Planet Earth

[Jared VanLeuven]

Caught the first episodes on Discovery HD tonight. Simply breathtaking cinematography, some utterly astounding shots. Anyone else watch it?

[Jeff Kilgroe]

I set my DVR to record it... I'm watching the first installment right now. <voice="Darth_Vader">Impressive.</voice>

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Just wanted to add that the overcompression on Discovery HD via Dish is rather frustrating.

The aerial shots are amazing though. Oh, and if there was actually a human in the water with camera for those underwater shots of the elephant herd, that took one crazy SOB.

[Ken Corben]

Just wanted to add that the overcompression on Discovery HD via Dish is rather frustrating.

The aerial shots are amazing though. Oh, and if there was actually a human in the water with camera for those underwater shots of the elephant herd, that took one crazy SOB.

Ya, watched on a 50" plasma with dish on Discovery HD Theater rather plain overall in terms of image quality. Imagine the original master viewed on a HD monitor. Or better yet, shot with Red and projected in 4K - SCHWING!

Club 1080 promo made me laugh out loud - I yelled out club Red 4K! I'd like to see the original master on a HD monitor though.

5 years in the the making and over 2000 filming days - only the BBC could do this in today's business world of non-fiction production given the governmental subsidies of the BBC?

So what's next? Well, the BBC didn't get the blue whale underwater shots to start. Hey Mr. Jannard, may I use red #5 to get that sequence for my Nat Geo series this Summer while I am waiting on my original order? I know where to get the shot - been there. Geez, the blue whales are enormous. Made me and my inflatable feel realy small.

Sharky

The underwater elephant shots were probably done with a polecam?

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Ya, watched on a 50" plasma with dish on Discovery HD Theater rather plain overall in terms of image quality. Imagine the original master viewed on a HD monitor. Or better yet, shot with Red and projected in 4K - SCHWING!

Viewing on a 71" 1080P DLP here. Some of the aerials of the dogs chasing the impala were borderline unwatchable. To see the HD master of this would really be amazing though... methinks anyway.


5 years in the the making and over 2000 filming days - only the BBC could do this in today's business world of non-fiction production given the governmental subsidies of the BBC?

Probably so. Although, if they were to offer this production on HD-DVD or BluRay with superior quality to the Dish feed, I'd buy it just to support their effort.


I know where to get the shot - been there. Geez, the blue whales are enormous. Made me and my inflatable feel realy small.

I would definitely like to see that!


The underwater elephant shots were probably done with a polecam?

Probably. Didn't seem like a polecam though... Quite possibly tethered with some motion ability or way to protract/retract? Hmm... Anyway, great stuff all around so far.

[Holosynthetic]

Made me and my inflatable feel realy small.

Now when you say your "inflatable"...what do you mean exactly? I think I read this all wrong and my minds in the gutter...

[Mark Thorpe]

yeah well all those lonely hours at sea can drive a man to that......:blink:

Sharky, I got my inflatable too close to some Sperm Whales in the Sea of Cortez a couple years back. Had a local hire as a captain, never seen someone's eyes so wide when the whale decided to 'play' with our little rubber duck with his tail...LMAO, the sight is still fresh in my head. So funny.

Cheers,
Mark.
Go on Jim, lend him #5.

[Casey Green]

Definitely great cinematography... If you don't have access at the moment, you can see some lower res highlight clips here:

http://dsc.discovery.com/beyond/index.html?playerId=203711706&categoryId=210014204&lineupId=452340373

[Anders Holck]

It will be out on HD DVD and Bluray next month:
http://www.amazon.com/Planet-Earth-Complete-BBC-DVD/dp/B000MRAAJW
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B000MRAAJM/ref=d_ap_planetearth_1

$70 for 550 mins is an ok deal.

The HD DVD is currently #48 on the Amazon DVD sales rank, that's pretty good.

[Rob Lohman]

Got the whole series on 5-disc (6?) DVD here. Very impressive! Once that HD format war is over I'm definitely gonna get it in the format left standing.

[Moir]

I agree that the cinematography for Planet Earth is breathtaking, but I thought the series slightly lacked the narrative cohesiveness of previous BBC natural history blockbusters (Life on Earth, Blue Planet etc). It kind of felt like a series of incredible images thrown together because they looked fantastic rather than because they were integral to the narrative. Obviously a very subjective opinion, and still a wonderful series to watch.

I believe a considerable proportion was shot on film rather than HD.

[Anders Holck]

Yeah, any war is bad.
Have been very pleased with my Hd Dvd's so far though, I have the HD-E1.
Even if the format loses the war and becomes deprecated, the content is still as good as Blu Ray ever will be. VC1 looks pretty darn good as a consumer format.
The choice to have no region coding on Hd Dvd, is a very big plus when you live in europe...

