Apple TV’s Earth At Night In Colour

 written for VMI

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Apple TV’s nature docuseries explored life after dark in ways not previously possible using new camera technology and the expertise of cinematographer Mark Payne-Gill.

Over a 30-year career MPG (as he is known) has gained a reputation as one of the world’s leading wildlife and lighting camerapersons with credits including Planet Earth (BBC NHU/Discovery Channel); Frozen Planet (BBC NHU/Discovery); long running BBC show The Sky at Night and six series of Stargazing Live (BBC Two).

His experience and interest in shooting natural history and astronomy made MPG the perfect candidate to be the technical lead for Offspring Films’ ambitious concept to film an entire series at night, under just moonlight conditions.

Mark Payne Gill using Canon ME20fsh super low light camera with Astrograph lens

“I love the idea of pushing boundaries and no one had attempted to shoot a whole episode let alone a series at night using just the moon as the lighting source.”

The default for night shoots is to use infrared light but this would counter the series’ unique selling point of being in colour. An alternative is to flood the night scene with generator-lit lamps which have a detrimental effect on the natural behaviour of the wildlife subjects.

“However, new ultra low light sensitive cameras had just come to market which I thought could be used to capture incredible night scenes in real-time,” Payne-Gill says.

These included the Canon ME20F-SH full-frame Full HD camera and the Sony α7S II.

“The main problem was how to shoot in the dark with long lenses. Fact is, you can’t use conventional daytime lenses which are too slow for moonlight. Tests showed we would need at least as fast as T2.8 which is at the limit under full moon conditions. If we could use a T2.0 that was better since it meant we could shoot either side of the full moon and using a T1.4 / 1.5 we could shoot five days either side as the moon waxes and wanes yet still has enough light to illuminate a scene.”

From his astronomy work MPG knew that astrograph lenses would offer the speed but, being designed to operate as telescopes, would they work with regular cameras?

“I needed to squeeze as much out of each lens as we could. I sourced a T2.8 400mm and a T3 600mm which had that crucial bit of extra reach in the dark. The downside was the sheer bulk of these lenses. Attached to small camera bodies they are like buckets. A T3 900m lens weighs over 20kg and since we’d need to travel on foot for large parts of the location work that was a non-starter.”

Weighing up the weight to light gathering capacity, MPG settled on an Officina Stellare (RH Veloce) 600mm T3 lens. He then tested both cameras with the lenses recording an owl in a studio to replicate moonlight conditions.

For reference, he also tested a Panasonic VariCam LT with dual ISO, a Canon C700 also with dual ISO, an ARRI Amira and RED Gemini.

“We invested a lot of time in the grade to do the whole test justice and the grade highlighted where the images stood out and where they started to fall apart.

“The α7S had too many artefacts in the image when you cropped in. When freeze framed the texture of the feathers was pixelated and had a red amp glow in the corner of the frame (an artefact that all extreme low light cameras seem to suffer from and caused when the sensor heats up). That could cause issues in post.”

He continues, “The resolution of the ME20 images held up really well. You could see detail of the feather texture with no breakdown of images at the edge. I also liked the noise structure. It was more filmic whereas the α7S had a clinical video look which was not as pleasing to the eye.”

On location for the series MPG took with him the 600mm astrograph and a set of Sigma PL Super Speed Primes. Both the ME20 and the Sigma set were supplied by VMI.

“The kit was hired from VMI by Offspring but I knew Barry from the time we’d tested the Phantom VEO. I knew he and the VMI team would deliver everything we needed.”

Payne-Gill also took a RED Gemini for shooting evening into night time. Not only does this camera have decent light sensitivity but it enables onboard RAW recording negating the need for an external recorder (which after all, the cameraperson is going to have to carry).

OffSpring made 12 half episodes over two seasons for which Payne-Gill was lead technical expert and the main lighting cameraperson on four of the episodes.

“The shoot had so many variables and a real challenge because of the tight turnaround. Cloud and bad weather can limit the ten day window of filming because of course when the moon disappears we have no light source. Also where we are on the planet had a bearing. The latitude of a crew position on earth in relation to the moon elevation can vary wildly. You can be at the equator and have the moon overhead all the time but in Finland in October the moon never gets that high so you’re illumination is diminished. And that can mean your lens choice is compromised.”

The series was the first to film Peregrine Falcons at night. It also delivered some rare sightings, like hippos trekking through the grasslands and two cheetahs playing and hunting together.

Most significantly, the filmmakers recorded tiny tarsiers hunting in Sulawesi, Indonesia capturing them for the first time exhibiting this behaviour on camera.

“Tarsiers are tiny, they move very fast and they live under a dense rainforest canopy with very little moonlit coming through. It wasn’t possible to use moonlight alone so we had to replicate it to at least gave us a chance to capture beautiful images of these remarkable primates.

Using any sort of big noisy generator with lights instantly shrinks the creature’s pupils to a pinprick and that goes against the whole point of the shoot. “They need their pupils to be as wide as possible to gather light and see their prey.”
Instead, Payne-Gill, set his battery powered lighting rig to just sufficient illumination as a full moon and filmed the animal natural and unaffected with pupils that you can see are large and wide in the footage.

“They were comfortable that there was no threat to start hunting in front of us,” he says. “The key is fast lenses which we were just as integral to the success of this production as the camera.”