Duma

Today's fact is about cheetahs and South Africa, simultaneously! "Duma"means cheetah in the Swahili language, but it's also the title of the 2005 film set in South Africa and telling the story of a boy named Xan who finds an orphan cheetah (named Duma) and his quest to return him to the wild. It has a bit more twists and turns than that, of course, but I don't want to give too much away! The director is the same gentleman who directed Fly Away Home and the Black Stallion, both wonderful animal movies that were favorites when I was younger (who I am kidding, they still are favorites).  Duma is not a very famous or well-known movie, and I don't remember how I stumbled upon it. It was probably a lucky find at Blockbuster. Now that I'm actually going to South Africa, though, I was curious as to where exactly this movie was filmed. Coincidentally, it was filmed almost exclusively in South Africa! There are scenes filmed in Johannesburg, so I guess I've kind of seen Johannesburg without even knowing it. After searching Chicago, New York City, and Londen, the filmakers finally found the actor to fulfill the role of Xan in South Africa as well. Alex Michaeletos was born in South Africa and grew up in a family of six on a farm with cheetahs, lions, leopards, tigers, African wild dogs, and antelope. This was his debut performance, and his South African accent was pretty darn cute.

The website for this movie, dumamovie.warnerbros.com, has a very interesting segment about what it was like to work with cheetahs. I figured I should read carefully and take some notes:

It took three months of very hard work to properly train the group of cheetahs who play Duma in the film. "Cheetahs are fairly lazy animals," reveals South African trainer Jim Stockley. "Mostly you need to exploit the natural behavior you require from the animal. Obviously, you can't have an animal do something that is impossible for them. When they do what you want them to do, they get rewarded, and you improve on that and then reward the behavior again."


Throughout filming the filmmakers worked with four different sizes of cheetah: three-week-old cubs, eight-week-old cats, an eight-month-old and four adult cheetahs. Cheetahs are an endangered species, and extremely fragile when they're young. The production was fortunate to find cheetah cubs that were only a few weeks old. "Doug Claybourne was relentless and didn't give up on getting these tiny cubs," says Harms. "The young ones can't be trained, but they're adorable!" 


"There's really no training whatsoever, just cub management!" agrees cheetah handler Jules Sylvester, a veteran trainer whose prior credits include Jurassic Park, There's Something About Mary and Dr. Doolittle 2. "It's more a matter of making sure the cubs are content and happy. Scenes that could possibly be dangerous to them were written out immediately." 


It was essential that the little cubs be kept warm enough during filming. Small oil heaters were running all the time, and miniature baby blankets were also employed. Like all babies, keeping a routine of their feeding schedule was very important, so the cubs drank from baby bottles every three hours, like clockwork.


As every animal has their own individual personality, the four adult cheetahs who portrayed Duma were each trained to specialize in performing various specific behaviors, with each of the animals handling the activities they were best suited for. One cheetah worked very closely with Michaletos, another was the star runner, one cheetah who was particularly possessive by nature specialized in grabbing things and walking away with them, and a fourth was especially emotive and proved to be skilled at making a convincingly worried expression for the cameras. 


"It's a strange phenomenon with cheetahs," notes Sylvester. "They are very gentle as far as big cats go, but they have the attention span of a three-year-old child - they will look at you once and that's it. So you have to have a trainer on either side, and it can be very difficult to get the stare. The only time you will get that is when he zooms in on something he sees in the distance - their design is, 'Spot it, chase it.'"


While spectacular onscreen, the cheetahs' famous running prowess proved at times to be a handicap to filming. "There are parts of the film that required the cheetah to display their speed," explains Ballard. "This turned out to be very difficult because the tracking vehicles couldn't keep up with them since they can accelerate and run so fast, and they were gone before we even got going. Working with most animals doesn't require that kind of physical exertion!"


"When it comes to the adult cheetahs, when you want them to run very, very fast, they'll run just for the love of it," says trainer Jules Sylvester. "In the scene where Duma runs after the motorcycle we had two cheetahs who just loved chasing it - no bait required. They ran alongside, but were not quite brave enough to jump on it." 


As everyone knows, if there's one thing cats hate, it's water. With this in mind, the filmmakers were apprehensive about shooting a scene where Xan attempts to coax Duma onto a raft. They needn't have worried - the cheetah turned out to be a consummate professional. "I thought we were going to have to make this up from a whole lot of little pieces of film and sort of cheat our way through," recalls Ballard. "Amazingly, the cat did everything in one take. He looked out at the river - 'I don't want to go there! Well, ok, I have to go with my friend,' and he got on and did everything just right." 


The trainers were under quite a bit of pressure themselves, negotiating the situation of dealing with a predator working alongside a young boy. "That places an awful lot of stress on me and the other trainers," says Sylvester, "because a predator will naturally hunt anything that is small and squeaky - i.e. a twelve year old little boy. We found some incredible cheetahs, and as predators go, they are pretty gentle. Alex had his own cheetahs, so he became very comfortable with them and he would actually sit next to them with his arm around them and lean into them, and the cheetahs responded so well to him."


"Working with the cheetahs was really great," remembers Michaletos. "It can be really awesome. It wasn't my first time being around them, and so I wasn't afraid of them. But sometimes you don't trust the cheetah - for instance, when the cheetah is in the water, I'd rather stay away from him, because he might try to climb on top of you!" 


There's some advice to be taken from this, I think. Don't go with a cheetah into water, and don't be small and squeaky. Don't try to keep up with a cheetah when it's running. Got it.

Here's the trailer if you have any interest: