Mark O’Shea MBE
Blood, Sweat & Snakebites
Mark O’Shea has conducted biological fieldwork and snakebite research projects in the Tropics since the early 1980s and has been involved with television since 1986. After years of working behind the scenes of natural history documentaries for the BBC and other channels, including on-location filming in Sri Lanka and Papua New Guinea, Mark was invited to move to front of camera for a film about anacondas in Venezuela, for Discovery Channel.
Challenging and dangerous
Since then he has been searching for and filming elusive wildlife in spectacular and remote locations. This has often been challenging and sometimes dangerous but always enhanced his appreciation of the natural world and what it takes to bring it to our screens. Blood, Sweat and Snakebites tells the story of the making of these films – the successes, the failures and the important scientific discoveries they made en-route. It also takes you behind the scenes and shows how Mark and his crew lived, worked, travelled, slept and ate on the filming expeditions.
Between 1999 and 2003 Mark presented 34 herpetological adventure documentary films, comprising four series of “O’Shea’s Big Adventure” for Animal Planet and Discovery Channel worldwide (aka “O’Shea’s Dangerous Reptiles” Channel 4).
At the onset of ‘OBA’ Mark decided he wanted to reflect genuine biological fieldwork and that meant not only the thrill of success but also the disappointment of failure – the downs as well as the ups. The ‘Number One’ OBA Golden Rule was “No Set-ups”! There would be no set-up captures, no captive or pre-caught specimens in reserve in case the elusive ‘quest’ species failed to materialise, not even retakes of genuine captures if the camera stopped running, sound was compromised or the presenter (Mark) made a hash of it, and no choreographed captures to make the presenter look good on camera.
Size does not necessarily equate with danger
Another aspect he wanted to promote in ‘OBA’ was that it was not necessary for a species to be Big or Dangerous to be an interesting ‘quest’ species and although they made films about pythons, king cobras and Komodo dragons, it was not their size or danger they were highlighting. Even small reptiles could become quest species and they made films about the 3 inch luminous lizard of Trinidad and the 3 inch green-blooded lizards of New Guinea.
Mark O’Shea is a venomous snake specialist who’s one of the top reptile experts in the world. Blood, Sweat & Snakebites is his fascinating, gripping, hugely informative and highly entertaining stage show that will have you gripping the edge of your seat!
Visually illustrated
