The filming of Seal Island, Walt Disney’s first True-Life Adventure, was the beginning of a lasting friendship between my family and its cinematographers, Alfred and Elma Milotte. As a kid in the ‘50s making movies with my little 8mm camera, I was excited to meet the couple who made real films for Walt Disney—Beaver Valley, Bear Country, Nature’s Half Acre…. They would stop by our Burbank home between these filming assignments. The only other nature films I saw in those early days of television was footage from Darkest Africa shot years earlier by another husband-and-wife team, Martin and Osa Johnson. The True-Lifes presented the natural world with a scope and technical virtuosity I had never seen before.
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