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The tricks behind nature documentaries

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Re: The tricks behind nature documentaries

#11

Post by avar »

Regarding Man v.s. Wild: The entire premise of the show is false. They claim to drop Bear Grylls in some remote location where he has to make it back to civilization. But in reality they seem to just drive around and film him doing stunts, see e.g.:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UpSlpvb1is

Worse, a lot of the behavior on that show is terrible survival behavior. E.g. when they did the episode in Iceland Grylls at one point jumped into a water filled ravine to make it to the other bank, and planned to dry off in some geothermal area he could see in the distance.

Firstly there's no ravine like that in Iceland that you couldn't easily walk around in 5-10 minutes without getting yourself wet, and secondly jumping into freezing water in the wilderness and thinking you can dry yourself off in some unfamiliar geothermal area you can spot in the distance is beyond stupid.

Most of the world's geothermal areas (including Iceland's) are just a collection of steaming holes in the ground, or water either too hot or too cold to dry off in. It's much better to stay dry than to take such a chance.

There are examples like that in virtually every episodes. E.g. Grylls climbing down a waterfall that he could trivially have walked around.

Re: The tricks behind nature documentaries

#12

Post by apu »

I wonder if one can define a loose version of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle for all documentaries: the more closely involved the film-maker is to the action, the more he/she influences it.

A scene which vividly comes to mind is in Harlan County, USA, where the film-maker gets shot at (!) by one of the anti-union thugs.

Re: The tricks behind nature documentaries

#13

Post by tuacker »

sliverstorm wrote: post #5

I always like to imagine "Planet Earth" is free of most of this stuff, and I hope I won't be proven otherwise.

BBC Life documentary always had an "On Location" at the end. Here are two examples.

One involves a lot of fake, they searched for a spot outside to observe and then rebuild the whole set indoor in order to be able to film growing of the plants [1].

In the other one they follow a dragon hunting a buffalo around for a long time trying best not to interfere [2].

But there is more, for one episode a cameramen built a shelter to hide himself from a bird. He had to improve it and stay for a long time to finally catch his footage. (Couldn't find it, sorry)

[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrDnCLczYA4

[2] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2-mTbv8gYo

Re: The tricks behind nature documentaries

#14

Post by andreyf »

Untitled wrote: post #7

This is sad. What made environmental programs worse for me is the human interaction (and human interest) stories that they try to create. Usually it is a person catching or wrestling with a wild animal (they usually try to justify this for some obscure reason instead of admitting it is for television). Probably the best example of this is Steve Irwin's shows. But this probably just mirrors what people want. Everythin…

And get Coke to sponsor it ;)

Re: The tricks behind nature documentaries

#16

Post by alextp »

apu wrote: post #12

I wonder if one can define a loose version of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle for all documentaries: the more closely involved the film-maker is to the action, the more he/she influences it. A scene which vividly comes to mind is in Harlan County, USA , where the film-maker gets shot at (!) by one of the anti-union thugs.

There is a fantastic documentary about a documentary, Santiago, ( http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santiago_(document%C3%A1rio) , unfortunately in portuguese), that explores this very issue. When he was young, the director tried to shoot a documentary about his family's former butler, but ended up discarding the footage. Years later, after the butler was dead, he came back to the footage and realized what a dick he was during the whole process. He then edited it to tell a story of the common blindness of the documentarist. It's touching, and makes it so you will never watch a documentary in the same way after watching it. I have no idea if it was released internationally, but it's definitely worth seeing.

Re: The tricks behind nature documentaries

#17

Post by [deleted] »

_b8r0 wrote: post #10
sliverstorm wrote: post #5

I always like to imagine "Planet Earth" is free of most of this stuff, and I hope I won't be proven otherwise.

One of the great things about the BBC natural history unit's programmes is that on the DVDs/Blu-Rays/Broadcasts they tend to show additional footage of how certain scenes were captured. They do tend to have the whole 6 weeks out in the middle of nowhere waiting for the perfect shot stuff going on, but of course that tends to be for one scene. The other thing I've noticed the BBC do is they reuse footage from one docu…

[deleted]

Re: The tricks behind nature documentaries

#19

Post by VMG »

carbocation wrote: post #8
sliverstorm wrote: post #5

I always like to imagine "Planet Earth" is free of most of this stuff, and I hope I won't be proven otherwise.

I've always assumed that the sound effects from their underwater shots were studio effects.

I mostly assume that the sounds on land are heavily edited too. You can't put a proper microphone on a lion.

I don't let it bother me however.

Re: The tricks behind nature documentaries

#20

Post by gbog »

danielnicollet wrote: post #4

Image is always manipulated one way or another, willingly or inadvertently, for the form or to change its meaning. Nothing really that new there. Like the sound of the bear paw ion the water example: did anyone really think they had a mike pole right above the beast? Did I miss something?

I would like to see it again but I think Flaherty's Nanook http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0013427/ feels much more real than most of more recent nature movies. Even if there is always some artificial human hand behind (be it only the cutting of the reels), some movies are good and some aren't, and in this documentary genre "good" should not mean bloody spectacular, it should mean just real. In the article someone draw the line to Gorilla suits, I would draw it much closer to Flaherty's way.
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