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Lemming Suicide Myth: Disney Film Faked Bogus Behavior

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Re: Lemming Suicide Myth: Disney Film Faked Bogus Behavior

#21
post #8

It remains common practice for nature "documentaries" to create fake narratives in editing. Pay attention to cuts, camera angles and changes in background scenery and you'll notice quite a lot of it. If they're showing two animals in some sort of confrontation but only ever show one of the animals at a time, you can be sure it's fake. If they're showing something that has several camera angles it's probably fake, par…

The audio in nature documentaries is all fake too, right? I don’t know that I’ve ever heard this from a reliable source, but at some point years ago I got the idea in my head and now every time I’m watching on I’m convinced the vast majority of the sound effects are fake.

I wonder. I tend to think so. But then I also think of things like the parabolic sideline microphones at football games and wonder how well they'd work with an amplifier.

Re: Lemming Suicide Myth: Disney Film Faked Bogus Behavior

#23
post #13

> The lemmings supposedly committing mass suicide by leaping into the ocean were actually thrown off a cliff by the Disney filmmakers. I guess the 50s where different times

Not different times, they're still at it

Yeah, you learn quickly in film school that documentaries edit footage however they like to tell a narrative. A lot of the incidents they describe happening in the wild are just multiple different situations clipped together, if you pay attention you'll notice some clips aren't even in the same place. There's even rumors recent footage of panicked animals were actually being caused by film crew drones, not anything happening naturally in the wild.

Re: Lemming Suicide Myth: Disney Film Faked Bogus Behavior

#24
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not different times, they're still at it

Yeah, you learn quickly in film school that documentaries edit footage however they like to tell a narrative. A lot of the incidents they describe happening in the wild are just multiple different situations clipped together, if you pay attention you'll notice some clips aren't even in the same place. There's even rumors recent footage of panicked animals were actually being caused by film crew drones, not anything h…

I think the "different times" was referring more to the animal cruelty than the choice to stage a scene.

Re: Lemming Suicide Myth: Disney Film Faked Bogus Behavior

#25
When I was studying documentary methods in media studies, this was widely shared. There were (and are) many things calling themselves documentaries but are closer to entertaining simulations.

The difference between what's allowed for popular media and what research professionals would accept is pretty wide.

Re: Lemming Suicide Myth: Disney Film Faked Bogus Behavior

#26
post #13

> The lemmings supposedly committing mass suicide by leaping into the ocean were actually thrown off a cliff by the Disney filmmakers. I guess the 50s where different times

I find it delicious that it was a Disney filmmaker who bought the lemmings off kids and let them run into the river (luckily they can swim).

Re: Lemming Suicide Myth: Disney Film Faked Bogus Behavior

#29
post #17

It remains common practice for nature "documentaries" to create fake narratives in editing. Pay attention to cuts, camera angles and changes in background scenery and you'll notice quite a lot of it. If they're showing two animals in some sort of confrontation but only ever show one of the animals at a time, you can be sure it's fake. If they're showing something that has several camera angles it's probably fake, par…

I hold out hope that Marty Stouffer’s Wild America didn’t make liberal use of those shenanigans in his original series.

Nor Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom.

Re: Lemming Suicide Myth: Disney Film Faked Bogus Behavior

#30
They say its a Myth, but then

>"What people see is essentially mass dispersal," said zoologist Gordon Jarrell, an expert in small mammals with the University of Alaska Fairbanks. "Sometimes it's pretty directional. The classic example is in the Scandinavian mountains, where (lemmings) have been dramatically observed. They will come to a body of water and be temporarily stopped, and eventually they'll build up along the shore so dense and they will swim across. If they get wet to the skin, they 're essentially dead."

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