NATURE Online asked Patrick Morris, the producer of BORN TO RUN, to talk about his experience making this NATURE program in the Serengeti. The following is his account of the filming.

The producers followed tommies for months.

"In 1993, I was invited to produce BORN TO RUN for Partridge Films by Michael Rosenberg, the director of films at Partridge Films, and Hugo van Lawick, a wildlife film producer and cameraman who has lived and worked from his camp in the Serengeti for 23 years. Our plan was to try to follow a year in the life of the Thomson's gazelle on Tanzania's Serengeti plains, documenting as much behavior as possible and profiling the many threats these antelope face.

"We chose Thomson's gazelles (or 'tommies,' as they are affectionately called) as the focus of our film because, despite their small size, they are full of both courage and character. Furthermore, tracking their migration would take us to all corners of the spectacular Serengeti National Park.

"I, along with photographers Alastair MacEwen and Sophie Buck, spent a total filming time of six months, spread through a year, following the gazelles. During the wet months, from December to April, we were based at Hugo van Lawick's private tented camp at Ndutu, near the short grass plains on the southern fringes of the Serengeti National Park. But when the gazelle herds migrated north in the dry season, we moved with them, establishing makeshift camps at Moru and Barafu -- both beautiful areas with rocky outcrops, lush vegetation, and an abundance of wildlife. Our two Land Rovers were also equipped with roof tents, allowing us to overnight safely whenever we needed to. This was especially useful if we were trying to follow individual gazelles. With radio links between the two cars and the camp, each of us always knew where the other was and what he or she was filming. As we were sometimes working in very remote areas, our communications setup was also vital for safety: if our cars broke down, help was always quick in coming.

"BORN TO RUN was a challenging film to make. We wanted to piece together all the important stages in the first year of life of an individual gazelle, but soon after starting the project, it became clear to us that tommies sometimes moved great distances during the night. That meant that keeping up with individuals was fraught with problems; also, except for adult females, whose horns were often twisted or broken, they were hard to tell apart.

"In the end, we opted to concentrate on the males, which proved a good way to incorporate more behavior of both sexes. By following a male growing up, we had more opportunity to include adult female behavior by showing the behavior of his mother (motherhood and birth, defense of young, the migration, being courted by males). If we had followed a female and her mother, it would have been harder to link to adult male sequences like sparring and scent-marking. To do justice to this, we found we had to piece the jigsaw puzzle together by filming a number of different-aged individuals to build up a profile of a single gazelle. Some tommies that we followed, we lost; others were taken by disease, drought, or predators. But in the end, we hoped that the finished product would show the viewer all the trials and tribulations an individual gazelle faces.

"Although I have long admired the design of Thomson's gazelles -- their speed and their ability to outmaneuver cheetahs in a chase -- I soon became aware that their fleetness was at the expense of some of the other skills needed to avoid predation. They do not have the stamina to outrun hyenas, nor do they have the height to spot predators such as lions and leopards in long grass. Unlike their larger cousins, the Grant's gazelles, they need to drink fairly regularly, which brings them into danger from crocodiles and other predators that conceal themselves at water holes and rivers.

"To compensate for this, tommies often group together. This allows them to spot danger early, but, despite this, the death toll seemed to me to be very high. This was particularly true during the month of the birthing season, when many predators seemed to concentrate heavily on scanning grass clumps for fawns. However, it seemed that if they could survive that first perilous month, the tommies had a very good chance of reaching adulthood. Indeed, as a species, Thomson's gazelles are remarkable in their success: some 500,000 of them live in the Serengeti, more than any other antelope.

Jackals are also a threat to tommies.

"During my years of working in East Africa, I have made a number of films about predator and prey species, and I have witnessed many hunts. I do find that my allegiance naturally falls with the animals that we are following. During the filming of BORN TO RUN, I always willed the gazelles to escape, hoping the predator might not spot the tommies or, if it did, that it would slip during the chase. As with many things, the suspense was always in the buildup, not the outcome. Witnessing a hunt can sometimes be distressing, but I found comfort in telling myself that this was Nature's way, and that the loss of one animal might mean the survival of another. Most importantly, we never interfere, trying simply to document our observations on film.

"Tommies live dangerously, but they also have a remarkable joie de vivre. There is nothing more special than seeing young gazelles racing around and prancing on all four legs in the cool air of dawn or after rainfall. They are curious, too, and will often approach other creatures to smell and inspect them, like geese, cranes, or even the rare caracal. It is peaceful moments such as these that I cherish the most, and I hope our film has managed to capture some of them, among the daily challenges of finding food, escaping predators, and winning mates.

"I love working in the Serengeti. The skies are huge and the air is charged with a rich, organic aroma. The greatest thrill for me is seeing distant black stormy skies, feeling the wind on my face, and smelling the approaching rain as it lands on dust at the very end of the dry season. I have had cheetahs climb on my car to scan for prey, been woken in the night by hyenas robbing food from our camp, and walked out at dawn to face a pride of lions sitting around my tent. I am never frightened, just amazed and privileged to be there."

Patrick Morris is an award-winning wildlife film producer with the BBC Natural History Unit in Bristol, England.

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