The Filmmaking Magic Behind the Making of Netflix’s Life on Our Planet

This article is introduced by

“Such a bizarre behavior that I’ve obtained into as we speak,” says Dan Tapster, the showrunner for Life on Our Planet. “I’ll say, ‘Yeah, we had been there to movie mammoths. Yeah, individuals, we’re right here to movie a T-Rex.’”

And but, there isn’t actually a greater method to describe what the group of Life on Our Planet needed to do for years to create the footage that makes up the documentary sequence. Of course, being CGI VFX, the prehistoric stars of the sequence are a great deal extra compliant than the celebrities of your common nature documentary. But it additionally required rather more planning.

“More so than with our regular sequence, there was much more pre-production,” says Sophie Lanfear, the producer-director and author of episodes three and eight. “This had an prolonged part of analysis and improvement earlier than we even went into the sphere and shot stuff. There was a lot to get our heads round. Where do you even begin with primarily 500 million years of complicated life?”

Toy Story

First, the makers of the present wanted to speak with scientists and decide how these animals would behave. “We work with Tom Fletcher, our resident paleontologist, on what the characters will appear like and the way they interacted,” says Jamie McPherson, director of pictures for the sequence.

From there, the subsequent step is “taking part in with dinosaur toys and Lego.” No, actually.

“We use the method we name preschool pre-vis, or plastic pre-vis, which was utilizing plastic dinosaur toys to play it out and movie it with my telephone and make little Lego monitoring automobiles,” McPherson says.

The entire scene is created in that course of after which used to make storyboards and to indicate ILM, Netflix, and anybody else concerned within the manufacturing.

“It’s form of the place to begin that lets us see the creatures in house—and can be an excuse to purchase 50 prehistoric plastic animals,” McPherson tells us. 

But toys will solely take you thus far, and central to the making of Life on Our Planet was using actual filming in actual areas.

“It makes the VFX really feel rather more actual in my opinion,” says Lanfear. “Of course, we might have had the backgrounds be CGI in addition to the animals however by selecting to movie actual areas, the scenes grew to become in some way extra plausible—I assume as a result of they’re grounded in actuality. This additionally helped make our VFX scenes mix in rather well with our modern-day pure historical past ones.”

In discovering these areas to movie, scientific veracity was the watchword. But generally, the seek for that veracity took the group to shocking locations. For occasion, an early episode options the tree fern forests the place Arthropleura, the large millipede, lived.

“We talked to the scientists, and for every scene they had been like, ‘Here are the vegetation you need to use, listed here are the vegetation you’ll be able to’t use,’ after which we discovered this nice tree fern nursery in Ireland,” says Tapster.

“This man’s backyard in Ireland, principally, the place he has among the largest tree ferns exterior of Tasmania, and I believe New Zealand,” provides McPherson. “There’s a microclimate that this stuff can develop in. They’re over head top, the dimensions of timber, these ferns. It’s wonderful.”

While scientific veracity was all the time the precedence, different extra prosaic issues additionally got here into play.

“The act of getting the shot you wanted additionally had a job within the location alternative. We use Surrey in SE England for a part of the T-Rex scene partially as a result of the vegetation was right, however, crucially, it had a parking lot which allow us to drive the camera-car round at T-Rex speeds with no wobble,” Tapster factors out.

Setting the Scene

But in case you are telling the story of your entire historical past of life on Earth, there are occasions when you will want to transcend Surrey. For occasion, to indicate the volcanic eruptions that drew a curtain on the Permian age, a crew wanted to truly camp within the environs of the erupting Icelandic volcano in 2021.

“The basalt that erupts from it, it’s very gentle, like meringue, but it surely’s actually sharp meringue. So, when the wind blows, all of the sharp bits of grain simply get in your eyes and face. Then there’s that black mud,” remembers Lanfear. “There’s a great image of Jamie and Ben Hardman, who’s an incredible drone operator, they usually appear like chimney sweeps.”

Strangely sufficient, none of them appear to thoughts.

“I used to be in my ingredient; the extra distant it may be, the higher!” Lanfear says. “We obtained particular permission to camp [near the volcano]. At the time, it was among the latest earth on the planet.”

“That’s such an incredible place to be,” McPherson agrees. “Camping close to volcanoes may be very thrilling, a boyhood dream. So yeah, that didn’t appear arduous on the time since you are in some of the wonderful landscapes on earth and attending to see these volcanoes go off, which is unimaginable.”