[Hrvoje Simic]

Sigourney Weaver seems to be a narrator (Amazon).
I don't have anything against her, but I would rather watch the series in its original form, with David Attenborough.

[MikeCurtis]

YES - that was amazing - the Great White leaping out of the water to get the seal slowed down 47x was LITERALLY jaw dropping - I watched a bunch of it (skipped to see Rome & Battlestar Galactica, what can I say), but I'll catch it when it runs again. Some of the best footage I've seen on Discovery, they've done a truly amazing job. I did think more than once it'd be nice to see how a Red One would hold up in those situations...

-mike

[PaulClements]

Sigourney Weaver seems to be a narrator (Amazon).
I don't have anything against her, but I would rather watch the series in its original form, with David Attenborough.

I just watched some of the highlights from the discovery channel link posted earlier. It is indeed Sigourney Weaver, and frankly doesn't seem as good. David Attenborough comes across like an automated encyclopedia of wildlife fact whereas Sigourney Weaver just sounds like someone reading from a script. I think it's a shame that they felt they had to do this for the American market, I'm guessing they looked at March of the Penguins and decided a film star voice over would be more widely received. Great shame.

[Zakaree Sandberg]

Planet earth is my dream job... I LOVE it

[Zakaree Sandberg]

does anyone know what they shot on"?:>

[Jared VanLeuven]

YES - that was amazing - the Great White leaping out of the water to get the seal slowed down 47x was LITERALLY jaw dropping - I watched a bunch of it (skipped to see Rome & Battlestar Galactica, what can I say), but I'll catch it when it runs again. Some of the best footage I've seen on Discovery, they've done a truly amazing job. I did think more than once it'd be nice to see how a Red One would hold up in those situations...

-mike

Okay, Total Thread Tangent re: Battlestar. I cried bitter tears when they said Season 4 wouldn't begin 'til 2008. :waaa: :ranting2:

Sorry, had to share.

[David Nardini]

does anyone know what they shot on ?

Majority of the underwater footage was shot with the following ... (designed and built by Peter Scoones).

[Nick Shaw]

I believe the high speed stuff like the Great White was shot with an Arri Tornado.

[Zakaree Sandberg]

Majority of the underwater footage was shot with the following ... (designed and built by Peter Scoones).

so HDCAM? thats just a housing but i guess a housing for the HDCAM..

[Petr Dvorak]

here we go

http://img187.imageshack.us/img187/8638/vlcsnap371654nx1.png
http://img185.imageshack.us/img185/6221/vlcsnap370461tp0.png



...the Great White leaping out of the water to get the seal ...
-mike

[Illya Friedman]

102" via DirecTV HD - Stunning!

I.

Dalsa

[feb31films]

I just watched some of the highlights from the discovery channel link posted earlier. It is indeed Sigourney Weaver, and frankly doesn't seem as good. David Attenborough comes across like an automated encyclopedia of wildlife fact whereas Sigourney Weaver just sounds like someone reading from a script. I think it's a shame that they felt they had to do this for the American market, I'm guessing they looked at March of the Penguins and decided a film star voice over would be more widely received. Great shame.


Not the first time they've done that. Remember the special: DRAGONS: A FANTASY MADE REAL ? Originally voiced by Ian Holm, the American broadcast (on Animal Planet) featured Patrick Stewart, much better known in the States due to Star Trek. AND they cut out nearly half of the film.

[Jeff Kilgroe]

There's one other they did where Avery Brooks narrated only to be replaced in subsequent version. That one confused me since Avery Brooks is well known -- more so than the replacement narrator, but perhaps that had more to do with contract negotiations and royalty payments or something to that effect. I can't remember which show that was, but I'm thinking the one involving dinosaurs that preceeded Dragons.

[Ken Corben]

Imagine what a stripped down Red sytem mounted to a Giraffe's neck would have yielded?

Or better yet, mounted to a crazy BBC cameraman's arse in the midst of a pride at night.

Mad dogs and Englishmen - I love these guys/ Thanks for bringing it to life.

[Ralph Oshiro]

. . . does anyone know what they shot on?I've been wondering that myself. I did see both film and HDCAM cameras in the BTS footage that they aired, but I'm very curious what that "extreme low-light HD camera" they keep yapping out is. I watched the opening episodes on a 50" 720p plasma via digital cable. Don't know what Time Warner's datarate is, but the picture really suffered on the mountains episode where there were a lot of shots with trees in it (far too much detail for that bit rate). I'm sure the HD masters are stunning. I wonder if the general public realizes how much of their "HD" picture is turned into crap by carrirers who are too cheap to alot some decent bandwidth to their HD programming bitstreams.

