FILMING SWANS

When I first conceived the idea for Waterscape: illusions I thought I was making a 15–minute film. However, as I began to investigate the symbolism and myths connected with swans, I discovered a wealth of stories. And as I filmed for hours on end and discovered that there was no end to the swans’ antics, the film grew to nearly an hour in length. With swan folklore swirling though my thoughts as I worked, I realized I was privy to good material to inspire my own fairy tale: I watched as a cygnet who had been rescued from the jaws of snapping turtles and raised on dry land, was later returned to the water. Her parents no longer recognized her and became her new tormentors.

Swans have a reputation for being ill-natured, but I soon learned that their violent reactions were in the interests of protecting their young from often wrongly perceived threats. Once the male got used to my presence and the slowness of my movements behind the camera, he ignored me. Moving quietly and slowly, I was able to inch up close to the nest.

When the cygnets hatched, the male swan always put on a big display of strength, swimming back and forth in a self-conscious, defensive posture with his neck angled back and wings puffed up. This show was mostly a threat to anything attacking from in front but of little use against the real menace which could come from behind when the snapping turtles surfaced from the depths.

It was the female that was the real force to contend with. When I attempted to come too close to the little ones, she was all action with no pretense. When nesting time came around each spring, she decided with the support of her mate that it was high time for any remaining of last year’s brood to clear out for the new ones on the way. The drama that ensued ended only when new homes for the young adults were found elsewhere.

Inevitably, when the swans were really up to something interesting, I was unprepared to capture them on film; I had just finished a roll or was just too slow to capture the action. These limitations necessitated imaginative solutions. Having failed to record an incident when the parent swans stalked the orphaned cygnet across the lawn, I returned at a later time and followed with my camera, the path the big swans had taken – this time without their participation.

The swans’ encounters with manmade phenomena were often as humorous as annoying because they did not discriminate between the natural and artificial features of their environment. They chased the lawnmower, swam in the pool, feasted on the landscaping on the side of the driveway, and used chunks of the lawn for their nest.

The summer I shot most of the swan footage, five of the eight cygnets that hatched survived. Swans grow quickly and by summer’s end, there were seven large swans to cope with. I liked to maintain that it was better to work around or with the swans to let them believe they were acting out of their own conviction, not against their will. In truth, I was afraid of these big birds and didn’t want a confrontation.

The swans featured in the film are of the Mute Swan breed. However, the cygnets make a peeping sound seemingly continually until they are quite large. After scouring several ornithological sound libraries, the sound designer, could not find this sound anywhere. Fortunately, after several years with no surviving cygnets, in August 2006 I found out that four adolescent cygnets, still making their baby sounds, were swimming on the pond. We trekked up immediately and recorded their voices. Yet, even with considerable provocation, we could not make the father swan, usually impossibly nasty, produce a sound we needed, a loud hiss. Instead, the hiss of a youngster approaching maturity was recorded and later finessed in sound editing to pass for his dad’s.