Introducing African Animals’ Lullaby
The award-winning short film African Animals’ Lullaby’ is available for on-demand rental or purchase now. I spoke with scientists and nature lovers turned filmmakers at their temporary home, fittingly a wildlife refuge in the Western United States. An award-winning nonfiction children's author, teacher, and storyteller, Dr. D, and Dr.Tim, scientist and teacher, focus on helping as many people as possible connect with their environment and positively experience nature.
Dr. Jessica Dimuzio, VMD knew she wanted to work in wildlife preservation since she was 16 years old. As a veterinarian specializing in reproduction and nutrition, she quickly learned to approach conservation from a holistic point of view. Tim Halverson, Ph.D. in behavioral ecology, visited Kenya as a research assistant studying sunbirds. After the second trip, he fell in love with Africa.
Jessica, not wanting to be left behind again, had won funding to study baboons. They returned several years later to lead university conservation biology programs, and the further they lived in the bush, the more she also loved living among the African animals. Tim and Jessica are married and together operate Nature Tales and Trails, a company with a mission to connect people to nature by sharing true tales from their work with animals around the world. When plans for entering additional film festivals with African Animals’ Lullaby and other projects like a book of lemur poems were paused because of the coronavirus pandemic, they took to the road to gather more material for more books and films.
What is African Animals’ Lullaby, and how did it come about?
Dr. Tim: In my view, it's a film that pays homage to that feeling of and love for the African Bush, specifically the sounds of animals.
Dr. D: We lived in a tent outside the Maasai Mara reserve. We had three prides of lions, a bachelor herd of elephants, and a really obnoxious hyena, basically as our closest neighbors.
You know, when you go to someplace and stay over for the first time, the sounds are different, and you can't get to sleep? Well, I could not get to sleep. And trying to get used to the sounds was difficult. One day we went out and tented near a herd of wildebeest, and they have the most soothing sound. That was the first time I fell asleep. I would watch the Maasai children gathering water or firewood and taking it back to their bomas. I started wondering whether they, like me, recalling all the animal sounds heard during the day would become their lullaby at night, which is what happened to me. That’s the background behind African Animals’ Lullaby.
Most of our conservation work had been directed towards college-age and above. I began thinking that we needed to reach children. Somebody suggested that I take a course on writing for children. I wasn't sure that I would be able to write for kids. The course was at the University of Pennsylvania. My first assignment was a lap book. For me, that’s a book you read to kids at bedtime. I recalled my experience in the Mara and sat down and wrote African Animals’ Lullaby in one day. I illustrated it with our photos, showed it that night, and everyone wanted to buy it. And that was my introduction to writing for kids.
How did you meet Rodney?
Dr. D: I met Rodney (co-director and sound engineer) and Charlotte (narrator), at the same time when we were all working in a program for elementary schools in the Philadelphia suburban area. I was a presenter and so were Rodney and Charlotte. We kept meeting each other, and they just became two of my favorite people. Rodney invited me to some events and we got to know him.
I think we may have gone to him to ask him about doing a soundtrack of the animal vocalizations for a storytelling program. We were going to develop a school program out of it.
Rodney said one day, okay, look, we're gonna make this into a movie. And I said, Oh, sure. I'm thinking of PowerPoint and sound. No, we made a movie. And it just is beyond my imagination. I can't thank Rodney enough for suggesting this. For me, every time I see and hear the film, I'm back there. And it's a very comfortable place for me.
How does African Animals’ Lullaby fit into your conservation work?
Dr. D: I wanted people to be immersed in the natural world, let the audience members experience being among wild animals, just like this Maasai child, and demonstrate the positive interactions between humans and animals -- that we can live side by side. And just maybe, they might fall in love like I did. That keeps me working in conservation.