However, the act of attending to the volcano on the proper time was a bit extra of a problem.

“Volcanoes nearly didn’t occur for us,” Tapster says. “We waited for 4 years for an eruption as a result of we made Life on Our Planet throughout a weirdly quiet time for volcanoes. We nearly thought we had been going to have to make use of FX or library footage. Then all of the sudden Iceland erupted and stored erupting for weeks. Then, three months later, La Palma erupted and we had been spoiled for alternative!”

Fortunately, drone specialist Hardman was already on the positioning in Iceland, and Tapster credit him with shaping a variety of the fashion of the sequence together with his aerial photographs of apocalyptic wildernesses.

“He obtained entry to the volcano and was there inside about six hours of it erupting. So, he was one of many very first those that obtained there. And he despatched us again some wonderful footage,” Tapster says.

Because the eruption lasted for so long as it did, McPherson was additionally in a position to get to the positioning and shoot some footage of his personal alongside some woolly mammoth scenes he was there to movie. Filming volcanoes to face in for prehistoric landscapes, nonetheless, brings its personal challenges.

“If the lava began heading in direction of a grass-filled space, we are able to’t present that as a result of it’s for a scene based mostly throughout the Permian Era, and grass hasn’t developed,” Tapster says.

Grass was a typical drawback, provided that it solely developed a comparatively current 55 million years in the past.

“Grass was the bane of our lives. We had been selecting grass out of seashores with tweezers,” Tapster remembers.McPherson agrees: “There was a variety of gardening.”

Shooting Invisible Stars

For many of the prehistoric sections of Life on Our Planet, these areas are backdrops for CGI stars. But that didn’t make the act of filming them any much less concerned.

“You should work out the place the [creature is] going to come back from and the way the scene performs out in that house,” McPherson says. “But we movie them dynamically as if thereis a creature there.”

McPherson’s dynamic filming fashion proved integral to creating Life on Our Planet really feel like a nature documentary displaying residing creatures. “Jamie is likely one of the main digital camera operators in pure historical past filmmaking. His fashion has been some of the revolutionary types, I believe, in all probability since Planet Earth,” Lanfear tells us.

“We are attempting to shoot it like a high-end pure historical past sequence,” McPherson says. “We’re shifting, utilizing monitoring automobile work very often to make all of it come to life. It’s a really thrilling course of.”

But the place most nature photographers have animals to movie, McPherson didn’t even get pleasure from a cardboard cut-out when taking pictures the prehistoric scenes, in case it gave away what they had been filming.

“Often, it was a simply large follow markers for the place the highest of [the creature’s] head was and the place its eyes had been, in order that we might body it,” McPherson says. “Then you’re taking that out, and now we have individuals run by way of the body performing the scene out in varied embarrassing methods.”

He provides: “I all the time filmed them working, so we’ve obtained bloopers.”

Sometimes, nonetheless, there isn’t even a stick on set.

“For essentially the most half when taking pictures VFX, we are actually filming nothing, which is a really, very odd expertise,” Tapster says. “But what Jamie is admittedly good at goes to a location and understanding what we’re attempting to get in intricate element. Then he appears on the panorama and has this inherent understanding of animal conduct. He’d say, ‘That animal goes to come back out of there in that route, and this animal goes to do that barely in a different way to how we deliberate, however trying on the panorama, that’s how it might work.’ And then we’d go filming.”

McPherson, nonetheless, is grateful to be taking pictures topics who’re so cooperative, even when they’re imaginary.

“It’s discovering the best-case situation,” he says. “If you had an actual tiger or bear popping out of the woods, the place would we wish to come from with the lighting to make it essentially the most wonderful shot attainable?”

Live Action

Life on Our Planet is a narrative that stretches from the earliest microbes to the trendy day and options some animals, similar to sharks and, notably, dragonflies, which have been round since earlier than the dinosaurs. For these creatures, CGI wouldn’t do, however even right here, the filmmakers had been in search of one thing totally different from a typical nature documentary.

“We had been going to shoot what we had written in our scripts. So, in that respect, it was simpler than another pure historical past sequence as a result of we knew precisely what we would have liked to shoot,” says Lanfear. “It meant we might concentrate on the fashion of the sequence and the visible spectacle of it.”

In taking pictures these animals, Life on Our Planet’s movie crews achieved spectacular footage. The Komodo dragon footage, for instance, attracts a direct line from the current day to prehistoric jungles but additionally reveals us issues we’ve by no means seen earlier than.

