subzero9285
Banned
Introduction
Trailer
Official website
BBC Wildlife Finder
*Examples of his music: Here
Episode synopses
1. Challenges Of Life
The first and most important lesson that all creatures learn in life is how to get enough food.
Of all of Life's filming locations, working in Antarctica was the most challenging and only through collaboration could the team hope to achieve their goals.
One team was diving under the ice of the Ross Sea; another camped out in a chinstrap penguin colony; and a third ventured down to the Antarctic Peninsula in search of the two top predators.
Cameraman Doug Allan set out on the Golden Fleece but got stuck in the ice. They wanted to film leopard seals hunting chinstrap penguin chicks something that only happens for ten days each year.
Filming killer whales hunting crabeater seals proved even more difficult. To help them find the whales in the vastness of the Antarctic Peninsula, series producer Martha Holmes and the crew of HMS Endurance set out in the ship's helicopters. Eventually, the teams managed to film the whales as they hunted something never filmed before in this, the most extreme continent on earth.
2. Reptiles And Amphibians
Reptiles and amphibians might appear to be hang-overs from the past, struggling to cope in today's natural world. But Life reveals how they overcome their shortcomings through extraordinary tricks and strategies to be a global success.
No-one has ever followed or filmed a Komodo dragon hunting a water buffalo this was the challenge for cameraman Kevin Flay.
At one waterhole, and after a long wait, he managed to film a dragon biting a buffalo. He followed the buffalo constantly over the next three weeks as it was trailed by up to seven dragons. This meant staying close to the dragons, which was potentially a very dangerous position.
The tracking process was emotionally difficult as Kevin couldn't help but feel for the buffalo, weakening daily from the venomous bite. Yet he was also impressed by the power and charisma of the dragons.
Finally, the buffalo died and he filmed ten big dragons reduce it to bones in just four hours.
3. Mammals
Mammals dominate our planet and can be found in every habitat, except the very deepest ocean. Their success lies in more than just the unique physical traits of fat, fur, and warm blood. What makes the mammals stand out is the care they lavish on their young.
For the first time Life has succeeded in filming a complete sequence of the colossal humpback whale courtship battle known as the 'heat run'.
It was filmed from the air, surface and underwater to give the full picture. This was a dangerous assignment for underwater cameraman Roger Munns. A team of free-divers placed themselves in position to film a fast moving train of fighting whales, each weighing up to 40 tonnes.
For the first three weeks all they found was an inquisitive and playful calf. When the heat run began, Roger placed himself in a precarious position to capture the action. Holding his breath deep underwater, he filmed seven male whales as they battled for position behind a female.
Roger was confronted by the most remarkable underwater experience of his life as the males charged past. It was like "standing in a stream of traffic", he said.
4. Fish
Fish are the most varied and diverse backboned creatures on the planet. To date, 28,000 species of fish have been discovered.
Sail fish are cameraman Rick Rosenthal's life passion so he jumped at the opportunity to film them off the coast of Mexico.
They were lucky to hit a bumper year and, with over 30 sail fish in the water at once, the action was extraordinary. For the very first time using a hi-speed camera in an underwater housing, the team were able to film unique footage of these top predators.
Meanwhile, in Tobago another crew led by Doug Anderson were after flying fish.
When flying fish start spawning they do so on a huge scale and anything and everything becomes a target for their eggs including cameramen and assistants! Eventually the team were forced to abandon the area as the numbers of flying fish were so huge that they risked sinking the boat by laying such a weight of eggs on it.
Undeterred, the crew spent the remainder of the trip filming hi-speed images of the fish doing what they do best flying with astonishing results!
5. Birds
From the equator to the poles, birds have found the most ingenious ways to overcome the many challenges of life. Everything revolves around their unique attribute feathers.
The very last filming trip for the Birds episode for Life was perhaps the most challenging for cameraman Barrie Britton and assistant producer Stephen Lyle.
Their aim was not only to film the male Vogelkop bowerbird weaving and decorating his extraordinary bower, but to also capture his courtship behaviour and the mating ritual itself an event which has never been filmed before.
To do this Barrie, Stephen and their field assistants spent a month camped deep in the forests of West Papua. Though there were many bowers to choose from, picking the right one to film was always going to be a gamble.
