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  • These images of a swarm of locusts are from the BBC’s groundbreaking Planet Earth series in 2006.

  • And this footage comes from the brand new sequel to that programthis is Planet Earth 2.

  • You might notice the improvement in resolution from HD to Ultra-HD.

  • But another big change is that in Planet Earth 2, it’s not just the grasshoppers that are moving.

  • The cameras are moving too.

  • These dynamic tracking shots are part of the reason why Planet Earth 2 is the BBC’s most

  • cinematic wildlife film yet.

  • GUNTON: We know when we go to the cinema now the camera’s never static. It's always on

  • the move, it’s always on a steadicam, it’s always on tracks, it’s always flying.

  • And I think we wanted to reflect that in our approach. Not just because we wanted to

  • do homage to cinema but because the reason why cinema does that is because as soon as

  • you have that sense of moving camera it feels more immersive, it feels more connected.

  • Watching Planet Earth 2 feels a bit like watching a hollywood blockbuster.

  • You almost forget that these actors are hiding in remote corners of the globe

  • and they do not follow scripts.

  • The BBC’s Natural History Unit in Bristol has been producing wildlife films for 60 years.

  • Their frequent presenter, sir David Attenborough, is most recognizable voice of the genre.

  • This extraordinary creature is half blind, half deaf, and this is just about as fast

  • as it can moveAnd through the decades, theyve continually

  • raised the bar for the look and feel of nature films, too.

  • That evolution, as well explore in this 3-part series, is in large part a story of technology.

  • The first big breakthrough was lightweight, 16mm film cameras.

  • NIGHTINGALE: If you remember, television began as a studio operation.

  • It just had ginormous video cameras that were larger than a person.

  • Then in the film industry, of course, that was all movies, and again, they were very,

  • very cumbersome.

  • There simply weren't cameras that you could take into the jungles and deserts and so on.

  • 16mm cameras were portable, but they were controversial inside the BBC, seen as amateur

  • cameras, since 35mm film was the broadcast standard at the time.

  • But Attenborough insisted on the smaller cameras for his first trips overseas.

  • And sure enough, he came back with footage of animals that had never before been filmed,

  • like these Indri lemurs in Madagascar.

  • Fifty-six years later, filming the Indri means moving the camera around them and traveling

  • with them through the trees, but the technology they used to do this has only come around

  • in the past few years.

  • The issue is stabilization.

  • You can see the shaking in these rare handheld shots from the BBC’s 1990 series The Trials of Life.

  • Aerial shots had the same problem.

  • And if they tried to zoom in, those bumps just got magnified.

  • Producers could achieve cinematic motion with cranes, dollies, and sliders where it was

  • practical to do so.

  • But for decades almost all the shots that weren’t underwater involved a camera on

  • a tripodpanning, tilting and zooming to follow the action.

  • There’s definitely no shortage of incredible animal behavior to film that way.

  • But it all changed around 2002. That's when BBC switched

  • from film to digital HD cameras for the Planet Earth series.

  • That switch gave them access to a tool called the Cineflex heligimbal, a stabilization system

  • for a helicopter-mounted camera.

  • The heligimbal delivered the smooth sweeping scenic shots that defined the epic look of that series.

  • But it also let them film individual animals from a kilometer up in the sky, and zoom way

  • in to follow them without the noise of the chopper scaring them off.

  • And that changed the way they could capture behaviors like hunting.

  • GUNTON: If you look at how people shot and edited hunting sequences, because of the nature

  • of where you had to put the camera, you could never get long continuous shots because you

  • would you get a shot on a tripod, the wolf would run off, you had to jump up and get

  • in the land rover, run across, put the tripod down and get another shot.

  • So it always had to be quite edited and quite constructed.

  • Compare that to the wolf hunt in Planet Earth.

  • GUNTON: Once that wolf started hunting you could just fly along, keep your distance and

  • in one shot, you just see how that drama played out.

  • And you just do not know what's gonna happen: is it gonna stumble, is gonna catch it, is

  • the little caribou gonna run away, is it gonna stumble?

