Hullabaloo has just completed audio post production on David Irelands "Hand Feeding Sharks" documentary. Channel Nine commissioned David to make 12 one hour Wildlife Specials.

David is a world renowned wildlife cameraman, film, video and multimedia producer, with 25 years experience in filming everything from lions and leopards to sharks and crocodiles. David is the "Original Crocodile Man" playing the lead roll in the wildlife documentary "Crocodile Man". This film was distributed worldwide on Discovery channel in 1990.

David also fights to protect the natural environment.  He has led campaigns to protect several species of sharks.

In "Hand Feeding Sharks", David explores two Australian environments, the mountains and the sea. He encounters strange insects, (some highly dangerous), he catches by hand a deadly rare snake on the edge of a cliff and then goes diving and hand feeds a species of shark that is known to be one of the fastest ambushing sharks on the planet. Plus the following animal encounters : Port Jackson sharks, giant octopus, giant cuttlefish, puffer fish, scorpions, centipedes, spiders, stick insects, tawney frogmouth, black spotted snakes, pythons and unbelievable shark action never before filmed. The action in this film is breathtaking and showcases David's ability and experience with sharks. As usual, David always has some light-hearted moments which make for some fun.

David Ireland began his film career as the owner of Cronulla Dive School which he founded in 1970. He soon built the business to be one of Australia's largest diver training centres in the southern hemisphere. While there, David formed a relationship with a pack of Grey Nurse Sharks off Cronulla which he hand fed over a seven-year period. The close relationship with the sharks led to the discovery of a formerly unknown shark behaviour.

David witnessed that the sharks "cracked” their tail when they became aggressive. He reported this tail cracking behaviour to government scientists who then requested film evidence. David's subsequent footage launched his career as a wildlife cameraman and film producer.

A home made underwater housing and a 16 mm Bolex camera were the tools that David used for his first underwater film. David held a fish in one hand and the camera in the other. When the shark took the fish David virtually stuck the movie camera in the shark's mouth.

The footage literally blew away the producer of the Good Morning Australia show on channel 10. Within weeks David became a regular presenter on the national television show. David went on to record many short television specials for channel Ten. He has also been a regular on the "Sunrise" show and various children's programmes.

Working in conjunction with Filmotion Productions who supply both camera work and editing, David decided to shoot this series on HD.  Both David and editor Fadel Fred El Harris say the pictures are amazing.  The clarity, colour and brightness are far superior to anything they have used before.  Fred says that working in HD has not put huge additions in time to the editing process, except for rendering the final programme.  All his usual effects etc are done in real time as with SD.  David also said having the programme available in HD also opens more doors for international sales.

The sound mix requires us to run through our normal processes of creating a good sound balance and applying the appropriate compression and equalisation.  Added to this we need to re-create all the atmos and spot effects for the documentaries.  David relies on filming with a small crew so he can move fast and capture the action quickly.  That means we have to fill in the gaps later on.  David normally only has a lapel microphone, which is our only source of original audio.

It sets a challenge to recreate particular scenes, but we love a challenge.  David will be working on the rest of the series over the next fourteen months.  We wish him well with all of his projects.  You can find out more about David at his web site.