Production Notes

After making significant breakthroughs in the large format industry with computer animated films including, 3D Mania: Encounter in the Third Dimension, Alien Adventure and Haunted Castle, producer/director Ben Stassen created the world’s first wildlife adventure in three dimensions, Wild Safari 3D.

Following the success of Wild Safari 3D, Stassen decided to embark on an even more ambitious project, a photo safari in the Okavango Delta. Uniquely formatted, African Adventure 3D places the viewer in the passenger seat of a variety of open air vehicles including a 4 wheel drive, a motor boat, an airboat and even a Mokoro, a canoe carved out of a tree trunk, accompanying Tim Liversedge and Liesl Eichenberger exploring the delta.

"I wanted to take this photo safari to a very literal level," says Stassen, "and actually position the audience in the back seat of the vehicles." The use of 3D filming technology accentuates audience involvement in the film. "3D enables you to truly take the audience and put them in the filmic space" says Stassen."I wanted to bring the audience close to the wildlife in a real setting and create a strong sense of being there."

Beyond the visceral fun of such an immersive film experience, African Adventure 3D also sets out to tell an important story about the need to preserve unique ecosystems like the Okavango Delta for generations to come. As a lifelong conservationist, Tim Liversedge decided to become a wildlife filmmaker in the 1980s. His passionately held conviction that the long-term protection of wildlife habitats would require the support of the international community prompted him to interrupt his career as a game warden to become a wildlife filmmaker and share his deep knowledge of the place with worldwide audiences. People will not care about a place they don't know. Tim believed his films could make a difference.

"Making Tim the central figure of the film turned out to be a great opportunity to tell an interesting story set in a fantastic region, but it also proved to be a formidable challenge," explains Stassen. Over the years, Tim has made a series of spectacular films in and around the delta. To capture some of Tim's magic in a giant screen film and in 3D would turn out to be a logistical nightmare. The amount of equipment and the size of the crew needed for this type of production are unheard of in traditional wildlife documentary production.

"It was a very stressful production. The water level was the highest in 25 years. It was very hard to move around," tells Stassen. We chartered a total of 57 planes over the course of the production just to move from point A to point B. Some flights were a mere 7 minutes long, but there was no other way to get to the numerous locations."

"But it is often under the harshest of conditions that the best scenes are captured," observes Stassen, "and hopefully this thrilling adventure will give audiences a greater appreciation for this corner of paradise."