TELEVISION Filming animals in their native habitats lets di-rectors and cinematographers tell a multitude of stories. "If you're looking for a love story, you've got that. If you're looking for a horror story, you've got that.
Action, you've got that," says Anna Dimitriadis, a wildlife cinematographer working in Africa. "It hits you when you least expect it. You drive out in the morning, and you have absolutely no idea what you're going to see.
" For the upcoming PBS series "Big Cats 24/7," Dimitriadis and others find those stories from their base camp. The goal is to help viewers understand what the animals are like — even when the cameras aren't rolling. Because they now have cameras that enable them to shoot during the night, those photographers can "peel back the curtain on a bit of their lives that we may have seen little glimpses of," says Rowan Crawford, the series' producer.
The cameras are portable and have stabilized technology and long-lens capabilities. "Military-grade technology allows us to see extremely far and in detail (in ways) we've just never seen before," Crawford says. Among the discoveries: Cheetahs are "scaredy cats," Dimitriadis says from the camp in Africa.
"They're scared of everything, particularly lions, and we've got one of the biggest lion prides here in the world," Dimitriadis says. "That means they're so hard to find, but if you have a thermal camera on them throughout the night, you get to see them curling up to sleep in the morning." To pre.