“There was a time within the Triassic the place that is what the world seemed like, dominated by big reptiles,” Tapster says. “But we discovered an amazing little bit of the story, which is, ‘If you might be residing in a world of big reptiles, what the hell do you do once you’re little, a child, a hatchling?’”

McPherson captured lovely footage of hatchling Komodo dragons restricted to the timber whereas the dominant adults roamed beneath, in addition to an epic and dramatic looking scene.

“We had this new system with a buggy you can push round to comply with the dragons to movie them shifting by way of the forest,” McPherson explains.

Ultimately, the filming of the large reptiles was disrupted by occasions that felt each bit as dramatic because the world-changing phenomena the sequence paperwork.

“We had been in Indonesia when the [Covid] lockdown occurred, and so we solely had 10 days on location,” McPherson remembers. “So, we had been very fortunate that in these 10 days, we obtained some footage the likes of which has by no means been seen earlier than.”

“When we went into lockdown, Dan and Fiona [Marsh, production manager] had been like, ‘If we don’t get you house, we don’t know that you simply’ll even be capable of get house,’” Lanfear tells us. “Imagine in the event that they had been stranded in Komodo for six months!”

As effectively because the Komodo dragon shoot, Covid additionally disrupted the crew taking pictures snow leopards in Nepal.

“That was so distant,” Tapster says. “They might solely get comms as soon as per week by enterprise a seven-hour spherical journey to the closest village. And so, that they had this bizarre expertise of the expansion of Covid.”

This group additionally captured some of the dramatic and sudden scenes of your entire sequence.

“Twenty years in the past, I labored on a sequence about mammals and snow leopards had been the Holy Grail; they had been nearly inconceivable to movie. But extra not too long ago, there’s this one location the place that they had turn into slightly bit extra dependable,” Tapster explains. “But nonetheless not that dependable, which is why the shoot was so lengthy. The group was mountaineering across the Himalayas for seven weeks, however finally, they labored out the place the household of mum and cubs lived and the place that very outdated male was looking.”

One day, they noticed the male up a mountain, looking an ibex, and really shortly arrange the digital camera and tripod.Tapster recounts: “They flip the digital camera on, and 5 seconds after turning it on, he did the dash, jumped to the ibex, missed it, and fell down the cliff.”

Sadly, each snow leopard and ibex fell and died within the wrestle.

“For the group, it was an actual bittersweet second as a result of that they had been monitoring this man for six weeks,” Tapster says. “But that was the conduct we had been attempting to get. He had turn into domestically identified for leaping at these mountain goats and rolling down the cliff with them. Yet this time, he simply obtained the timing flawed.”

Less tragic however equally beautiful is the unimaginable footage that Life on Our Planet has achieved swimming alongside humpback whales due to the most recent stabilized digital camera techniques. “Back within the day, these techniques had been used for helicopter filming. There are these enormous gimbals that permit you to stabilize a really lengthy 1,500-millimeter lens,” he says. 

“You can shake the digital camera, and it simply appears prefer it’s on rails. It doesn’t transfer in any respect.”

McPherson’s innovation was to transplant that form of mounting onto different automobiles, from four-by-fours to snowmobiles to the buggy that filmed the Komodo dragons. 

“Jamie revolutionized the best way wherein pure historical past is shot with using digital camera stabilized techniques,” Tapster says.

But the whale shoot marked the primary time the method was used underwater.

“It’s principally an underwater digital camera gimbal that you simply remotely function on the floor,” explains McPherson.

That brings its personal challenges.

“It causes a lot drag as quickly as you set it underwater and speed up the boat,” says Tapster. “It needed to be actually over-engineered to deal with the forces it was below. That took a variety of trial and numerous error, however finally, they obtained a system that labored.”

Life on Our Planet has finished the inconceivable, bringing long-extinct creatures again to life, but it surely additionally offers us completely contemporary views on the animals with us as we speak.

As Tapster says: “The objective for Life on Our Planet was to not solely movie our topics in as dramatic manner as attainable, however to additionally use that lens to provide our planet ‘context’—to let individuals actually perceive our planet and its animals like by no means earlier than… and I for one suppose that that’s mission achieved.”

Life On Our Planet is out now on Netflix.

The put up The Filmmaking Magic Behind the Making of Netflix’s Life on Our Planet appeared first on Den of Geek.