IBC Daily Executive Issue 2011
Sir David Attenborough explains the vital role technology
has played in the evolution of natural history filmmaking.
“Watching time lapse photography of flower buds opening
is marvellous in 2D but in 3D it really is transcendental,” says Sir David
Attenborough. “You experience the sensation of being able to touch the plant.”
Technology has come a long way since Attenborough’s first
foray into filmmaking in the 1950’s but his relationship with innovative
recording equipment has been almost as intimate as it has with some of his
subjects. While the 85-year-old is among other things a world respected
broadcaster and iconic presenter, synonymous with the natural history genre he
has helped define, his success has in part been built on a natural affinity and
enthusiasm for new storytelling tools.
“In 1952 TV was regarded by the BBC’s governors as
essentially electronic,” says the distinguished recipient of IBC’s
International Honour for Excellence. “The serious business of broadcasting took
place in TV studios – or on radio – and when you asked for extra money to make
a film the reaction was ‘what for?’. It was extremely difficult to get funding.
“TV was 405-line monochrome and the telecine machines
only had one gauge – 35mm – for reels which cost a fortune and weighed a ton,”
he recalls. “It simply wasn’t possible to make the sort of film I wanted to
make in Africa in 35mm so I asked to use 16mm and was told in no uncertain
terms that 16mm was for amateurs.
“I persisted and put my case to the head of TV who
finally agreed to allow me to take 16mm on location (for Zoo Quest) and I
became the first user of that format at the BBC. The difficulties didn’t end
there because the standard that BBC staff cameramen worked to was also 35mm and
most wouldn’t touch 16 with a barge pole so I had to employ freelancers.”
Attenborough recalls that the Cine Special he took on his
first expeditions used a side-loading reel running 2 minutes 40 seconds, that
it operated for just 40 second bursts and only then by winding it up.
“As you can imagine it was extremely difficult to film
any kind of continuity of animal behaviour and there was no way of
synchronising sound with picture so I couldn’t talk to camera,” he says.
In the mid-1960s Attenborough was appointed Controller of
BBC2, during which time he also helped usher in colour transmissions. But
programme making and the natural world was too big a draw and after resigning
in 1973 he spent three years planning and filming Life on Earth which
debuted in 1979 to universal acclaim. It was the most ambitious project yet
achieved by the BBC Natural History Unit.
“Natural history is full of marvellous opportunities for
colour and showing birds of paradise in black and white was a very frustrating
thing to have to do,” he says. “Colour meant natural history could be so much
more visually exciting and Life on Earth was expressly
designed to take advantage of this.”
Another major technical advance, crucial to the evolution
of the genre, was the commercial jet plane. “Suddenly you could schedule
round-the-world trips to capture environments at different times of the year
where previously a trip to Australia to film a three-minute sequence of some
owls was just not practical.”
Cheaper, faster flights made 13-hour long series
economical. “Every series that followed was a response to a technical
advance,” he says. “The Private Life of Plants was a direct
response to the introduction of servers which allowed you to film continuously
over long periods, to generate amazing time lapse footage. Infra-red cameras
enabled us to film the nocturnal behaviour of mammals (The Life of Mammals)
that had not been possible before. Cool lighting systems and highly
light-sensitive cameras allowed us to film insects on a macro scale whereas
previously the poor things had been scared by the light and heat and had
exhibited abnormal behaviour.
“Digital of course made a huge difference with cameras
that can operate soundlessly without scaring wildlife, that you record hours of
footage on just waiting for something to happen, and also miniaturised so you
can put them in hides.”
The last big technical change, he suggests, was the
introduction of gyro-mounted helicopters which enabled aerial shots of wildlife
activity, of wolves hunting buffalo for example, that had never been seen
before.
More recently Attenborough has been pioneering 3DTV
documentaries, closely involved in the production of Flying Monsters 3D (Atlantic
Productions for Sky) which was the first of its kind to win a BAFTA.
“3D works under certain circumstances and depends on how
you produce it,” he says. “Right now, the technology is limiting although the
results can be liberating. It takes four-to-five people to lift the cameras and
30 minutes to change a lens, which is no way to react to fast moving animal
behaviour. The systems are very temperamental which means you could be sitting
around for an hour and half while the cameras are aligned.
“Frankly it’s a nightmare to anyone accustomed to
crawling through the bushes trying to get close to nervous animals with a small
camera capable of capturing sound and vision. You can’t do it with 3D – at the
moment.”
The restrictions on the use of long lenses, which tend to
create a flat, cardboard-like effect, are equally limiting.
“If you ask a cameraman to go to South America and film
landscapes in 3D but they are not allowed to use lenses longer than 75mm then
they are simply not going to be able to bring back content as good as it would
be in 2D. Audience’s expectations will be let down and that is to be avoided at
all costs.
“That’s why you have to choose your subjects carefully to
exploit the value of 3D. I chose to work with fossils (for Flying
Monsters 3D) and deliberately that of a creature which moved in three
dimensions so that its 40ft wing span can fly over the audience if you wish it
to.”
Atlantic Productions’ follow-up is Bachelor King,
a 3D narrative documentary currently in postproduction about penguins on the
island of South Georgia. Again, it was Attenborough’s choice.
“The thing about 150,000 penguins on a beach is that they
look identical so that when they move or you lose track of them during filming
you can simply construct the story from another one,” he says. “The beach’s
other inhabitants included seals, and they don’t move too fast either.”
He believes that the future for 3D depends on technical
development. “At the moment the big problem with 3DTV is that you have to wear
glasses which occlude light. That means you can’t see the person next to you,
read a newspaper or do anything you would normally do other than watch the TV
and that means you have to have event programming.”
Although he has just completed another landmark
production Frozen Planet, following the cycle of the polar seasons,
which took three years to film and saw him film at the north pole for the first
time, Attenborough continues to search for new worlds to explore.
“We still know remarkably little about the deep ocean
because our technology is limited by pressure at depth – but that would make
for an incredible subject,” he says. “As for the next thing after 3D, that
could be holograms. Imagine that – creatures popping out of your TV and
appearing in your living room.”
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