Zoo Quest To West Africa (1955)

Concept and creative process

Opening titles for a series in which David Attenborough and a team from London Zoo travel in search of exotic animals. Their aim is to capture them and bring them back to the UK to exhibit in the zoo. This programme follows an expedition group touring West Africa's Sierra Leone region in search of nature's rarest and undiscovered wildlife. The titles were filmed on a rostrum camera and superimposed in a film optical over a framed drawing of one of the world's rarest birds, the Picathartes or white-necked rockfowl from Sierra Leone, the avian holy grail.