Most history documentaries, odd as it may seem, are not shot in historic places. They are entirely constructed in editing rooms by assembling archival film and photos and interlacing them with interviews also shot indoors.

Viewers never get to see the places where history was actually made. Very few programs feature outdoor location shooting and the little there is is mostly play-acting re-enactments in some farmer's field. Shooting in historic locations is rarer still, and then done very sparingly - involving at most perhaps a scenic pan, a sit-down interview, or perhaps a host doing a brief walk about.

Our Camera Features Historic Locations: One of the hundreds of remote South African locations to which we took our camera, "Hell on earth," the British trench on top of remote Spion Kop. The dead lay three deep here in what was the Boer War's bloodiest battle, and a British defeat that shocked the Empire in Jan. 1900. A Canadian officer, Lt. J.W. Osborne, of Brantford, ON, lies in this mass grave. Our program explains how this came to be.

We decided to depart from the normal convention and shoot our program substantially on the locations where history was actually made so that television audiences could "see" these sites which played such a major role in the lives of the "Anglo-Boer War generation."

We spent 2 months in South Africa, and drove 11,000 km, to take our camera to hundreds of Anglo-Boer War sites.

Our program, which features major explanations at 83 different historic places, offers, we believe, an unprecedented number of real historic locations for a history documentary.

Towards the end of episode one, you talk about the Canadians boredom while stationed at Belmont and how they took to carving their names on rocks at Gun Hill. As the camera panned over the names of several of the troops still evident on the rocks, there it was - A. Woodward, RCR, London - my great Uncle Albert W. Woodward.

Thank you for giving this Canadian a personal experience."

Most history documentaries have no "host" or presenter at all. A few use a "celebrity" host as a "narration voice" or as an indoor "studio presenter."

All feature their "experts" as "interview subjects" - a technique copied from news shows - and have them looking towards, and answering questions from, an off-camera director.

Far from becoming a host for the program, these expert/interviewees deliberately ignore the viewing audience and concentrate instead, on talking to the interviewer. In this technique, the television viewer is shuffled aside and treated merely as the "eaves-dropper" or voyeur, looking in on a typical "news" type interview.

Our Experts are Hosts: Historian Pam McFadden - typifying all our experts - is the host of the Talana Hill and Elandslaagte sections. She looks and talks directly at the camera as she stands where General Penn-Symons was fatally shot, and asks the audience to imagine the scene as the British general fell, while trying to rally his men to renew the attack against the withering Boer fire sweeping down Talana Hill, during the first battle of the Anglo-Boer War.

We decided to depart from tradition and come up with a superior, more intimate and more modern approach in the use of hosts and experts.

Instead of a single host we would have many; instead of a celebrity "who pretends," we would harness the "real life" passion of our experts.

Who could possibly be a better host than the expert burning with the conviction from knowing the subject matter intimately?

We decided to make every one of our "experts" the "host" of his/her segment.

Instead of treating the viewer simply as the traditional "bystander" as an expert talks, our program would give the viewer pride of place as the focus for the entire program.

In this innovative technique, all the "experts" would, break with tradition, by not "answering questions" from, or towards, an off-camera director, but would instead, be "making statements" directly to the viewing audience, and breaking convention further by talking directly into the camera lens. This technique effectively turns each expert into a host.

We feature 104 gripping contributions from 15 expert/hosts in the program - an unprecedented number of hosts in a television documentary.

Feedback: # 52: Burlington, ON - "I saw all four episodes of your show. They were all really great!"

All serious television documentaries have, for generations, had all their experts - who mostly sit indoors in a studio or room - look straight at the INTERVIEWER, usually the director, sitting behind the camera. They are issued strict orders - NEVER LOOK INTO THE CAMERA LENS. TALK TO ME, NOT THE AUDIENCE. PRETEND THE VIEWER ISN'T THERE.

And it's not improving. In what is a most disconcerting first in television, one Canadian series now even has the host avoiding eye contact with the audience, causing his eyes to play a desperate hide-and-seek with the behind the camera director as - in obvious discomfort - he walks and talks.

Our Experts Only Talk to the Camera/Viewer: Grietjie Erasmus - speaking directly to the camera - points to marks on her family house made by British canon fire during the Battle of Biddulphsberg in May 1900. She tells the audience that, during the battle, her great-grandfather was so terrified that he refused to come outside and had to be removed bodily from the house to safety.

We deliberately departed from convention, telling our experts, rather than ignoring the audience, to speak straight into the camera, directly to the viewer.

In spite of the fact that it runs counter to the practice of every other documentary producer, it is a technique we have used with great success in all our programs for the past twenty years.

In our first one hour television documentary (aired on CBC in 1987), and in our award-winning television series (aired on Life Network 1996-98), interview subjects/experts were directed to talk straight into the camera.

Hopefully our continuing drive to publicize our innovative "expert as host" technique, will attract a few more converts among television executives and producers to our novel way of presenting the best an expert has to give and which has long ago won great acclaim among television audiences.

The Intimacy of Susan Botha: Many have noted that our innovative technique - we have been doing it for 23 years - of having the expert perform to the camera lens, has created television programming with an unparalleled bond of intimacy between expert and viewer that is impossible to achieve in any other way. Above Susan explains how soldiers bent the ends of cartridge cases to hold powder to start fires in cold weather.

Traditionally cameramen are not directors, they are told what to do by others who are. Cameramen are also not subject experts; they are almost entirely passive conduits, who are there as the technical experts in the recording process. It is others - writers, directors, producers - who research, write, and decide what the content of the show will be, and what questions the experts are asked.

That is why in other documentaries the experts NEVER look into the lens at the cameraman but always at the other people standing beside, behind, around the camera, who are asking the questions.

It is why the audience of other documentaries only ever gets to see the side of the experts' faces as they talk - and never, their most intimate parts - their eyes.

Our Director/Historian/Cameraman and "Stand-In" John Goldi csc: John Goldi's preferred technique over the past 23 years has been to act as a "stand-in" for the viewing audience when shooting experts for his documentaries. His pioneering innovation has achieved an unparalleled intimacy between the audience and his experts because, by getting them to perform straight to him - as director, expert and only incidentally as cameraman - he creates the illusion they are talking directly to the audience.

As a long-time Canadian historian - and fellow expert on the Anglo-Boer War - John Goldi was able to prompt all his fellow historians into delivering their performances straight to him, into the camera lens, as he "stood in" for the audience.

By directing the experts to talk directly to him - his camera eye - he effectively takes his presence - as the interviewer - out of the communications loop. The audience is never aware of his presence; the annoying middle man - the interviewer- is gone.

The illusion becomes complete; the experts' eye-lines zero straight to the television audience. The viewer believes the expert is talking "to me and only to me" - not to some off-camera interviewer like in all other documentaries.

We believe this is a superior and more "classy" technique for shooting experts, than the traditional one, borrowed from the nightly news, which results in "off-axis" interviews conducted by interviewers who are never shown.