PREHISTORIC PLANET BIG PICTURE
PRODUCTION
APPLE TV+ SPLICED THE TALENTS OF PRODUCER JOHN FAVREAU, THE BBC’S NHU AND MPC TO BRING DINOSAURS BACK TO LIFE FOR PREHISTORIC PLANET. PIPPA CONSIDINE REPORTS
DETAILS
Broadcaster: Apple TV + Produced by: BBC Studios NHU Executive producers Mike Gunton, Jon Favreau Series producer Tim Walker Series directors Andrew R Jones , Adam Valdez Episode producers: Paul Stewart, Dom Walter, Paul Thompson, Simon Bell, Matthew Wright, Editor Andy Hague Series Animation Supervisor Andrew R Jones Vfx supervisor Lindsay McFarlane Music Hans Zimmer, Andrew Christie, Bleeding Fingers Music Narrated by Sir David Attenborough Cinematography: David Baillie, Paul D Stewart, Paul Williams Simon de Glanville, Andrew Fleming, Jonathan Jones, Mark MacEwen, Robert Walker, Jamey Warner MPC: Vfx supervisor : Elliot Newman Vfx producer : Matt Marshall Head of Animation : Seng Lau
Planet. Executive producers are Mike Gunton, creative director at BBC Studios Natural History Unit, alongside Hollywood director Jon Favreau, creator of The Jungle Book and The Lion King. “We’re using all of the tools and techniques
T
that the BBC documentary filmmakers have honed over decades,” says Favreau. “Then we’re using CGI to create the most naturalistic possible dinosaurs set in a photo-real world that is as close as we can possibly get to the real landscape these dinosaurs would have inhabited.” The commission came just two months
after the launch of Apple’s streaming service in 2019. For the tech giant, it was a perfect mix of cutting-edge filmmaking, with natural history’s universal appeal. And the project needed deep pockets: the undisclosed budget might not run to Lion King’s US$260m, but it covered multi-territory shoots and the creation of hundreds of creatures. MPC’s involvement
itans from the worlds of digital film making and natural history production joined forces for Apple TV+ landmark show Prehistoric
and female Tyrannosaurus Rex are flirting. “The analysis of the skull shows that there were a lot of nerve endings that came to the surface, and this means the snouts would have been used for very delicate behaviours, one of which would have been nuzzling.” Favreau’s long time collaborators Andy
Jones and Adam Valdez were series directors, working alongside the BBC NHU team. “It was pretty scary at first to figure out how to do it, but I think we all jumped off a cliff, took a leap of faith together,” says Valdez. Before the shoot could start, MPC first
built the prehistoric worlds, complete with the series’ dinosaur stars, in the game engine. They plotted camera positions and moves. The environments were shot in the field, to
“WE’RE USING ALL OF THE TOOLS AND TECHNIQUES
was pivotal. Favreau had worked with MPC on Jungle Book and Lion King. “We had built this whole software stack in cinematic workflow around creating digital characters,” says Favreau. On Lion King’s journey to bring animal characters to life, BBC Studios’ Planet Earth became the team’s Rosetta stone for reference. Gunton and Favreau were introduced by Jay
Hunt, European creative director for Worldwide Video at Apple. Gunton talked about his idea for a show that took the format of Planet Earth and time-travelled 66 million years, to the time of the dinosaurs. “We were both in the same world and we thought: we’re off. We’ve got to do this together,” says Gunton. The five 40-minute episodes, which
launched across five evenings at the end of May, each present a different habitat: forests, deserts, ice worlds, freshwater and coasts. New research offered a chance to
introduce new dinosaurs and to tell unseen stories, particularly around behaviour. The team drew on a range of expertise from fields including palaeontology, anatomy, behaviour and contemporary biology. Series producer Tim Walker talks one scene where a male
create authentic back plates for the dinosaur action. “It’s filmed in a way which is exactly the same as how we film animals for real, despite those dinosaurs being CG and dropped into that real environment,” says Walker. Gunton describes the
THAT THE BBC DOCUMENTARY FILMMAKERS HAVE HONED OVER DECADES”
natural history grammar of the show. “You have to resist the temptation to put the camera anywhere
because you couldn’t if you were filming it for real…. It’s not a jaws and claws show, it’s much more about the nuances and sophistications of the dinosaurs.” He contrasts the T. rex sequence with a scene featuring a small, feathered dinosaur, the Mononykus. “You can’t get close to a T. rex, but you can get close to a mononykus, so some of the photography reflects that.” The close-up approach includes a remote camera perspective, as though a camera was hidden in a log containing the Mononykus’ wormy prey. Despite lockdown, the team found suitable
locations to stand in for the late Cretaceous era. The film makers didn’t need to capture animals, but the shoots had their own challenges. In Namibia, they needed one shot as the scene for a large gathering of huge dinosaurs. “The space required to put them had to be vast,” explains Walker. When the producer finally found a location “they had to get the camera position, get all of the reference material …and then retreat back over a quarter of a mile over steep sand dunes to be able to get the dinosaurs in focus in the lens.” On location, they used Red Monstro cameras,
Summer 2022
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