Filmmaker killed by giraffe after getting too close

Carlos Carvalho, an award-winning director and cinematographer, was trying to get a close-up shot of Gerald the giraffe at the Glen Afric Country Lodge, when the giraffe swung his head down, hitting the cameraman. Carvalho was shooting a film on the farm when the freak accident happened.

“Carlos went right up to about a metre of Gerald’s legs and panned up,  trying to get a close-up shot from below when the giraffe bent down to look at him,” John Brooker, owner of Glen Afric Country Lodge, told the Kormorant.

”The rest of the  film crew had already packed up while the sun was going down in order  to move to another location, when Carlos approached the giraffe. After he was hit, he fell down unconscious. The camera was still rolling and one can clearly hear on the recording how his assistants warn him that everybody had left, and then him saying that ‘I want to get this shot’. He was underneath the giraffe, filming up. Gerald bent down to look at him, bumping him with the head,” Brooker said.

Carvalho was airlifted to the Milpark Hospital in Johannesburg where he died a few hours later.

Carlos Carvalho

“Our deepest sympathy goes to the family. We have filmed about 600 movies on the farm and never had an incident like this. He just got too close to the animal despite the strict safety regulations and warnings to the film crew not to get close to the animals. The problem is that people see us working with the various animals on the farm and think it is easy. They are wild animals and one does not get that close to them. We have been involved in the film business since the 1960s and have been working with wild animals from lions to tigers, rhinos and other game for the past 55 years.”

Brooker said Gerald will remain on the farm.

“He did nothing wrong, this was not his fault.”

Carvalho was the director of photography for the acclaimed The Forgotten Kingdom, the first feature film produced in Lesotho. It won the Haskell Wexler Award for Best Cinematography at the 14th annual Woodstock Film Festival Maverick Awards in New York in 2014.

He worked on TV commercials, feature films, documentaries and corporate infomercials, and had won several awards over the years.

Andrew Mudge, writer and director of The Forgotten Kingdom, posted on Facebook that he was “absolutely gutted” to learn of Carvalho’s death. He described Carvalho as “one of the kindest, most thoughtful, and talented” people he had ever worked with.