Here at Newsflash Online, we’re as partial as anyone to a good nature documentary. Even in his 90s, Sir David Attenborough continues to front some fascinating programmes, and it’s interesting to see how technology continues to inform our view of the natural world.
New show Our Planet is Sir David’s first for Netflix, but it’s not just the streaming, on-demand nature of the platform on which it’s being shown that represents a new development. Nature films have long been a driving force for film technology in general, and the new offering has utilised a number of new innovations in order to capture its amazing footage.
One technique used by BBC predecessor Planet Earth, which was made by the same team, was a specially developed gyro-stabilised camera. When coupled with an extremely powerful zoom lens, this allowed ground-breaking footage to be captured from a helicopter without disturbing the animals and without any camera shake.
Special cameras helped capture prairie dogs and polar bears
This technique has been used with a variety of different vehicles in the new series. They were mounted on snow vehicles to track polar bears, who can range over an incredible 50,000 square miles. It was also deployed on a jeep that kept pace with running prairie dogs and still managed to capture smooth footage, despite the uneven terrain.
Producer Alastair Fothergill told Wired: ‘You seem to be running with the dogs. You could never film that with a traditional tripod: every shot is moving, because all of it is shot with a very powerful lens from quite a long way away, about 100 metres from the action.’
Motion-detection cameras are also crucial in capturing elusive species such as colourless tigers in Eastern Russia. Even using 40 of the latest such infrared-triggered cameras, the Our Planet team spent a fruitless year trying to capture the beasts.
‘It was only the second year that we started seeing their footprints in the snow and, using remote-controlled cameras, we managed to capture an entire sequence,’ Fothergill said. ‘It looks as if it’s been shot by a cameraman, but it was the cameras.’
Yet another technology used by the crews were underwater rebreathers, which absorb the carbon dioxide of the cameraman’s exhaled breath to permit the rebreathing of unused oxygen. These can give a longer time underwater and crucially do not create bubbles, which can disturb the wildlife.
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