  • It was so gripping because it was unmediated.

  • The Cineflex system required digital cameras because it separates the lens from the camera’s

  • data storage, which at the time was digital video cassette tape.

  • You just can’t do that with film.

  • The 400mm zoom lens is mounted inside a series of rings called a gimbal, that isolate it

  • from the movement of the helicopter, with the help of small sensors called gyroscopes.

  • Those sensors detect changes in orientation so that motors can correct for those movements

  • almost immediately.

  • So the camera operator can control the lens with a joystick inside the helicopter

  • and zoom in without losing any stability.

  • Ten years later, that stabilization technology comes in smaller, much more affordable forms.

  • It’s embedded in drones, and built into rigs that you can hold in your hands.

  • And that technological change aligned perfectly with what the BBC wanted to do with Planet Earth 2.

  • GUNTON: We wanted to push the proximity, getting close to the animals because we wanted to see

  • the world's landscapes, our planet, through the animals' eyes.

  • Gyro-stabilized drones provided more intimate aerials,

  • and handheld shots showed what it feels like to really move through these habitats.

  • WHITE: I think we've gone for a much more emotional narrative in these.

  • It's much more trying to put you in their world and what would that animal be feeling.

  • Trying not to be anthropomorphic about it, but just sort of taking the viewer on a journey

  • where they can start to relate to how that animal might work in that world.

  • It's a slightly warmer, closer take on Planet Earth.

  • Hollywood filmmakers have been able to get stabilized walking shots for decades using

  • a Steadicam.

  • That’s a bigger, more complicated rig that stabilizes the camera with balanced weights

  • and a spring-loaded arm attached to a vest that the operator wears.

  • Those long walk-and-talk shots that ER and The West Wing made famous,

  • those are all Steadicam shots.

  • The producers of Planet Earth 2 used Steadicams for a few sequences, like this footage of

  • a serval cat hunting in South Africa.

  • But it most cases Steadicams have been too cumbersome, expensive, or inflexible for shooting

  • in the wild.

  • Instead, the Planet Earth 2 team relied heavily on smaller handheld stabilizers.

  • Like the heligimbal, these rigs have gyroscopes that measure orientation along 3 axes and

  • motors that counteract those movements.

  • These rigs are so small and versatile they can often replace several other tools like

  • sliders and cranes.

  • WHITE: On some of the trips, like the trip to film the penguins, we took a crane with

  • us, we talked about taking sliders.

  • The reality is it didn't come out of the box.

  • Everything was done with a cameraman holding a camera on a gimbal.

  • In an environment like that, just to be able to move around quite freely, have a camera

  • that you can put down at penguin level but be able to pick up and get above the penguins

  • was just so useful.

  • Handheld stabilizers are most effective when you can get close to the animal, and a lot

  • of animals don’t like that, so theyll never replace tripods.

  • Rather they add to the rapidly growing arsenal of tools becoming available not just to pros,

  • but to everyone, to be able to get shots that look like hollywood blockbusters.

  • But ultimately, what makes a movie great isn’t just the pictures, it’s the story.

  • The Natural History Unit’s style has shifted over time from more educational to more cinematic,

  • but they haven’t forgotten that.

  • GUNTON: The imagery of course is that first thing that catches the eye, catches the attention

  • but without the revelations the storytelling brings, in the end, it palls quite quickly.

  • So no technology will ever replace the ability to be able to tell a story that grips and

  • fascinates and emotionally connects with an audience.

  • Thank you for watching!

  • You can find Planet Earth 2 on BBC America.

  • It will be airing Saturdays through March 25th.

  • You can also find tons of clips from their archive on BBC Earth’s mobile app.

  • It’s called Story of Life and it’s actually where I found a lot of the clips that I used

  • in this video.

  • And it’s free!

  • So check it out.

These images of a swarm of locusts are from the BBC’s groundbreaking Planet Earth series in 2006.

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BBC如何讓地球看起來像一部好萊塢電影? (How the BBC makes Planet Earth look like a Hollywood movie)

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    Chow Tze Lok 發佈於 2021 年 01 月 14 日
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