Filming Mountain Gorillas and Documentary Making in Uganda, Rwanda or Congo
Filming Mountain Gorillas in Uganda or Rwanda is an adventure of visiting gorilla parks and take videos and photos of the gorillas for documentary purposes. In this case, a documentary is a film or television program that is educational and tells a true story about mountain gorillas. This involves capturing every moment of the gorilla behavior, characters and lifestyles.
To film Mountain Gorillas in Uganda, you should one of the Gorilla National Parks which include Bwindi Impenetrable Forest National Park or Mgahinga Gorilla National Park in south western Uganda, Volcanoes National Park in the north of Rwanda or Virunga National Park in the Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. No any other place in the world apart from the above mentioned where you can find these primates and film or document them.
Filming mountain gorillas is possible when one has required papers to do so. At Gorilla Trekking Services, we help any film crew in processing gorilla filming permissions for any gorilla park in Africa. We aid in securing gorilla filming permits and contract from Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA), a body in charge of all National Park in Uganda, and OTRPN or Rwanda Development Board for Rwanda gorilla filming license from Rwanda Development Board (RDB) and a similar permission with Virunga National Park in Congo.
Requirements for Filming Mountain Gorillas
To film mountain gorillas, there are logistical requirements that must be present for successful and meaningful filming. A charge equal to 40% of the activity fee plus 10% as a monitoring fee applies to Uganda. And any people planning to film mountain gorillas in Bwindi impenetrable National Park and Mgahinga National Park will have to pay the ordinary gorilla permit fees of USD 700 per person to film for one hour) plus an addition of 40% of the permit price. In addition to this, one is required to pay a group charge of 10% as monitoring fees.
Another option of filming mountain gorillas is taking advantage of the gorilla habituation experience and be able to film gorillas for four hours. In this case a gorilla habituation experience permit costs USD 1500 per person. Under this concept, visitors stay longer with mountain gorillas which enjoying a selected with a few people. Gorilla habituation experience guests are limited to four in number. Other the hand, filming mountain gorillas in the Volcanoes National Park in Rwanda or the Virunga National Park in Democratic Republic of Congo require somehow different paperwork that can be processed.
The fees for filming gorillas in Uganda is paid to Uganda Wildlife Authority. UWA then provides a practical working arrangement or a memorandum of understanding between it and the filming firm to guiding the filming adventure in the jingle. When all the filming costs are summed together, there will be another 5% surcharge to take care of the environmental impacts on the park.
One of the Gorilla Trekking Services roles is to process permits for filming gorillas and contracts for Uganda, Rwanda and Democratic Republic of Congo for clients. Always what we require from the filming agency is the information regarding the number of days, filming dates plus number of persons in the filming entourage. Then we shall proceed to work out a contract to permit gorilla filming. Working on a filming contract may take like 7 days to process and therefore, an inquiry in advance is very essential to allow proper arrangements.
At our gorilla company, we cater for all the logistical requirements including, transportation, scouting, processing filming permits, media accreditation, identifying professional guides plus accommodation among others.