TINY CREATURES BIG PICTURE
PRODUCTION
FOR NETFLIX’S ‘ANIMAL DRAMA’ TINY CREATURES, FILMMAKER JONATHAN JONES HAD TO EVOLVE AN INNOVATIVE AND INTRICATE LAYERING TECHNIQUE. ADRIAN PENNINGTON REPORTS
DETAILS Production
Ember Films with associate producers Blackfin and Momentum Broadcaster Netflix
Series narrator Mike Colter Exec producer Jonathan Jones Christina Douglas Geno McDermott Produced By Gemma Brandt Director
Jonathan Jones Dubbing mixer Paul Vitolins Sound designer Paul Vitolins, George Fry
Editors
Donovan Jones; Joe Carnaby
Picture post Ember Films Sound post Bang NY VFX
Ember Films DoP
Jonathan Jones Series Music Benjamin Squires
natural history cinematographer Jonathan Jones (Planet Earth II) this included giving voices to the creatures he was patiently waiting to capture. “Traditional natural history programming is
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amazing but requires a lot of attention and can be quite challenging for a family to digest,” he says. “I’m a huge fan of fantasy-adventure films and was keen to make something that would entice a new generation to get excited about the animal world.” The result may set the benchmark for a new genre.
Neither doc nor completely fiction, Tiny Creatures is an animal drama that puts the viewer on the shoulder of small animals as they navigate everyday challenges. Although narrated, the stories are rooted in
science and the decades of wildlife experience and technical knowledge that Jones has gained from working on shows like Hidden Kingdoms and Great Migrations. “We previsualised every single shot to comprehensively plan our narrative and shooting schedule,” he explains. “Translating what we did in pre-vis and then looking at the finished show, it’s a carbon copy. And, everything we did on set was always with the welfare of the animals in mind.” Each 25-minute episode is set in a different
environment – from Louisiana, Washington and Texas to a Minnesota golf course – all showcasing mini critter adventures, including a kangaroo rat, owl, golden hamster and skunk often in peril of falling prey to a predator. With background plates shot on location
itting behind a long lens in the field anticipating when things might happen, ideas tend to form. For Emmy-winning
“At Ember we’ve been shooting and posting 4K
for 12 years, so we have a very refined workflow,” Jones says. “We didn’t transcode rushes. We shot RAW and posted RAW. Our intention was to grade in RAW too, but due to the complexity of the multi layers of feathered masks within each frame we decided to treat each shot as a VFX master and conform as a VFX shot for the HDR colour grade.” The majority of the show is shot on multiple RED
cameras with the HELIUM sensor at 6K to 8K, with additional high-speed photography on the Phantom Flex4K. “I wanted to shoot at the highest resolution and quality which is why I chose RED HELIUM,” says Jones. “We’d film a pass with one animal and ensure its safety before moving to the next stage. Only then did we re-set the scene and reshoot the sequence, this time with another animal or perhaps props (like a moving bowling ball or water pipe bursting).” To ensure the two frames matched when
stitched together, rushes from each were edited on the spot. “We pushed Adobe Premiere to the limit but got such a good result. It handles RAW from the cameras brilliantly and also has a built-in mask function. Some shots would have eight or nine layers of 8K footage to composite into one shot.” The data volumes were daunting. Each day’s
“SOME SHOTS WOULD HAVE 8
OR 9 LAYERS OF 8K FOOTAGETO COMPOSITE INTO ONE SHOT”
in the U.S., the eight-episodes along with the creature cast were produced in-house back at Ember Films’ Norfolk studio. The remarkable illusion that Tiny Creatures manages to pull off is to place the “hero” and the “villain” in the same frame despite being filmed entirely separately. “When you watch one take of a squirrel
running it’s not particularly interesting, but when you superimpose a snake into the picture as if following, then the whole feeling of the shot changes,” notes Jones. This double passing technique was achieved
by performing post at the same time as the shoot, a methodology which is pretty unique for any production let alone one dealing in 4K and higher resolution RAW rushes.
shoot averaged 3-4TB; each episode totalled about 80TB running online, mirrored for back-up and also archived on LTO. Shooting at 1000 fps, the Phantom Flex4K alone needed 2TB storage cards. “Some animal
movements are so fast that
we were shooting 600 fps to catch their portraits,” says Jones. “Based on our experience in the wild, we had written the script, built sets, rigged the camera and planned depth of field in such a way to allow the animals to feel comfortable. Most of the shots you see in the series are from the first or second take.” Tiny Creatures was also mastered in HDR with
a colour managed pipeline devised with colourist Toby Tomkins and Jack McGinity at Cheat in London. Jones explains, “In partnership with Netflix, we opted for HDR and began to push the dynamic range, for example, by letting windows overexpose so we could see more detailed differences between inside and outside. UHD-HDR is more common for a feature workflow which is why it was perfect for Tiny Creatures. These are really mini-movies with a start, middle and an end with dramatic devices more familiar to a blockbuster than a nature doc.”
Autumn 2020
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