Rodney also wrote a song for the African Animals’ Lullaby school programs. When I did school visits, I would play the whole song as the kids would file into the auditorium and they'd all dance to it. It's a wonderful, happy song that incorporates the animal sounds heard in the film. Then when they leave, we play it again. And I’d say, Now that you know who makes these sounds, listen really carefully and see if you can recognize which animal it is. They would listen intently as they walked out, and then all of a sudden, you’d hear Oh, elephant, oh, Hippo, a zebra. And so already, in one showing they got their ears attuned to the vocalizations. I was over the top, I was so happy. And that's the whole point of this, you know, to get them connected.
What is the vision for African Animals’ Lullaby?
Dr. Tim: We want to try and reach as many people to hopefully have them support the efforts of conservation. Our main focus is trying to get people connected with nature. For us, nature is a beautiful and wondrous, and soothing thing. Nature is lots, lots, lots of different things. Sometimes tedious, sometimes scary. It's all of those things. So our real focus of this part of our lives is to try and get people to have some sense of that same appreciation that we have in the hopes that they will then care about things enough to conserve environments and such.
Dr. D: I've never lost my sense of wonder about the natural world. Never. I'm always happiest in it. I'm very enthusiastic about it. I think that I communicate that very well to others. And I think that's where the strong connections come from, why I can write books and produce films for kids -- I don’t forget what that sense of wonder is.
Do animals speak a language?
Dr. D: They're not going to learn English. We need to learn their language: their vocalizations, and their body language for two reasons. One is for safety, and the other is because you become even more part of the natural world if you understand these things. I'll give you an example. If I asked you, what does a lion sound like? What would you answer me?
“Roar!”
Most people say they roar. In African Animals’ Lullaby, the verse describes lions talking to each other at night. And it's a very, very different vocalization. And most people did not recognize that sound as lions.
It's very, very important to know, are you in danger or not?
What has it been like working with Rodney?
Dr. D: I am absolutely meticulous about scientific, ecological, behavioral, and geographical accuracy. You name it, it has to be right. I had done a mock-up. I got in the sounds. I actually found the ambient sounds from Massai Mara at specific times of the day. During my research for this, I looked at a lot of nature programs, and they had orchestral soundtracks.
They didn't have the ambient sounds; they may have the sound of the animal, they may not. I couldn't believe it. So I wanted to make sure that people understood what it's like to hear all the sounds, listen to nature’s orchestra. If you've ever been in a forest with cicadas, it's scary to some people, you know. To me, that's part of the immersion. So I did a mockup with photos, the ambient sound, the vocalization of the animal, and the words. So it was very, very detailed and very rough.
Rodney took it, made it, and gave it to me... and I think he thought he was done.
I didn’t know what to say because my instructions weren’t followed.
He was like, didn't you love it? And I'm going, No, it's wrong. I explained to Rodney that the reason I was so detailed in my mock-up is because animals will always see you before you see them, so their vocalizations must be first, then the animal visually appears, and last you hear the spoken words.
He looked at the two of us, and he said, then you have to sit beside me. And we'll do it together. We said, Okay. No problem.
And what ended up happening was, it was an incredible collaboration. We pushed each other, and we learned so much from each other. It was just phenomenal. And it was fun. We totally enjoyed it.
What's next for African Animals’ Lullaby?
Dr. Tim: We hope people will watch it on Vimeo and enjoy the experience, and we plan to have a portion of the proceeds go to one or two conservation funds for African animals.
Rent or buy African Animals’ Lullaby online at www.africananimalslullaby.com. While school programs and many other aspects of life are paused due to COVID-19, Dr. D and Dr. Tim hope that it will be a wonderful holiday gift — a safari to Africa without passports or plane rides! The audio version of African Animals’ Lullaby and African Animals’ Lullaby JAM, (song composed for the film) will also be available through www.africananimalslullaby.com.
Proceeds will benefit some conservation efforts in Africa, hand-selected by Dr. D.
Get updates and follow Dr. D and Dr. Tim at http://www.naturetalesandtrails.com/ on Facebook @NTandT.DrD and Rodney Whittenberg at http://melodyvision.com/