[00:30:48] Jake Willers: So, the easiest place is just to go to jakewillers. com, so that's just my name, Jake Willers is W I L L E R S dot com, and there you can find my podcast, you can find, I actually run a mentoring group as well for, for, especially So, um, we're, we're a community of inspiring wildlife filmmakers and you can find the information for it.

[00:31:08] And we also have a community, a free community of wildlife filmmakers that you can join if you're interested in collaborating with other filmmakers, connecting, sharing your footage and your films. Uh, you know, us filmmakers, we can spend a lot of the time kind of in a studio like this on our own, right?

[00:31:29] You know, not seeing anyone else for days on end, if not weeks. And so it's always nice to collaborate and meet other people. And rather than doing it on a platform, we actually used to have a group on Facebook. But I find with the Facebook groups. Now, there's so much going on on Facebook. It's so easy to get drawn away and distracted by other things that I've actually created a community that's completely away.

[00:31:53] It's a standalone community. And when you join it, there's a few hundred people in there who are all You know, from aspiring filmmakers who don't have a camera, they're filming with their phone to, you know, professional filmmakers who are filming for some of the biggest shows on the planet right now. So, um, so well worth joining up and meeting up with those people.

[00:32:14] Alex Re: That sounds really cool. I encourage everybody to go on Jake's website. That sounds amazing. Take a look at his work. And Jake, thank you so much again for coming on to the show. I learned a lot from you and it really gets me excited to watch Planet Earth 3, of course, and, uh, other wildlife documentaries like that.

[00:32:34] So thank you so much for coming on.

[00:32:37] Jake Willers: Excellent. It's a pleasure. Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it.

[00:32:40] Alex Re: I'm so glad I had the opportunity to talk with Jake about his career as a filmmaker and podcast host. He's had some once in a lifetime experiences that sound so cool to be a part of, and he's doing amazing work to spread the word about wildlife conservation.

[00:32:56] If you want to support Jake, you should go check out his podcast, Behind the Wild Lens, and visit his website, jakewillers. com. Thank you so much for coming on this adventure with me. As we learned about Wildlife in Media, you can find the sources that we use for the podcast and links to organizations that we referenced@onwildlife.org.

[00:33:17] You can also email us with any questions at On Wildlife dot podcast@gmail.com, and you can follow us on Instagram at On Wildlife, or on TikTok at On Wildlife. And don't forget to tune in next month for another awesome episode. And that's On Wildlife.

[00:33:41] Jess Avellino: You've been listening to On Wildlife with Alex Re. On Wildlife provides general educational information on various topics as a public service, which should not be construed as professional, financial, real estate, tax, or legal advice. These are our personal opinions only. Please refer to our full disclaimer policy on our website for full details.