Edmond Dantès
Dantès the White
Three of the BBC's finest flagship series, forming a trilogy of sublime nature filmmaking;
But how would you rank them? And post your favourite scenes.
The Blue Planet
Planet Earth
Frozen Planet
Soundtracks
The Blue Planet - Intro
Planet Earth - The Lions And The Oryx
Frozen Planet - Scott's Legacy
As beautiful as Planet Earth is, it marked the diminishment of the flagship series, where style started taking precedence over substance.
But how would you rank them? And post your favourite scenes.
The Blue Planet
TrailerThis definitive natural history of the world's oceans covers everything from popular shores and teeming shallows to the mysterious open depths. Two-thirds of the planet is covered by the oceans and yet they remain largely unexplored and certainly under-filmed. The TV series Blue Planet changes all that and subsequently changes our views of the deep. Advances in underwater photography have opened the doors to unknown territories never before explored.
The series took almost five years to make, involving nearly 200 filming locations. The fact that most of the ocean environment remains a mystery presented the production team with many challenges. Besides witnessing animal behaviour for the first time, the crew also observed some that were new to science. The producers were helped by marine scientists all over the world with state-of-the-art equipment.
Blue whales whose migration routes were previously unknown were located by air, after some of the animals had been given temporary radio tags. The camera team spent three years on standby, using a microlight to land on the water nearby when they finally caught up with the creatures in the Gulf of California.
The open ocean proved more difficult and over 400 days were invested in often unsuccessful filming trips. After six weeks, the crew chanced upon a school of spinner dolphins, which in turn led them to a shoal of tuna. Off Mexico, the behaviour of a flock of frigatebirds guided the cameramen to a group of sailfish and marlin: the fastest inhabitants of the sea. Near the coast of Natal in South Africa, the team spent two seasons attempting to film the annual sardine run, a huge congregation of predators such as sharks and dolphins that assembles to feast on the migrating fish by corralling them into 'bait balls'. Meanwhile, in Monterey Bay, orca were documented attacking gray whales and killing a calf.
Filming in the deep ocean required the use of special submersibles. One of them enabled the crew to dive over a mile into the San Diego trench, where the carcass of a 40-ton gray whale had been placed to attract a large variety of scavengers.
Upon its first transmission on BBC One, over 12 million people watched the series and it regularly achieved an audience share of over 30%.
Planet Earth
TrailerThe makers of The Blue Planet present the epic story of life on Earth. Narrated by David Attenborough, Five years in production, over 2000 days in the field, using 40 cameramen filming across 200 locations, this is the ultimate portrait of our planet.
A stunning television experience that combines rare action, unimaginable scale, impossible locations and intimate moments with our planet's best-loved, wildest and most elusive creatures. From the highest mountains to the deepest rivers, this blockbuster series takes you on an unforgettable journey through the challenging seasons and the daily struggle for survival in Earth's most extreme habitats. Using a budget of unprecedented proportions, photography and unique, specially developed filming techniques, Planet Earth takes you to places you have never seen before, to experience sights and sounds you may never experience again.
Production began in 2002 and was completed in autumn 2006, shortly before the final six episodes went to air. The first year after commissioning was spent on researching and planning the shoots. To capture all the footage required by the producers, 71 camera operators filmed in 204 locations in 62 countries on all seven continents, spending more than 2000 days in the field.
The decision to film Planet Earth in high definition (HD) was initially regarded by the BBC as a risk. In 2002, the technology was still largely untested in the field, and Fothergill was concerned about the difficulties of adapting to the new cameras. Despite the reservations, the HD cameras proved to be reliable and even out-performed traditional film cameras in certain situations. Their high sensitivity allowed the team to film at lower light levels than film cameras, in dark rainforests for example. Because tape stock is smaller, lighter, and cheaper than film, the lengths of shoots were limited primarily by the capacity of batteries. This improved the chances of capturing interesting behaviour, and enabled longer aerial shoots.
