Our Great National Parks

Drone operator on Our Great National Parks — the Higher Ground Productions / Wild Space Productions docuseries for Netflix, narrated by President Barack Obama. Five episodes across five continents, each profiling a single national park or protected area in detail.

I shot drone and provided aerial stock footage for the Tsavo National Park episode. I also negotiated all aerial filming permissions with KWS (Kenya Wildlife Service) and KCAA (Kenya Civil Aviation Authority) for the Kenya filming.

Production context

Wild Space Productions specialises in landscape and natural-history documentary at theatrical and high-end-broadcast tier. Our Great National Parks sits inside Higher Ground’s slate (the Obamas’ production company on Netflix), with the explicit editorial brief of treating the parks as protagonists rather than as backdrops. The drone work supports that — flying with the herds, not over them.

Outcome

Production won Best Cinematography (docuseries) at the Critics Choice Documentary Awards. The award is the production’s; the drone-work contribution sits alongside the named cinematography team’s broader work on the series.