For film director Ben Horowitz, one of the attractions of working with lions is not having to deal with prima donna actors.
He has spent the better part of the past two years working on the set of The White Lion, which last week wrapped up principal photography on a private farm on the way to Brits.
He and lion wrangler Kevin Richardson had just finished lunch on set and Horowitz was answering my questions when he looked up and called out: "Gandalf, come here."
Thinking it funny that a crew member was named after Tolkien's white wizard I turned around to spy a teenage white lion ambling over to the table, trailed by The Star photographer Ilvy Njiokikijien.
Gandalf wandered up to the table to nuzzle Richardson and get a pat from Horowitz. The film crew, finishing their lunch, seemed unperturbed by Gandalf's presence. The journalists at the next table, however, had eyes as big as saucers and I was sitting perfectly, perfectly still.
Horowitz and Richardson discuss whether it's easier to work with humans or lions. Richardson thinks the lions are better because they can do the same expression over and over.
"At least you can tell the actors where the mark is," says Horowitz, to which Richardson replies: "But the lions never get their dialogue wrong."
Horowitz says filming scenes with the bigger lions had its own problems since the cameras and people had to be caged, and filming was always done in the early morning or late afternoon because of the light quality.
"Because we are making a story about lions the hunt is important and there is no stock footage of white lions," Horowitz adds.
One of the most ambitious scenes they have had to do was filming the hunt scene.
"It's risky, rig-building and training the lion to do a specific act. It's not like a car chase. We're doing things from scratch and there's no guarantee that the lion will perform," he says.
They built a rig with a fake wildebeest on a gimble, attached to the back wheel of a track, and shot the scene with three vehicles around the rig, all with huge lights since they were shooting at night.
"The story of The White Lion follows the life of the white lion born to a tawny pride. His tawny brother gets killed and when his mom reintroduces him to the pride, he becomes the plaything for the other cubs.
"It's a coming of age story that anyone who watches can relate to at some point," says Richardson.
He is quick to point out that the film has a non-Hollywood feel: "The lions don't talk to each other telepathically."
Richardson gauges that 27 hand-reared white lions of various ages have been used to portray the screen lion Letsatsi plus several other wilder ones who provided different aspects of natural behaviour.
The White Lion was conceptualised by Rodney Fuhr, owner of the farm on which the filming has been taking place.
Richardson put together the film crew with Horowitz, whom had worked with as an animal behaviourist on a different film set. Fuhr is bankrolling the entire project.
"I envisaged it to be a small team but it grew bigger and bigger and suddenly we were shooting with blue screens and special effects.
"Animal welfare has been here all along and they step in when they think we're overstepping the mark. It makes life difficult because I know my animals but it's made us think about how to do things," says Richardson.
The film crew have come a long way in the past two years, when in the beginning the biggest challenge they had was how to get a usable shot of a young lion against a beautiful sunset. On average they shot about 20 seconds-worth of usable footage a day. Feature films average about three minutes a day.
"More than any other production we've pushed the limits, but there were limits.
"It's difficult to get lions to fight, you can't take risks. Again, we built models for the lions to pick a fight with," Horowitz says.
But three of the four lions they were working with at the time just wouldn't take the bait. Luckily, the fourth one did.
"You can't exactly interview a lion and say 'which part do you want in the film? Are you good at running or fighting?'" says Horowitz.
He counts the past two years as the best time he's had in his film career.
"It's a completely South African product, yet South Africa doesn't even come into the storyline. It is such a relief to work on a film where there is no pressure of cultural expression. There's a lesson to be learned. If we make a film about people it should be approached in the same way," Horowitz says.
