- It's a really remarkable place.

I film chimps a lot in forest environments where it's all really green and shady and dark.

And coming here for the first time, it's a completely different visual landscape, different color palette as well, different energy, the chimps and the landscape and everything around them.

(vegetation rustling) (chimps hooting and grunting) You're filming them in the long, golden grass.

You can just see that these little shapes through the grass and it almost looks like a lion or something's gonna pop its head out.

You just see this little, black, furry shape peeping out of the grass and you know it's a chimpanzee.

What on earth is it doing out here in this, like, savanna environment?

It's almost like they got lost and this is where they've ended up.

It's very cool seeing them standing up and, like, walking through, almost like humans.

Hairy, hairy humans walking through a savanna.

So then, you've got these huge open plateaus that just look like the surface of the moon.

Such an alien environment.

I can't imagine how difficult it was when they were habituating these chimps.

(chimps grunting) It gives you this immense respect for the people that have done the hard work before you got there.

Johnny and his team have been going out every single day for the last 25 years to get to this level where we can just turn up and watch them behaving completely naturally.

(birds chirping) (vegetation rustling) Filming chimps is really difficult, but then filming Johnny following the chimps and the chimp behavior is like another layer of difficulty and complexity.

(birds squawking) (vegetation rustling) You've got to be filming the behavior that the chimps are doing, and then suddenly you've got to stop doing that and then grab a different camera and film Johnny watching what's happening and his reactions to things.

So, it made something that's quite difficult much more difficult.

(laughs) The days are really long.

Leaving the hotel at 5:00 in the morning and driving out, and then walking in to get to the chimps before they get out of their nests and then just being with them all day and then waiting for them to nest again.

They could have traveled during the day, so then you've got to walk that distance back to your car, and then drive back to the hotel.

So, it's a sort of two-hour commute to work.

We're a bit behind.

So it's very, very long days.

Once it starts going up towards 40 degrees, it's just, like, absolutely sweltering and just one of the things that makes it really difficult is you have to carry so much water with you for the day.

Five or six liters of water adds five or six kilos to your backpack.

And it's already a really heavy backpack, big cameras and big lenses, so it just makes it so much harder.

But it's so worth it.

(vegetation rustling) (chimps hooting and grunting) It's an amazing place to film chimps.

(chimps continue hooting and grunting) Oh my God.

(chimp barking) This place just gives so much that's different to other chimp habitats, being able to see the chimps within a landscape as opposed to sort of surrounded by just green.

You just sort of get obsessed with everything that's different and new and fresh.

Watching them drinking in a stream, that's quite a rare thing to see.

And then when it got dark, seeing them out foraging up a baobab tree with, like, the moonlight just hanging in the sky behind them.

And it's just amazing to see, like, their understanding of fire, to see all the smoke, like, pouring around in front of them and they just didn't care.

Just sitting there, like, with a fire, like, you know, 10 feet in front of him just burning away, eating some baobab and just, like, watching it, completely nonchalant to this forest fire right in front of him.

It's amazing.

It's such a human thing to understand fire and where it is and how it moves.

Yeah, it just makes them feel more and more human the more time you spend with them.

Right, I think that's enough of that.

(companion laughing)