Mountains of Eden

Max writes about creating the sound for the films:

Two Nature Conservation Films "The Monkey Hunters" and "Elephants of Eden" formed the project "Mountains of Eden". Both were recorded to be as close to reality as possible. All cuts were taken without disturbing or influencing the animals.
NCF asked for the same realism for the additional sounds; all sounds should be as close to reality as possible. For example, in many naturefilms elephants are horning constantly, but in "Elephants of Eden" only in situations of great danger or joy. Normally elephants are very quiet animals!
The sound editing was rather a hugh task, particularly because for this kind of films no sound is recorded at the 'set' (the savanna in this casel...). All sounds (ambiances, effects and the vocalisation by the animals) are added in the postproduction: . Max had an enormous sound library with recordings taken in Africa, from producer Nature Conservation Films, to help him with this task..

fragment of 'The Monkey Hunters'

The sound of this joyfull scene consist almost entirely of original African recordings from our library.

Fragment of 'Elephants of Eden':

A quote from Danny about the composing music for the films: "It is a pleasure to compose music for nature films like 'Elephants of Eden'; exquisite nature shots, animals who never act poorly, in a majestic landscape.
The challenge for me in composing the film music, was catching the 'spirit' of the elephants and the panoramic view of the Kilimanjaro Mountain. This film contains some beautiful material of running elephant hurds and a male elephant in 'musth', sucheagerness to mate!
After composing the music, I had the opportunity to orchestrat the music and record it with the Metropole orchestra guided by Arjan Tien. They were able to evoke the armosphere of the Kilimanjaro in no-time at all!
A good thing of working with the Metropole orchestra is their versatility, a hugh advantage in view of the wide selection of styles in filmmusic.
Working on a film like this one with a dedicated team of filmmakers is an enormous joy. Thanks to director Caroline Brett, filmeditor Alan Miller and postproduction-leader Jochem van Rijs.