I just watched the final two episodes of the BBC/Discovery series Life.
I didn’t like the narration but I could deal with it. And there was more baboon penis that I would have prefered but that’s just nature.
However, what I found unacceptable was the use of CGI. I was watching the opening of the Plants episode where they had the long stop motion tracking shot. It wasn’t overtly dramatic like animals fighting but I thought it was amazing when I considered how incredibly hard it must have been to film. I was thinking how difficult it must have been to slowly move the camera inch by inch over the course of weeks to get the shot.
Except that’s not how they did. At the end of the episode they did a “behind the scenes” sequence and explained how they had faked the shot. Of course, they didn’t call it faked but that’s what I see it as. They shot an outdoor tracking shot to get a background. Then they filmed a bunch of other shots inside a studio mock-up. Then they edited all the shots together on a computer. As far as I’m concerned that’s special effect not nature photography.
If you’re going to make up CGI shots for a nature documentary, you might as well go for the spectacle and throw in some dragons and unicorns and Zoe Saldana in a thong.
Now that would get the Discovery channel some ratings. Now you’re thinking like an exec!
I know it’s not exactly the same thing, but ever since my wife & I became aware of “Foley Artists” we’ve made fun of the sound effects during nature programs. Now every time I see an animal tramping through a forest on Discovery I picture a woman crunching leaves in a cardboard box.
Now that’s a phrase you don’t hear everyday.
Editing is now considered CGI?
Put her in a leopard print thong, and it just might fly!
No, I just saw what** Little Nemo** was talking about. They took some background tracking shots of a mossy tree scene and then said they recreated the whole scene in the studio by ‘painstakingly’ positioning the plants to film the rest of the scene. They showed them attaching plants to fake tree limbs like a florist creating a bouquet.
Whatever it is, it isn’t nature photography. I am begining to doubt whether Oprah was sitting on her own ass when she narrated the story, or if they created one in the studio for her.
CGI means computer generated images, were there a lot of animated animals in Life?
I didn’t watch anymore than the first episode because I can’t stand Oprah’s voice.
You could get the DVDs (or maybe view it online) for the BBC version, narrated by Daven Attenborough, as nature documentaries should be.
Okay, I just had a look at the documentary, and I can see what you mean about it being a big visual effects cheat (though there’s certainly no CGI). But at least they were open about it.
And I also recommend you watch the David Attenborough narrated version. It would be nice if they included his audio on the DVD as an alternative track.
Okay, maybe I’m misusing the terminology. I figured it was a CGI because it was generated on a computer (as opposed to other forms of trickery like using models or putting the plants on the tree for the shot). But whatever it’s called, it clearly was a fake shot - the plants we saw were never anywhere near that forest.
I’d hate to see this become an acceptable practice in nature shows. Look at the difficulty they had recording some of the legitimate sequences. Next time, some producer might argue that it’s okay to fudge things a little and create the shot on a computer instead.
It wasn’t generated on a computer. The separate elements were combined in a computer (called “compositing”) but they were all real plants really growing.
For that one shot, yes. It was a symbolic sequence for the early part of the documentary, with no indication from the narration that it was showing anything genuine. Most of the other shots were genuine, though sped up or slowed down, but even then I imagine a good number were filmed in controlled conditions.
Too late. By about 100 years. Almost all nature documentaries use creative editing and artifice to make the show more interesting and informative.
David Attenborough has a great autobiography of his time as a natural history documentary maker that details several such incidents, in their attempts to entertain and educate.
I’ve already said I got the terminology wrong. But I’ll say it again. However, I think we all understand what the shot was at this point.
I know. But I still think there’s a big line between manipulating images that were actually recorded and creating images that never existed outside of a computer.
Obviously fakery doesn’t require computers. They could have taken a bunch of greenhouse plants and put them out in that forest for the shot. Or the guys recording the orca shots could have thrown one of the seals into the water with the orca in order to get a recording of a kill. These would have been manipulations of nature even though the recordings would have been genuine.
But, as I said, I see this as taking it up to another level. These are the equivalent of those dinosaur nature shows. It’s completely unconstrained by reality.