What Kind Of Cameras Does Planet Earth Use

The stunning nature docuseries sequel featuring leopards, penguins, sloths and more than will be simulcast on AMC, Sundance and BBC America.

It's been a decade since the original "Planet Earth" became a cultural event on Tv set, thanks to its stunning filmmaking and unparalleled access to the natural world. Since then, the squad has surpassed its previous efforts to capture footage for "Planet Earth Ii," thanks to innovations in engineering and good onetime-fashioned man tenacity.

Being able to observe the natural world is not equally like shooting fish in a barrel as sending out a cameraman to simply indicate and shoot. Elusive snow leopards are rare and avoid humans, soaring birds spiral up and down heights with dizzying speed, some predators are too dangerous to become near, many prey animals are too skittish to hang around humans, and some animals — such as a massive population of penguins that rule a remote island — are simply too hard to access because of the unfriendly terrain.

READ MORE: 'Planet Earth Ii' Video: Epic Iguana and Ophidian Battle Sets Internet Afire — Watch

Fortunately, "Planet Globe II" used a variety of sneaky ways to picture their animal stars. Executive producer Mike Gunton and "Islands" episode producer Elizabeth White spoke to IndieWire at the Television Critics Association press tour almost how they were able to capture the priceless footage.

ane. Camera Size Matters: "Cameras are so much smaller — y'all can now have them on a kind of handheld gimbal, yous tin can put cameras into remote boxes and exit them up a mountain," White told IndieWire. "Even filming 'Frozen Planet' five or six years ago, the size of the cameras was massive. By and large it was tied to a tripod. So with this you lot could be much more free to move and free to send a photographic camera up in a tree with a rope. It's just so much more portable."

Chinstrap penguins on "Planet Globe Two"

BBC America

two. Attack of the Drones: "In terms of remote places, the simply thing that was massively useful for 'Islands' was drones considering nosotros couldn't have taken helicopters," said White, whose most difficult challenge was capturing moving-picture show of the chinstrap penguins on Zavodovski Island, which is an uninhabited (except for all of those penguins) volcanic island in the South Atlantic.

Although White and her team ready upwards campsite on an outcropping of rock and used handheld cams to shoot penguins up close, most of the sweeping vistas showing the millions of penguins and how they jump into rocky waters had to be accomplished with drones. Having a good pilot for the drone equipped with an expensive camera was essential, merely at that place were other problems also involved with the use of drones.

READ More: 'Planet Earth 2': Listen to Hans Zimmer'due south Scenic Score

"In the fourth dimension that we've been filming, they've gone from being something quite unheard of and not especially popular to being massive," said White. "All the legislation involved in piloting circular the world is big. Then yous normally demand quite skilled pilots, people who have flown drones in that country. Some countries, not. Some countries oasis't fifty-fifty begun to recall about drones yet."

Golden eagle on "Planet World II"

BBC America

3. Extreme Eagles: Following the flight of a bird of prey like the gilded hawkeye is no piece of cake feat. The speed, the altitude and the steepness of its flying is a challenge that a regular cameraman could inappreciably replicate. "Planet Earth Ii's" solution was to care for the eagle as if it were an farthermost sports athlete and strapped a Go Pro-like photographic camera to it.

Gunton explained, "We thought, 'How can we show what it's like flying at that extraordinary stoop?' The ultimate way of doing it would exist to actually go an hawkeye to evidence you lot what it's like. Then they got an eagle and put a camera on the back of it. Obviously information technology was a trained eagle. That causes all sorts of trouble considering then people would say, 'Oh, you've used the trained bird.' In some ways, I regret that shot…just that is a genuine POV, a genuine shot of what it's like to be an hawkeye flight."

White added, "It's just nearly three shots, but …the thing I practice beloved about it is you see its head twitching, you see its eyes going."

4. Hanging Out: Although not quite as authentic, another way "Planet Earth II" mimicked an eagle's flight was with an expert hang glider. There's a twist to this approach though, which you tin detect out more about in Episode vii, "The Making of Planet Earth II."

A snow leopard, "Planet Earth Ii"

BBC America

5. It'southward a Trap! Advances in the technology of photographic camera traps, which are triggered by move, helped capture footage of very rare animals such as the snow leopard, which is endangered and lives a solitary and secretive beingness.

"It allowed us to tell that story, which was untellable without that engineering science. In some ways, it is my favorite sequence in one sense — because even the racer snakes, which I recall is i of the best greatest pieces of television receiver ever — we could all go there potentially and sit down with our binoculars and see that," said Gunton. "You could never see what happens with those snow leopards. It'southward only through that camera that y'all can do it. I remember there's something rather also kind of old-fashioned-ly magical about information technology. You leave those cameras there, in that location's no cameraman involved other than setting information technology up and then you become away. And you come back and think, 'Well, what's in here?' You accept this bill of fare out, you lot put it in the machine then recall, 'Nothing.' And then all of a sudden, every bit if by magic, over the crest comes a snow leopard."

READ More: 'Planet Earth Two' Extended Trailer: Hit Nature Docuseries Gets Gorgeous Sequel

"The crew who put those in position did such a beautiful job considering they were working with scientists who knew that certain rocks — they chosen them kind of 'pee mail' where they spray," added White. "So on those particular rocks they would rig a photographic camera so that you lot had a view that also gave you the landscape. So you could put the context in, but they would as well have a couple of others that would give the shut-ups and so on."

"The bears scratching is another example of y'all probably wouldn't be able to see. Y'all certainly couldn't get that perspective," said Gunton.

White agreed. "A cameraman upward a tree would exist distracting the bear."

Check out a clip of the bears scratching themselves on trees (set to music!) after emerging from hibernation beneath:

6. Packing Oestrus: "Planet Earth Two" focused one episode on a surprising habitat that hasn't been featured before: cities. "It felt very, very personal. It was kind of unmined territory in a sense," said White. "Y'all can't avert the fact that cities are a key habitat and that many, many, many people live in cities. So information technology felt fresh and gimmicky but it also felt like information technology was very, very relevant. It was timely.

"The leopards in Bombay were filmed using erstwhile military technology that films rut signatures," she said. "That story you wouldn't be able to do without that technology."

The leopards featured in Mumbai hunt at night, and the estrus signature engineering presents the big cats in an eerie fashion that highlights some aspects — such as the manner their muscles move and the texture of each hair — but downplays others, like their optics.

Leopard seen with heat signature in Mumbai, "Planet World II"

BBC America

Gunton added, "It was of import that the approach to motion-picture show that was to say, 'This is a habitat.' So it's cute and it's filmed with the aforementioned engineering science. The same techniques, the aforementioned grammer is used. And and then the choice of the stories is the same in that how yous choose the stories is exactly the same as y'all'd choose it in these other shows. It's another iii-dimensional jigsaw. Y'all need different types of behavior and different types of creatures: you lot need mammals, you need reptiles. You also need different types of emotion: yous want some scary stories, you want some lamentable stories, thought-provoking [stories]… So y'all've probably simply got 1 funny mammal or ane scary reptile or one idea-provoking bird. Information technology's like a matrix."

Enter the matrix when "Planet Earth II" premieres Sat, Feb. 18 at ix p.thou.,  simulcast on AMC, BBC America and Sundance.

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Source: https://www.indiewire.com/2017/02/planet-earth-2-filmmaking-amc-sundance-bbc-america-1201783604/

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