H.A. Snow, the explorer-cinematographer who made "Hunting Big Game in Africa With Gun and Camera," tells a unique experience of his attempts to get good pictures of various wild animals in their native haunts.
"The most striking thing which developed during our trip through Africa," explains the veteran naturalist, "was the novel way we obtained "close-ups" of beasts that previously could not be approached.
"It is impossible to get within several hundred yards of many fleet footed inhabitants of the desert and African bad lands. We found, however, that few of the animals could average more than twenty miles an hour for any length of time. Therefore we adopted a new way of approaching them.
"We ran them down in our flivver. By following them at a steady pace of about twenty-miles an hour, we literally tired them out, so much, that finally we were able to walk right up to them and crank at leisure.
"We were thus enabled to get bully pictures of zebras and giraffes, wild creatures theretofore unapproached by camera on the desert. We also were able to run down such animals as hyenas and warthogs.
"One of the most unusual events of the trip, and one I fortunately caught for the screen, was a fight between our flivver and a wart-hog. Tired by being chased, the wart-hog turned on our car and attacked it savagely, but was thrown for a good loss. The only damage to the flivver was a bent radiator.
"On my next trip to Africa, this summer, I expect to develop this new method of animal shooting and expect to obtain wonderful results, believe it or not, I am going to get a lion in the open and chase him in my flivver. I aim to run that lion so far he will be as meek as a lamb. Then I will make him pose for me, 'and order him around like an "Extra".'
H.A. Snow, "Getting Animal 'Close-ups'," Film Yearbook 1924, page 24.
© 1997, David Pierce, on editing and revisions (if any)
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