Alan Root was a pioneering wildlife film-maker whose life often seemed to be something out of an Indiana Jones movie. Yet despite his larger-than-life character he always put the animals’ story at the heart of his films, and prided himself on “keeping it real” throughout his long and innovative career. In the words of Sir David Attenborough, “Alan Root made natural history film-making grow up.”

Alan, who has died aged 80, was one of the first people to bring Africa’s wildlife to our screens. He was best known for his contributions to Anglia Television’s long-running series Survival, many made in partnership with his first wife, Joan. One of these – the 1978 film Mysterious Castles of Clay, about the hidden life of a termite mound – was nominated for an Academy Award. He also introduced Dian Fossey to her first mountain gorillas, and later shot some of the wildlife footage for the 1988 film Gorillas in the Mist.

Alan Root with a boomslang, a highly venomous snake, that he captured in Tsavo East, Kenya. Photograph: The Elephant Movie

Despite his early success, Alan never lived on past glories: he always looked for new ways to achieve his aims, pioneering the use of hot-air balloons, which allowed him to obtain intimate footage without scaring the animals. But much of his enduring fame came from the various mishaps and near-death experiences he endured while trying to get close to his subjects. As fellow film-maker Mark Deeble noted: “Alan approached everything as if it was his last day on earth. Then he pushed the boundaries so that, in many cases, it almost became that.”

He had countless scars from encounters with hippos, gorillas and leopards, and on meeting someone new would proffer his right hand – missing the index finger from a bite by a puff adder – just to see their reaction. Not all his near-death experiences were the result of animal attacks. He taught himself to pilot a small plane, flying at ludicrously low altitudes so he could spot birds en route. He then progressed to helicopters, but having written off two – and walked away more or less unscathed – he never even thought of giving up flying.

Alan was born in London, where his father, Ted, managed a food-processing factory. In 1943 the family moved to Kenya for his father’s work, and he attended the Prince of Wales school in Nairobi. As a teenager, encouraged by the legendary film-maker Armand Denis, who lived in Nairobi, he bought a Bolex clockwork camera and shot a film about jacanas, the birds known as “lily-trotters” because of their ability to walk across aquatic vegetation. He got to know the father-and-son film-making team of Bernhard and Michael Grzimek, and became firm friends with Michael.

However, Michael died at the age of 24, in 1959, when he was flying a small aircraft through a mountain gorge near the Serengeti in Tanzania and collided with a vulture. At the time, the Grzimeks were making a film about the wildlife of the Serengeti. Alan completed the filming, and Serengeti Shall Not Die went on to win an Oscar for best documentary feature. Afterwards Alan used to observe that “it was all downhill after that”.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Alan and Joan Root filming wildebeest crossing the Mara river between Tanzania and Kenya. Photograph: Alan Root

In 1961 he married a Kenyan fellow film-maker, Joan Wells-Thorpe. During their 20-year partnership the couple produced some of the most acclaimed wildlife films ever made, including The Year of the Wildebeest (1975) and Safari by Balloon (1975). They split up in the early 1980s, and in 2006 Joan was murdered at her home after campaigning against wildlife poaching.

Alan Root surfacing next to a Nile crocodile in the Mzima spring, Tsavo West, Kenya. Photograph: Joan Root

After the end of his marriage Alan continued to work for Survival, encouraging and mentoring young film-makers, including Deeble and Victoria Stone, who as a team under his guidance made many memorable African wildlife films. He married Jenny Hammond in 1991; she died in 2000, after which he was married a third time, to the biologist, artist and violinist Fran Michelmore.

In 2008 he was appointed OBE, and during his career he picked up more than 60 other awards, including two Emmys and a Bafta. Audiences loved his way with words as well as the stunning images: a classic line was “the aardvark – first word in the dictionary, last word in anteater design”. Root was always rather dismissive of the trickery used in some modern wildlife films, preferring to rely on his own knowledge and fieldcraft, gained from more than six decades in the bush. In 1998 he paid a visit to the team of Big Cat Diary, a BBC nature series of which I was the series producer, in the Masai Mara. He spent the evening regaling us with gripping anecdotes about his extraordinary life and times, and was remarkably modest about his many achievements.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Alan and Joan Root filming for the ITV series Survival. Photograph: ITV/REX/Shutterstock

He never officially retired, and for his 80th year planned his most ambitious idea yet: to walk alone with the migrating wildebeest on their epic journey from the Serengeti into the Masai Mara. Because he knew that the authorities would never give him permission for filming, he would pretend to go “on safari” with Fran and their teenage sons, Myles and Rory. “It was pure Alan Root,” said Deeble, “the maverick film-maker, making a statement, as only he knew how.” But in March this year he was diagnosed with a brain tumour. So instead he took his family on one last epic voyage – to Alaska – before returning to their home near Mount Kenya, where he died.

He is survived by Fran and their sons, and by two stepchildren, David and Karen, from his second marriage.

• Alan George Windsor Root, wildlife film-maker, born 12 May 1937; died 26 August 2017