Sir, – In the early 1980s, as producer/director on RTÉ’s Anything Goes, I had the pleasure of attending a major wildlife filmmakers conference in Bath in the company of Éamon de Buitléar and Gerrit Van Gelderen. Everyone who was anyone in the world of international wildlife filming was there. A large contingent from BBC’s Life on Earth presented an impressive overview of their production with its teams of worldwide film units, special equipment and big budgets. A faint air of depression descended on everyone else as the clear inference was that the day of the small independent wildlife film-maker was well and truly over.
And then Éamon gave his scheduled talk. He was, as always, immensely entertaining, warm and witty. He showed an extract of a recent film he’d made for the BBC on red deer in Kerry, where he’d not only shot the film himself – beautifully – but he’d also written and played the exhilarating bodhrán music used in the piece. His example of one man’s skill in film-making got a tremendous reception and cheered up the entire conference. Ar dheis Dé go raibh a anam. – Yours, etc,