Breathtaking results
What sort of thing happened in making Night on Earth that just wouldn’t have been possible before?
BM: We had 20 million bats in Texas that were going to come out of a cave at dusk. The team went into the cave with hazmat suits wading through dead bats and guano. Dolby Vision HDR let us get the imagery of those bats lit by a shaft of light from the entrance, then Dolby Atmos let us build the surround sound of actually being in the cave. When they swirled out of the cave, we had a crane with our cameraman in it. They flocked towards him, he let them go overhead and kept the cut long. It was breathtaking. One of the challenges of natural history
production is that so many stories have been told. So many animals have been so well documented. What new technologies bring us is the chance to tell a new story, because it can capture details – sometimes whole behaviours – that haven’t been seen.
How much did the new technologies change the balance of those decisions?
BM: Normally on a shoot you can be there for weeks or months, building up a lot you can edit together later. Because we could really only shoot for six days or so around the full moon, we didn’t have that luxury, so much more of Night on Earth is really just what the camera captured. It worked out very well. And when it was right for the story to build up a sequence from lots of different components in post, we had all the tools needed for handling the production flow without compromising the source quality.
Natural, natural history
How did the experience of using Dolby Atmos and Dolby Vision change your approach to documentary making?
BM: For ‘Jungle Nights’ we went to film jaguars in Brazil and see what they did at night. For a month, our crew was filming sleeping jaguars. On the second to last night they pointed the camera up into the canopy where there was a glowing thermal dot... it was an ocelot, and it was creeping through the treetops stalking a snake bird. What we got was a very long cut with very few words. We let the audience work out what was happening and it told an incredible story.
Did Dolby Atmos fit in well with existing audio workflow and resources?
That’s the thing about Netflix. Unlike the
broadcast TV many of us grew up with, it’s only been around in the age of widescreen. People expect to see a semi-cinematic experience. So that’s what we made, allowing things to play longer with fewer words over the top. It’s night, it’s atmospheric, there’s natural tension and interest, and Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos let us realise that near- cinematic experience.
CD: Working with Dolby Atmos meant that we could use a huge library built up over 30 years including some Ambisonics effects – which have their own spatial aesthetics – which translate directly into the 3D immersive soundscape without need for panning. The library has become a huge asset over the past two years because of that. And it was also a joy working closely with Edmund Butt, who composed the music. We could take the stems and weave them into the soundscape in much more expansive and effective ways. He was delighted to be a part of that, as it heightened the emotional impact and power of his work.
“On headphones, you get the whole experience, that’s the joy of the downmix algorithm in Dolby Atmos, the big selling point for us. Whatever people are listening to, the mix is tailored for their environment, and nothing has really been thrown away. We check it all, of course, but have great faith in it.”
Chris Domaille, dubbing mixer at Films@59
© 2020 Dolby Laboratories, Inc. All rights reserved.
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