Film Info59 minutes per episode
Episodes available: Mountains, Islands Deserts, Cities, Grasslands, Jungles BBC Studios Natural History Unit production, co-produced with BBC America, ZDF, Tencent and France Télévisions Available for Free screenings ONLY Synopsis: Experience the world from the viewpoint of animals themselves. From spellbinding wildlife spectacle to intimate encounters, Planet Earth II takes you closer than ever before. Filmmaker Q&AWhat inspired this story?
Four years in the making, Planet Earth II is a sequel to the original Planet Earth, which broadcast in 2006. Its conception was based around a number of changes that have come about since the first series. In the past few years, technology has become smaller, lighter and more versatile e.g. gyro-stabilised gimbals allowing fluid camera work and ‘walking with’ animals at their eye-level; mini cameras and remote cameras allowing high-resolution filming of secretive animals like snow leopards; drones technology opening up the opportunity for aerial filming in remote regions where helicopters were impossible to source. |
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In a progressive approach to subject matter, climate change and human impact issues are treated as part of the story – yellow crazy ants attack the famous Christmas Island crabs as an example of invasive species on islands, and the lives of indris in Madagascar are portrayed against a narrative of deforestation.
But the episode that tackles our changing world most graphically is the final episode, which focuses on the newest habitat on earth – our Cities. Shot in the same cinematic style as the other episodes, but with the addition of cutting edge hyperlapse and a thought-provoking narrative, this is a very contemporary look at our human influence on the natural world.
Describe some of the challenges faced while making this film
Each episode of Planet Earth II brought its own challenges and problems to overcome. Mountain animals, for example, are notoriously hard to see, let alone even film. The terrain itself is very daunting and just seeing these animals is incredibly hard; filming wild snow leopards is a ‘holy grail’ of natural history documentary. In the Mountains episode, our snow leopard crews really struggled to get the shots, battling steep dangerous terrain, altitude sickness, rock falls and terrible weather.
Producer Justin Anderson, working in conjunction with snow leopard scientists, deployed a series of remote digital cameras around scenting rocks in the mountains of Ladak. These are places where snow leopards come to communicate – scent marking and, from the scent of others, learning about their social lives in a form of communication the researchers dub ‘pee mail’. The cameras developed, and the choice of site (wide angle lenses to allow the animal to be captured in the context of its environment, and setting up multiple cameras on the same ‘routes’ / scenting spots) helped paint a fresh portrait of the way these illusive cats use the mountains. Similarly, the filming locations used in the Islands episode proved just as challenging; many of the word’s most interesting islands are extremely remote and pretty inaccessible. Making this film involved the challenges of long days at sea on transit, the hurdles of getting permission to visit these remote and pristine places, and the vagaries of weather events like El Nino. The shoot that best epitomises all of these was filming on the island of Zavodovski, an active volcano in the Southern Ocean and home to the world’s biggest penguin colony. The island is rarely visited, so permits, permissions and planning was complicated and took almost 18 months. In a small yacht it took us 7 days sailing to get there (and 8 back!), and of our 6.5 weeks trip we managed just 6 filming days because the weather is so changeable on the island.
How do you approach storytelling?
Planet Earth II is the story of Earth’s different habitats, told through animal eyes. The technological advances used throughout the production of the series allowed a new approach to storytelling. Where Planet Earth (the first season) looks at ecosystems with an almost Godly view, Planet Earth II is about intimacy and proximity – putting the viewer into the animals’ world. Stylistically, everything is shot from the animals eye level, intimate details and the rawness of their daily lives are not glossed over (flies buzz into the spit of the komodo dragon as it tries to woo its mate) and the animals are treated as protagonists on an epic journey so that the viewer can see their daily struggles in a way that feels relatable, but not overly-anthropomorphic.
One of the challenges of natural history programming is to reach a young audience, but Planet Earth II proved particularly popular with 16-34 year olds (43% of the population) - despite the fact that many were too young to remember the first series. This can be credited largely to the storytelling approach taken throughout the series.
The most talked about moment of the series that was picked up on social media, was the sequence of a chase between a hatchling marine iguana and racer snakes in the Galapagos. This was a behaviour the team had set out to film, but they discovered a location (dubbed the ‘wall of death’) with an unusually high numbers of snakes, each competing for prey. The resulting sequence is horror film-esque and had viewers on the edge of their seats. A tweet by @MrLukeJohnson declaring it ‘possibly the greatest scene in documentary history’ was retweeted more than 200,000 times and the sequence won the Primetime TV Moment of 2016 at the Broadcast Television awards and the Virgin ‘Must See TV’ peoples choice award BAFTA.
