BBC · Studio and VFX
Sir David’s 100th birthday film
Lily the barn owl, and the shots the effects team needed.
The film
A green screen studio, one day to get everything, and a barn owl who finds things by ear.
The BBC made a birthday card film for Sir David Attenborough’s 100th, and Lily the barn owl was central to it.
It was shot entirely on green screen, at a studio near us run by our friend Nick Pitt. We have filmed there many times over many years, and that matters more than it sounds — the birds know that building. A bird that already knows the room is a bird that will work on the day.
We had one day to get every shot the film needed.
The shot
Posting the letter
Most of what was needed was straightforward. Take-off, landing, flying through frame — Lily has been doing all of that for years.
One shot was not. She had to fly towards a front door, filmed from behind, and stall very slightly in the air as she arrived, as though she were posting a letter through the letterbox. You do not get that from an ordinary landing shot filmed from behind. The bird simply lands.
What made it possible is that Lily hunts by ear. She flies to a beeper. As far as we know she is unique among captive barn owls in that — almost every other one flies by sight. Lily listens, the way a wild bird does.
So we put the beeper on a small podium against the green screen and covered it with another piece of green cloth. She could not see it. She had to find it, and to find it she had to slow and reach — which is exactly the stall the shot needed.
That is the whole trick. We did not train the stall. We gave her a reason to do it.
And that is why it works on screen. The stall is not a trick we taught her — it is what a barn owl does instinctively as it sets itself over prey, the half-beat before the pounce. All we did was trigger a natural behaviour in a very unnatural setting. Nothing about it is faked, so nothing about it looks faked.
How it was made
Every animal in it is real
There was to be no AI in this film. It is Sir David’s hundredth birthday film, and every animal in it is a real animal. Visual effects were used to build the world around them — that is what the green screen was for — but the creatures in the frame are creatures, filmed.
The effects were done by Rob Hifle, who we have worked with for years and who is at the very top of his trade. He knows exactly what he needs from us to get the shot he is after, which saves an enormous amount of time on a one-day shoot.
He also takes the same view we do, which is the reason we keep working with him: Lily’s welfare comes first, and the shot gets done in a way she enjoys. If those two things ever pull against each other, the bird wins.
There is a swan in the film as well, flying over the city. That is one of our whooper swans, from archive. Swan footage courtesy of Nick Pitt.
Watch
The film
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The bird
Lily
Lily works with Rose, on our own ground and in studios, and she is filmed at night as often as she is by day. Rose’s experience with her is the other half of everything on this page.
She flies to sound boxes hidden in the grass, so the cameraman gets natural hunting behaviour rather than a bird flying at a mark. She also flies to the hand, and she will work to presenters and alongside actors.
Birds differ, in intelligence and in how curious they are. As barn owls go, you will not find one that thinks harder than Lily. She is a one-off.
The birds
Barn owl.
Luna and her sister Lily as chicks, with Rose and Lloyd.
At a glance
Production
BBC
Bird
Lily, barn owl
Discipline
Studio work for visual effects
Behind it
Why Lily
She hunts by ear and flies to a beeper — as far as we know, unique among captive barn owls.
What VFX needs
Repeatable, matched shots from set angles — not one lucky pass.
The result
Every plate the effects team asked for, in a single day.
“Her huge experience in studio filming is what made it such a successful shoot.”
Lloyd Buck
Contact
Lloyd Buck
lloyd@lloydbuck.co.uk
077603 90917
Jo Sarsby Personal Management
talks@josarsby.com
Talks and personal appearances
Where we are
North Somerset, United Kingdom.
We travel worldwide for filming.