Panasonic VariCam HD cameras were used for land-based footage and Sony HD cameras for aerial sequences. The latter, a distinctive feature of Planet Earth, were shot using a technique borrowed from Hollywood action films. Michael Kelem, the aerial cameraman, had previously worked on Mission: Impossible III and Black Hawk Down. The camera was mounted in a device called a Cineflex (Heligimbal), a gyroscopically-stabilised housing attached to the underside of a helicopter and controlled by joystick from inside the cockpit. The unit was lightweight, enabling lenses with a longer reach to be attached (up to 40x magnification). This enabled him to capture steady images of individual creatures from a height which prevented the noise of the helicopter from disturbing them.
The episodes are each an hour in length, comprising the main programme and a 10-minute featurette called Planet Earth Diaries which details the filming of a particular event. In the UK, Planet Earth was split into two parts, broadcast in spring and autumn 2006. The first five episodes premiered on BBC One at 9:00pm on Sundays, beginning on 5 March 2006. The programmes were repeated the following Saturday in an early evening slot on BBC Two. Along with its 2005 dramatisation of Bleak House, the BBC selected Planet Earth for its trial of high-definition broadcasts. The opening episode was its first-ever scheduled programme in the format, shown 27 May 2006 on the BBC HD channel.
Frozen Planet
TrailerNarrated by Sir David Attenborough and from the award-winning team behind Planet Earth & Blue Planet comes the ultimate portrait of the earth's Polar regions.
The Arctic and Antarctic remain the greatest wildernesses on Earth. The scale and beauty of the scenery and the sheer power of the elements the weather, the ocean and the ice is unmatched anywhere else on our planet. Yet these harsh environments are teeming with life: home to iconic animals from polar bears to emperor penguins and from killer whales to wandering albatrosses.
Using the latest camera technology to film on land, from the air, underwater and below the ice caps, Frozen Planet follows their fascinating lives throughout the seasons as they struggle to survive. With spectacular polar landscapes and amazing animal behaviour, often filmed for the first time, it captures the drama of an extreme natural world.
With both Poles under grave threat from climate change, this extraordinary series may be the last chance to witness these great wildernesses before they change forever.
Filming finished in 2010 and focused on the challenges facing polar bears and arctic wolves in the north and adelie penguins and wandering albatrosses in the south, although many other storylines are developed. After an introductory episode, the subsequent four episodes depict the changing seasons at the poles, before an episode focusing on mankinds activities there.
The final episode, "On Thin Ice", examines how global warming is affecting the polar regions. Filmmakers worked in new locations, including Antarcticas active volcanoes and the Russian Arctic. Sequences captured include migrating eider ducks, footage of a fur seal colony from the air, and pack hunting of seals by orca. The aerial photography used the Cineflex and Gyron cameras pioneered on Planet Earth, which enable steady footage to be captured from long-range without disturbing the animals.
From late April to early May 2009, BBC crews were in Hay River, Northwest Territories, Canada filming the annual breakup of the river of the same name, which flows into Great Slave Lake.
The BBC was accused of staging after it was reported that one scene of a polar bear giving birth was filmed in a Dutch (initially reported as German) animal park. The BBC defended the shots, explaining that it would have been impossible to film the event in the wild without endangering the cubs, that the commentary was careful not to mislead the audience, and that the Frozen Planet website had already explained how the scene was captured before the story appeared in the media.
Frozen Planet was broadcast on BBC One and BBC One HD starting 26 October 2011. Each of the first six episodes comprises the main programme followed by a 10-minute featurette called Freeze Frame, which shows how some of the sequences were filmed. David Attenborough's principal role is to narrate the programmes, but he appears briefly on camera to give an introduction and a closing statement. For the seventh programme, "On Thin Ice", he serves as writer and presenter for what was billed by the BBC as a personal statement on the effects of climate change at the poles. A special programme called "Frozen Planet: The Epic Journey" featuring re-edited highlights from the series was broadcast on BBC One on 28 December 2011.
Soundtracks
The Blue Planet - Intro
Planet Earth - The Lions And The Oryx
Frozen Planet - Scott's Legacy
As beautiful as Planet Earth is, it marked the diminishment of the flagship series, where style started taking precedence over substance.