In Cities, there is a particularly poignant sequence in which hatchling turtles travel the ‘wrong way’ up a Caribbean beach. Confused by the lights on a beachfront building, viewers watched as they fell into storm drains and dodged cars, inciting a strong response among the public, and hammering home the point that many animals have suffered from the consequences of urban development. The piece was accompanied by a digital clip showing conservation work to rescue the turtles, which engaged a huge positive audience reaction in the media
But the episode that tackles our changing world most graphically is the final episode, which focuses on the newest habitat on earth – our Cities. Shot in the same cinematic style as the other episodes, but with the addition of cutting edge hyperlapse and a thought-provoking narrative, this is a very contemporary look at our human influence on the natural world.
Describe some of the challenges faced while making this film
Each episode of Planet Earth II brought its own challenges and problems to overcome. Mountain animals, for example, are notoriously hard to see, let alone even film. The terrain itself is very daunting and just seeing these animals is incredibly hard; filming wild snow leopards is a ‘holy grail’ of natural history documentary. In the Mountains episode, our snow leopard crews really struggled to get the shots, battling steep dangerous terrain, altitude sickness, rock falls and terrible weather.
Producer Justin Anderson, working in conjunction with snow leopard scientists, deployed a series of remote digital cameras around scenting rocks in the mountains of Ladak. These are places where snow leopards come to communicate – scent marking and, from the scent of others, learning about their social lives in a form of communication the researchers dub ‘pee mail’. The cameras developed, and the choice of site (wide angle lenses to allow the animal to be captured in the context of its environment, and setting up multiple cameras on the same ‘routes’ / scenting spots) helped paint a fresh portrait of the way these illusive cats use the mountains. Similarly, the filming locations used in the Islands episode proved just as challenging; many of the word’s most interesting islands are extremely remote and pretty inaccessible. Making this film involved the challenges of long days at sea on transit, the hurdles of getting permission to visit these remote and pristine places, and the vagaries of weather events like El Nino. The shoot that best epitomises all of these was filming on the island of Zavodovski, an active volcano in the Southern Ocean and home to the world’s biggest penguin colony. The island is rarely visited, so permits, permissions and planning was complicated and took almost 18 months. In a small yacht it took us 7 days sailing to get there (and 8 back!), and of our 6.5 weeks trip we managed just 6 filming days because the weather is so changeable on the island.
How do you approach storytelling?
Planet Earth II is the story of Earth’s different habitats, told through animal eyes. The technological advances used throughout the production of the series allowed a new approach to storytelling. Where Planet Earth (the first season) looks at ecosystems with an almost Godly view, Planet Earth II is about intimacy and proximity – putting the viewer into the animals’ world. Stylistically, everything is shot from the animals eye level, intimate details and the rawness of their daily lives are not glossed over (flies buzz into the spit of the komodo dragon as it tries to woo its mate) and the animals are treated as protagonists on an epic journey so that the viewer can see their daily struggles in a way that feels relatable, but not overly-anthropomorphic.
One of the challenges of natural history programming is to reach a young audience, but Planet Earth II proved particularly popular with 16-34 year olds (43% of the population) - despite the fact that many were too young to remember the first series. This can be credited largely to the storytelling approach taken throughout the series.
The most talked about moment of the series that was picked up on social media, was the sequence of a chase between a hatchling marine iguana and racer snakes in the Galapagos. This was a behaviour the team had set out to film, but they discovered a location (dubbed the ‘wall of death’) with an unusually high numbers of snakes, each competing for prey. The resulting sequence is horror film-esque and had viewers on the edge of their seats. A tweet by @MrLukeJohnson declaring it ‘possibly the greatest scene in documentary history’ was retweeted more than 200,000 times and the sequence won the Primetime TV Moment of 2016 at the Broadcast Television awards and the Virgin ‘Must See TV’ peoples choice award BAFTA.
In Cities, there is a particularly poignant sequence in which hatchling turtles travel the ‘wrong way’ up a Caribbean beach. Confused by the lights on a beachfront building, viewers watched as they fell into storm drains and dodged cars, inciting a strong response among the public, and hammering home the point that many animals have suffered from the consequences of urban development. The piece was accompanied by a digital clip showing conservation work to rescue the turtles, which engaged a huge positive audience reaction in the media