“The aim of the series was to bring some of the most charismatic stories to the screen”
Colin Jackson
locations with little power requirements. What we lose in terms of image quality we gain in getting unique footage of animals we would not have normally captured using traditional methods.”
Creative techniques When it came to shooting more traditional wildlife material, the choice was Panasonic P2 Varicam cameras shooting AVC-I 100. “This is the workhorse camera for most recent Natural History Unit epics, and allows for filming at speeds up to 50fps. This gives us the ability to shoot in slow-mo to help with the cinematic nature of the production. “To this end, we also had to film the material in progressive rather than interlaced. To achieve a consistency of look across the footage, we shot sync material also on Canon XF305 cameras — also in progressive mode.” Jackson says that Canon HJ40 lenses were used for extreme close ups of subjects such as lions and elephants. For meerkats and bears, where cameramen were able to be very close to the animals, HJ22 and HJ11 lenses were employed. Editing was done on location
for all of the major VT material. “The editing for the Kenyan and US footage was completed entirely on location. However, the material from the meerkats and macaques stories benefitted from extra dub and mixing time at the Bristol base after the completed VT was sent from location. We used Avid Media Composer 5.5 across the series. We found this allowed for easier workflows when working with multiple formats and multiple resolutions.” Jackson concludes, “The aim
of the series was to bring some of the most charismatic stories to the screen. We used five different teams of natural history producers, directors, camera operators and OB specialists to film a host of
different animals from across the globe during the crucial month of May when many of those animals’ young are taking their first breaths. And I believe our purpose was achieved with outstanding success.”