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“Planet Earth” – REAL high definition
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[GranitW] “What I was talking about was lets say there’s a movie like lord of the rings, would you like it if in the middle of the movie the characters started talking about how there filming this or the technologies they’re using.”
One is a fictional story, the other is a documentary. Two completely different things. In documentaries oftentimes the narrator will point out when something is unique either in the aquisition of the footage or the content of the footage. I really didn’t find it out of place at all and I’m sure there was a lot of interest from the general public in what they were saying.
We’re kind of jaded because we work in the biz so it’s like a marketing commercial when we hear people say “this is totally new.” But note that they never said a brand name or anything like that, just “new technology” or “this has never been filmed.”
The only disappointment I had was in the Great White shark attack they said 1 second was slowed down to 47 seconds. I would have liked to have seen that real time first before they showed the super slow mo.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Food Network’s “Good Eats”
HD Editorial for “Assignment Earth”Read my blog! https://blogs.creativecow.net/WalterBiscardi
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I know the the difference of a movie and a documentary. I watch a lot of documentaries and very few talk much about how there shooting something or the technology that there using. It felt like a documentary of the adventure of filming Planet Earth and the final product rolled into one.
I do agree about the Great White White shark. Although it’s not appealing in most movies, a documentary can repeat footage over again, especially if there showing it again in more detail.
I do love the shots, and it doesn’t bother me when the say “this is the first time this animal was film”. I just got annoy when they continued by adding more specific and technical comments, like the HD Cam on the Helicopter.
I think they should of moved all the technical stuff to the end of show other wise it could take away attention to the main purpose of the Documentary, which is to tell people about hidden and interesting things about Earth.
Video Specialist
Apple Developer
Owner of GranitWorks -
Light, Lenses, Framing and Time are the formula. I am sure they used whatever cameras and formats to get the action they wanted.
Considering the broadcasters use mpeg2 at bit rates lower than HDV, I wish we could get over the cringe and HDV is somehow not worthy. I have seen excellent HD shot with prime lenses on a Canon XL H1 and some ordinary HDCam.
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[Michael G] “Considering the broadcasters use mpeg2 at bit rates lower than HDV, I wish we could get over the cringe and HDV is somehow not worthy. I have seen excellent HD shot with prime lenses on a Canon XL H1 and some ordinary HDCam.”
Absolutely on the camera work, a good camera op can make any camera look good.
Uncompressed HD taken down to MPEG-2 for broadcast will look far cleaner than HDV originated material that’s compressed again for broadcast. I work with HDV and Varicam footage, there’s no question the DVCPro HD codec is a much cleaner codec with more color information and it holds up much better to color correction than HDV. Uncompressed HD would look even better.
The higher quality the footage when you start, the better it will look when compressed for final delivery.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Food Network’s “Good Eats”
HD Editorial for “Assignment Earth”Read my blog! https://blogs.creativecow.net/WalterBiscardi
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Yes I know all that theory Walter and I work with HDCam and HDV all the time. It was your comment that HDV wasn’t used that got up my nose. I love HDV because it is letting doco makers jump to HD without the huge costs. So don’t lecture them on using other cameras and codecs because most can’t pay the extra. Be grateful that they are ditching DV.
And I insist on going from HDV straight to uncompressed so we could argue till the cows come home (pun intended) about the evils of transcoding. But I won’t argue the economics of going to DVCPro100HD from HDV with you.
IF we all had the millions of dollars per ep for docos that the BBC has then we would all strive for the best.
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They bought a lot of expensive equipment used in movies, like the HD Cam on the Helicopter. It looked like the had a camera that ran at 600 – 1200 fps. They had a 1 to 2 second shot of a shark and slowed it down to 45 seconds. They had some cool stuff for this project. I don’t think they had any real new technology, they just used stuff that the Film industry already used.
Video Specialist
Apple Developer
Owner of GranitWorks -
That’s what I felt too. It really took me out of the show.
Video Specialist
Apple Developer
Owner of GranitWorks -
I did feel the timing was a little off. There was very little narration during the show as if they had nothing really to say, they just wanted to show what they filmed. I did like voice they chose.
It was like a organized Guerilla Project, if that’s possible. Great Shots, but weak script.
Video Specialist
Apple Developer
Owner of GranitWorks -
I did feel the timing was a little off. There was very little narration during the show as if they had nothing really to say, they just wanted to show what they filmed. I did like voice they chose.
It was like an organized Guerilla Project, if that’s possible. Great Shots, but weak script.
Video Specialist
Apple Developer
Owner of GranitWorks -
very pretty stuff, but I got tired of Sigourney Weaver telling me that “this is the first time the (insert your animal or mating ritual here) has been seen courtesy of new technology…”
Kidding of course. Great looking stuff!
Scott Witthaus
Senior Editor/Post Production Supervisor
1708 Inc./Editorial
Richmond, VA USA
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