Documentaries Put Film Maker on Path to Adventure, 2 Emmys

The gorilla charged toward her, screeching, beating its chest. The bush was dense and she was alone, cut off from the group. She cowered to the jungle floor and covered her eyes.

“A New York girl. I’d never even been camping before. I muttered an odd assortment of curse words--one was religious, one wasn’t. Then I said to myself, ‘You’re either going to die or you’re not. You gotta look.’ ”

When Barbara Jampel looked up, the 500-pound gorilla had stopped. It stood over her, grunted once or twice, then disappeared again into the Rwandan rain forest.

Jampel is still mad that no one caught the meeting on film. But the footage she took later of that gorilla and others earned two Emmy Award nominations for her 1981 National Geographic documentary, “Gorilla.”

That was the Burbank woman’s first National Geographic special. Since then, Jampel has traveled the world filming everything from koalas to state-of-the-art robots. She won an Emmy for a 1985 film, “Among the Wild Chimpanzees,” documenting Jane Goodall’s study of primates. Her latest work, “In the Shadow of Vesuvius,” will air Feb. 11 on public television.

These shows have established Jampel as one of America’s leading documentary film makers. At age 44, and comfortably situated in a cluttered office in the shadow of Griffith Park, Jampel recently reflected on a career that came about almost by chance.

Forest Hills is a stately, upper-middle class community on Long Island. There are large homes with expansive lawns and an exclusive tennis club. It is about as far away from the African jungle as you can get.

Jampel grew up there, studied hard in high school and eventually was educated in child psychology at Cornell University. Social work was her interest then. She moved to the West Coast in 1964 to work for of Los Angeles County. That lasted about a year.

“I was having a hard time working within the bureaucracy,” she recalled.

Jampel walked away from the Civil Service job and took work as a secretary for David L. Wolper Productions in Burbank. In those days, before Wolper had produced “Roots” or “Thornbirds,” the company was renowned for its documentaries.

Jampel was not especially attracted to the film world. But she could type and knew shorthand. Wolper had a job opening for those skills.

Not long after, in a kind of twist of fate from which careers are born, two of the company’s producers left to form a documentary division at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. They took Jampel with them.

Became a Producer

The department at MGM was small at first, so Jampel was given such tasks as budgeting and location scouting. She learned as she worked and eventually became an associate producer. In 1971, six years after quitting social work, Jampel co-wrote and produced the award-winning “In Search of the Lost World,” a study of pre-Columbian civilizations.

“In documentary work a basic curiousity and wide-ranging interest are terribly important,” said Nicolas Noxen, one of the producers who brought Jampel to the studio. “Barbara had that. She was one in a million.”

It was with that first film that Jampel learned a necessity of documentary film making--the ability to become quickly familiar with complex subjects.

“You have to put in an intensive period of research in a short time to become knowledgeable. Then you move onto the next project,” she said. “I wish I could hang onto all the facts--from rhinoceroses to apes to computers. But some things you learned three or four years ago have to start to diminish or your brain gets clogged.”

Jampel eventually left MGM to work independently. She made films for business, local television and the like. She spent six months in Paris as producer for Jacques Cousteau’s series.

In 1979, Jampel wrote and produced a film on the Nobel Peace Prize for WQED, the public broadcasting station in Pittsburgh. It was a pleasant, successful partnership. WQED was producing the National Geographic Society’s television specials, so they asked Jampel to travel to Rwanda to film gorillas.

“It’s nice to have an experience like that early in one’s career,” Jampel said, flashing back to her jungle encounter. “Then nothing shocks you.”

Since “Gorilla,” Jampel has worked exclusively for National Geographic.

The Emmy Award for “Among the Wild Chimpanzees” stands on a shelf below a window that looks out onto a parking lot. On the walls of Jampel’s office hang pictures of her at various locations--in the jungles of Africa, in a town near the volcano Vesuvius, hugging a koala in Australia.