Day in, day out, Barrie returned to his trusty hide and, after several weeks of concerted effort, his patience was wearing thin. Though he had managed to film some wonderful bower construction and decoration, the actual courtship event still eluded him.
It wasn't until the last few days of the shoot that Barrie was able to capture this extraordinary piece of behaviour. It only lasted a matter of seconds, but it was well worth the wait!
6. Insects
There are more kinds of insects than all other animals put together. There are thought to be 200 million individual insects for every one of us.
The team wanted to "fly" a camera through thousands of monarch butterflies during their mass hibernation in the Mexican forests. First, they worked at a special place where the butterflies come to the ground each day to drink from a small stream.
Climbers Tim Fogg and Jim Spickler took three days to rig a very complicated spider's web of cables among the trees, all to support the central one which was the runway for the camera. The result was a unique series of camera shots flying alongside butterflies.
Then they rigged the whole system at 50 metres up in the trees, in order to fly the camera close past vast roosts of butterflies hanging from the branches. This was a much more demanding and delicate job as the roosts disperse at the slightest disturbance.
7. Hunters And Hunted
The ability to learn from past experiences and so develop novel solutions to problems has allowed mammals to flourish in the harshest environments. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the life and death struggles between the hunters and hunted.
Cameraman Mike Pitts and producer Adam Chapman travelled to the Falkland Islands on a tip-off that a pod of orca had learnt how to hunt naive elephant seal pups when they first venture into the water.
Despite over-inquisitive seal pups, bad underwater visibility and South Atlantic storms, the crew managed to film a unique hunting strategy and discovered in the process that it is actually only one female in the pod that dares to edge into the small pool where the seals first swim.
8. Creatures Of The Deep
Marine invertebrates are extraordinarily diverse, outnumbering fish by ten to one. They range from some of the most primitive creatures in the sea to some of the most intelligent.
The Life team travelled to the freezing waters of the Antarctic to film the slow motion world of the creatures living under the ice.
First they drilled a huge hole in the ice to feed all the equipment through. It took more than 150 dives to gradually construct and operate a tracking time lapse rig.
And, finally, they could film the behaviour of starfish, sea urchins and giant worms swarming over a dead seal pup, speeded up 500 times.
The Life team also discovered creating their very own ship wreck in the Bahamas was much more difficult than they imagined but in the end the boat sank perfectly, settling upright on the bottom. The team returned several times during the next two years to watch nature take a hold on the rusting hulk
9. Plants
Plants have successfully managed to conquer every habitat on the planet by using ingenious and cunning strategies. Through the use of time-lapse photography, Plants reveals how plants battle for life and face the challenges of their habitats.
The team were trying to achieve a shot that had never been attempted before the entire growing season in a woodland filmed in one shot. It would bring together elements of time lapse photography, in the both the field and the studio, computer graphics and a lot of hard work and patience.
Set in a secret location on Dartmoor, the team carried numerous wheelbarrow loads of kit the 1.5 miles to the site and took two days to build the track.
With a bicycle wheel, a piece of string, a ladder and a stills camera, the team finally managed to get the base shot.
Then the track had to be rebuilt in the studio to exactly the same length and angle and the forest had to be reconstructed around it in blue screen by time lapse cameraman Tim Sheppherd.
It took over a year to be fully completed, from a five-week track to film the foxgloves opening, getting spiders to spin webs, and even a high-speed camera shoot to get the water droplet falling at the end of the sequence.
Then it was over to Mick Connaire, the graphic designer, to bring it all together.
10. Primates
Intelligence and adaptability allow primates to tackle the many challenges of life, and this is what makes our closest relatives so successful. This resourcefulness has enabled primates to conquer an incredible diversity of habitat.
As the majority of primates live in tropical forest and spend a lot of time up in the trees or concealed behind leaves filming them is a tough challenge.
The Life team had to use all their primate intelligence, forward-thinking, field craft and hand-eye co-ordination to succeed.
Camerawoman Justine Evans, primatologist Tatyana Humle and their field assistants filmed chimpanzees using tools in the forests of Guinea, West Africa. It took a month of intense effort for Justine to capture some unforgettable behaviour, and earn the trust of our closest living relatives.
Starts this Monday on BBC One at 9:00 pm, non-UK viewers will probably get the Blu-Ray box set before Christmas. You won't have to wait a year, which is what happened with the Planet Earth release.
