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How do they make nature/animal TV programs?

post #1 of 12
8/24/10 at 10:19pm
Thread Starter 
I was flipping through the channels and landed on NatGeo, and they were following around some King Cobras out in the jungle of India. Or so they claimed.

How do they make nature films? It can't be economically feasible to sit in the wild and wait for all these spectacular events to happen can it? How much of the footage is staged?
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post #2 of 12
8/24/10 at 10:29pm
Yes, most of it is done for real by sitting in blinds, tree stands, camo, etc and filming a lot. I certainly wouldn't say it is a good living money wise, but the folks I've known to go do that usually LOVE the work (biologists).

Depending on the type of program, I certainly would not put it past them to use lots of captive/tame/zoo footage though.
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post #3 of 12
8/24/10 at 11:02pm
No idea who they get everything perfectly framed and in focus. I mean how do you catch a preying mantis mating? I would imagine it is mostly legit and in the wild though. I went to college with the types who would work for food stamps to do it too.
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post #4 of 12
8/24/10 at 11:26pm
If you're Disney or Bear Grylls, you fake it; if you're Planet Earth or Les Stroud, you sit on your ass and wait.

lefty
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post #5 of 12
8/24/10 at 11:41pm
There is some tricky cutting to make it seem like two events are happening at the same time.
But for the really cool stuff they just wait. Check out the behind the scenes for Planet Earth. I think one guy said be filmed for something like 100 days in one tiny blind to catch a bird doing its thing. That's part of why they continue to catch new stuff, so much of it is just a matter of blind luck and being at the right place a the right time.
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post #6 of 12
8/25/10 at 2:52pm
Not true. Even some scenes in Attenborough's Blue Planet were filmed at zoos. I can't be sure about the Life Of... series, but you can be sure if Attenborough is faking it, everyone else is. Having said that, there are definitely times where they do sit for two months to get three minutes of video.
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post #7 of 12
8/25/10 at 3:03pm
The thing that got me was finding out that the sounds are almost always dubbed in. It never occurred to me that filming a cheetah from a mile away would make it hard to hear it growling...
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post #8 of 12
8/25/10 at 3:48pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Blackhood View Post
The thing that got me was finding out that the sounds are almost always dubbed in. It never occurred to me that filming a cheetah from a mile away would make it hard to hear it growling...

Yeah, the sound is added. Think about all the under water music. There was actually a piece in Blue Planet about this.
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post #9 of 12
8/25/10 at 3:52pm
However they do it I can watch all of those shows hours on end tirelessly. Really feeling River Monsters right now even tho they drag it out for an hour.
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post #10 of 12
8/25/10 at 5:46pm
River monsters is great, makes me want to avoid the Amazon.
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post #11 of 12
8/25/10 at 5:47pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by bigbris1 View Post
However they do it I can watch all of those shows hours on end tirelessly. Really feeling River Monsters right now even tho they drag it out for an hour.

Yeah I think they could pack an entire season into on show, all you need is 5 minutes of "LOOK AT THIS HUGE FUCKING SCARY FISH!!!"
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post #12 of 12
8/25/10 at 6:17pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Bhowie View Post
Yeah I think they could pack an entire season into on show, all you need is 5 minutes of "LOOK AT THIS HUGE F***ING SCARY FISH!!!"

:rofl:
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