A woman who is wont to smile, but almost self-consciously, Jampel is relaxed with co-workers. With a visitor on this day, she is guarded. She says something and immediately worries that it will reflect badly on her.

She says she wants to think of something interesting to recount, then tells a story of working in Italy last summer for the show on Vesuvius. The crew needed shots from the rim of a neighboring volcano, La Solfatara. The ground was so hot there that they could not set down their camera equipment. The rubber soles of her shoes burned.

This, she says, is the kind of thing that happens to a documentary film maker.

Networks Pay Better

Jampel is still self-employed; she is paid by the film. (The money, she says, is not as good as network television, but “better than a lot of other things.”)

It can take as long as a year to make a National Geographic documentary. The society approaches Jampel with ideas. She travels to the site of the subject to determine if it will make a good documentary. Is there enough of a story? Are the people, or animals, interesting?

If she decides to make the film, there follows two or more months of research, poring over textbooks and documents, interviewing professors and specialists. It is not glamorous work. Neither is the shooting that follows.

Budgets for documentaries are not as large as those for network sitcoms, so Jampel works with a small crew: an associate producer, a soundman, a cameraman and assistant. There are no first-class flights, no four-star hotels.

“The life is a series of Holiday Inns. You’re working, so you don’t really get to see much,” Jampel said. “It’s hard work and long days.”

A soundman on the crew misses his baby’s first steps while filming out of the country. A cameraman turns down a trip to work in Africa because his wife is pregnant.

‘Impinges on Your Life’

“It impinges on your personal life,” said Jampel, who is divorced and has no children. “You need to surround yourself with people who understand.”

And there are hassles with travel arrangements, airplanes and buses. For every tale of charging gorillas there are two more about tracking down lost luggage: The crew carries $100,000 worth of camera equipment packed into 30 cases.

Filming can last anywhere from one to three months. It takes roughly 20 hours worth of footage to make a one-hour show. If wildlife must be photographed, time is wasted waiting for the animals to appear. If scientists are interviewed, they must be discouraged from talking exclusively in six-syllable words.

“A lot of scientists have a hard time communicating in a language that you and I would understand,” Jampel mused.

Editing Is Tough Part

Once filming is finished, Jampel returns to Los Angeles to spend the next four months editing and writing the narration. Working in small offices cramped with editing machines, reels of footage and strings of film hanging from racks, she and several editors will spend 8 to 10 hours a day going over every frame, assembling a one-hour show while classical music plays over the office intercom.

“It may not be as creative as commercial television, but it’s more intellectually demanding,” Jampel said. “It’s like a jigsaw puzzle where the pieces can be put together any number of ways.”

With such involved work, Jampel can produce only one show a year. When it is completed, there is inevitably a letdown.

“You watch it on television and it’s over in an hour,” she said. “Your mother calls and says it was nice and that’s it.”

But Jampel has earned the respect of her peers. “She excels in being extremely thorough,” said Noxen, who most recently produced National Geographic’s “Secrets of the Titanic.” “I always find her shows polished in every way. She is a real craftsman. Totally conscientious.”

At present, Jampel is editing a film on the origins of man that is due to be televised in 1988. She is happy to be home, to cook in her own kitchen, to spend evenings watching “Kate and Allie” and re-runs of “Family Feud.”

Her work now is in the editing rooms of WQED’s Los Angeles offices. The Pittsburgh station opened a West Coast location because many of the independent producers who work on National Geographic specials live here. The mood in the office is light. Workers dress casually and joke continually.

Having talked for almost an hour about the difficulties and frustrations of documentary work, Jampel says she worries that her form of movie-making may be disappearing. Commercial television broadcasts shows like “60 Minutes” and “20/20,” but independent documentary film makers have only public television to turn to. There isn’t enough money or air time.

Then Jampel smiles suddenly and looks a visitor straight in the eye.

“I can’t imagine doing anything else,” she says. “I’m sorry for all you people who want my job, ‘cause I’m not letting go.”