Netflix’s Our Planet filmmakers on their new wildlife series
Netflix’s new original documentary series Our Planet is the next thing I recommend you binge-watch. The eight-episode series is filled with heart-pounding scenes, beautiful scenic shots of nature and hilarious wildlife sequences. It showcases the beauty of our planet while also hinting at how much we need to help make a change.
The series is well done, and packs a powerful punch, with due praise to Oscar-winner Steven Price for the emotional cinematic score. The narration by Sir David Attenborough simply seals this as a must-watch doc.
Series producer Keith Scholey and Adam Chapman, producer and director of two episodes, were in Toronto for the premiere of Our Planet. I chatted with them about filming this series, capturing the stunning sequences and more. ~Marriska Fernandes
How long did it take to film this?
Keith: It was a four-year project over 50 countries. Year one is largely research and planning. In natural history, if you haven’t really worked it out when you arrive in this far-off land, and you’re not there in exactly the right moment, things can get very badly wrong. The animal might not show up or the weather’s bad. Then it’s two years of flat-out filming — we sent teams all over the world. Then it was a year of post-production editing.
How did the conversation begin to create such a thought-provoking series?
Keith: Alastair [Fothergill] and I jointly started Silverback Films. We’ve made series like Planet Earth, Frozen Planet, etc. We were at the BBC at that time. We felt we had to make another big program. We felt the success of those series before had not really moved the dial in terms of changing people’s opinion towards conservation. We reached millions of people. But had they really changed? So we thought we had to give it a shot with things getting so alarmingly out of control with nature. We thought we had to create a landmark that somehow could help move the change. That was the inspiration.
The collapsing glaciers made for a wild and captivating scene — can you talk about your experience filming that?
Adam: With the glaciers, it was one of the most astonishing natural events. Watching it from a helicopter was absolutely astounding. We were focused on getting the shot, so we just sat back and looked at it and what was around, and were just blown away by it. The drive to capture that one-off event was… (laughs) we were pretty focused. Unfortunately, the helicopter was delayed so we were down to 10 days or so. It came down to the last day, pretty much the last 20 minutes of the last day. That feeling in the helicopter was one of concentration and getting it right and after that it was a huge relief that we had achieved our goal, but also terrible sadness at what this event represents.
Which was the most unforgettable sequence you captured?
Keith: There are many, many sequences that we captured and each episode is different. In the jungle episode, there’s a wonderful sequence of a little bird of paradise, which does the most complex dance routine in nature. He does it all on his own. He does six moves absolutely right and the moves are crazy.
The interesting thing is it hasn’t been filmed before and the scientist didn’t quite know what this whole dance was about because they haven’t been able to see it from the point of view of a female. The female sits on a branch right above him. So we put a remote camera over her shoulder and it suddenly revealed what the whole climax of the dance was about — he does this incredible flash of color, which you can’t actually see unless you’re looking straight down. You then go, “Aha! That’s what it’s about.”
Adam, when you’re directing wildlife, you don’t have much control over the subject or the environment. So how challenging was that for you?
Yeah, obviously with wildlife you are reliant on what it does in front of you is what you can get. It’s knowing when to take a risk on a sequence. They’re all difficult. They’re all expensive. To a certain degree you rely on the serendipity of the moment and the skill of the team around you to capture what is going on. What always amazes me is how there’s always things that surprise us. There’s always these moments we never expected. That’s what makes it so fulfilling and so rewarding.
What was the most surprising thing for you?
Adam: For me, in the “From Deserts to Grasslands” episode in Oman there’s an Arabian leopard, which is unbelievably rare. There’s only 200 in the world. You cannot film it using an ordinary system of a cameraman with a long lens. They’re too rare and cover a long range. So the only way to film it was to put in remote camera traps and we ended up leaving eight camera traps in the fields for two-and-a-half years and we were working with an Omani scientist and a chap called Dave Willis who spent a lot of time trying to capture these sorts of images.
We received a hard drive from him with a note written on it saying: “You might be interested in this.” This was after a year of cameras being out there. On one of these cameras framed in the most perfect way in a spectacular backdrop of the rising sun in the most beautiful light was a male and female Arabian leopard, who come into shot and mate, and then go their separate ways. It’s this wonderful moment in the film when you realize, because they’re so rare, that that moment could be the future of this population. It was an absolutely baffling moment.
Keith: They could have come together in a billion other places and they chose that spot right in front of the camera.
One of my favorite aspects was the cinematic score. Can you talk about that?
Keith: We were blessed by Steven Price giving us his time. He got the Oscar for Gravity and he’s done many big movies. He did a series for us for the BBC four years ago. We said, “Steve we really, really want you to do this series.” We know he’s a genius but it’s a lot of work because you have to do eight episodes and he’s got only six weeks for each episode. But every time his score came back, he just elevated the film to another level. It’s the magic of David’s voice. David is on form. That’s the voice of a 92-year-old. The combination makes it emotional and gets to you. We’re blessed by having a genius.
Adam: [Steve is] an astonishing man to work with. The process of working with composers is fascinating. You take the film to Steven’s studio and you watch the film, and each sequence you stop and you discuss the emotion and the way you feel the music should be and what should dominate. His ability to translate a description into this extraordinary emotional response and to hold your hand in the key moments and drive the emotion forward is astonishing.
What message would you like to drive home with this documentary?
Keith: The world still has wonderful things. That’s the first thing. But, if we don’t do anything about it, we will lose all those things. The loss is inevitable. We know absolutely how we don’t have to do that. We are at a point of choice. All of us are living on this planet in the most crucial 20 years of life on Earth’s existence and it’s up to all of us to pull it through.
How has Netflix as a platform helped you make this series?
Keith: When we first met Netflix, Lisa, the exec who runs everything, said, “We are very light touch editorially.” That’s the truth. They get filmmakers and they say, “You make what you want to make.” That is rare in our industry these days. First crucial thing is they let us make what we wanted to make. Also, they’re incredibly supportive all the way. But then the platform, we can instantly reach 140 million subscribers all over the world. Another crucial thing is that it’s there all the time. If you have normal telly, you watch it and it’s gone. Netflix is always there. We also have this wonderful online site ourplanet.com and you get far more detail and understanding, taking you back and forth from the series. So for a method of putting this story across, it’s quite unique and immensely exciting and we couldn’t have done it without the Netflix set up.
And it’s reaching a difference audience as well.
Keith: Yes, that’s right! That’s the very exciting thing. We talked about the audience. I’ve done all my work for the BBC, but BBC audience for natural history is predominantly old and the Netflix audience is predominantly young. Young people want to change the world. They want a better world, so it’s great to be in that space.
Can you talk about collaborating with Sir David Attenborough?
Keith: My first job in television was working on a David Attenborough series back in 1980-something, so I’d known David my whole career. The same with Alastair. He’s a friend. So we knew David is in the same space as we are in wanting to do things. He’s always quite funny. When we started, he was like, “If I’m still here, count me in.” (laughs) His big part is doing the narration. For me personally, the big part is when you have the privilege of having David narrating on a series, you want to make sure the program is good. And that is a real motivator. Because if it’s really bad, you have David turn up and (Keith cringes) and you really don’t want to have that (laughs). He inspires us and of course, what he delivers no one can do that.
Our Planet premieres globally on Netflix on April 5, 2019.
Originally published on Tribute.ca