[Ken Corben]

EXACTLY RALPH!

The FCC and broadcasters are concerned more with quantity than quality over the allotted bandwiths...Capitalism.

I am looking forward to the DVD on my plasma - commercial free to boot!

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Satellite HD is terrible. Digital cable varies from acceptable to worse than satellite. What drives me insane is that DirecTV and Dish both broadcast their 1080i as 1280x1080 in most cases and it's still highly overcompressed. The macroblocking and break-up of the picture in fast high-detail scenes was practically unacceptable. I know the 1280x1080 drives the guys at HD.NET insane, but what can they do... They've protested and wish circumstances were different, but it is what it is.

Hopefully the HD-DVD / BluRay versions will be a lot better in this respect.

[PaulClements]

I believe the high speed stuff like the Great White was shot with an Arri Tornado.

Perhaps I'm remembering completely wrong here, but I seem to remember the great white shots being shot with some sort of modified crash camera (The ones they use to film the dummies in the car crashing into the wall), so they could get the very high frame rate. I remember thinking at the time why didn't they use a phantom.

[Steve Gibby]

Phantom 65 would have worked well for those high-speed shots. Aerospace facilities use them at high frame rates to track missile launches. The results are stunning...

I viewed the "Mountains" and "Deep Sea" episodes of Planet Earth last night. Beautiful cinematography, smooth camera moves, great stuff. With a budget of $1 million USD per episode, good crews (over 200 people total), and 5 years to make it, it better be very good though. My favorite shot sequence in the Deep Sea episode was the whale shark surrounded by the bait ball as the yearling yellowfin tuna darted through the frame. It was such an ethereal shot...

In the Mountains episode the aerial shots were stellar - smooth and dreamlike. Nice gimbal system used there. The "brass ring" shots of the snow leopard were also very breathtaking.

Planet Earth is seriously good nature documentary work. I agree that the images are stronger than the script and narration. Right after the airing, an episode of Blue Planet, the Deep Sea episode was televised. The images were also very stunning in that, plus IMO David Attenborough's narration suited the images better than that of Signoray Weaver for Planet Earth.

[PaulClements]

With a budget of $1 million USD per episode, good crews (over 200 people total), and 5 years to make it, it better be very good though.

Gibby, budgets and the BBC don't necessarily go together very well. Here's something interesting I read in the Telegraph (UK Newspaper) a couple of days ago. A bulb in a BBC employees table lamp blew so she went to get another one. She was told she wasn't allowed to change it herself for health and safety risks. The bulb cost £10 ($20). First of all she had to phone someone to report the problem, who then had to contact an engineer, who had to order the part and then have someone fit it. In total it took 5 people to change the lightbulb in her lamp. Now I admit, $1 million USD is alot per episode, but I dare say the people on the ground, in the air or in the water probably only made up a 10th of those costs. The rest was probably consumed by some bureaucrats telling them about the health and safety issues of exposure to sun just before they jumped into the sea with man eating sharks!!!

[Moir]

Paul I suspect that story is slightly apocryphal, but probably does accurately portray the malaise that infects all large organisations once the health and safety nazis get going. And don't even get me started on compliance officers.

But in a way maybe it's a good thing: it promotes the use of small, independent production companies and gives us all a chance to share the license fee payers' largesse.

For me, Attenborough is the best in the business. A friend worked as a field assistant in Borneo on a production he was narrating. Apparently he nailed almost every piece to camera first time, and was a consummate pro. He is blessed with a great voice for narration.

[Steve Gibby]

LOL Paul...thanks for that insight!

Bureaucracy does seem to exponentially multiply budgets on anything its fingers touch. If pencil pushers in a bureau are paid more than frontline production staff, budgets tend to get bizarrely disproportionate. Bureaucracy worldwide seems to be as streamlined as a blimp. It makes producing good programs on moderate budgets an extreme challenge...or even good programs on big budgets, when only a small portion of the budget filters down to those who are actually making the programs.

[PaulClements]

Paul I suspect that story is slightly apocryphal, but probably does accurately portray the malaise that infects all large organisations once the health and safety nazis get going. And don't even get me started on compliance officers.

I wouldn't say it's apocryphal, it was quoted from ariel, the inhouse magazine for the BBC, and the original article was written by the woman involved. The Telegraph isn't a tabloid so they don't just make stuff up all the time, unfortunately it was true, I might have gotten the facts slightly skewed as to the engineers etc... all I remember from the article was that the bulb cost £10($20) and it took 5 people from start to finish to get the lightbulb changed. Naturally the punchline to the article was something like:

"How many BBC employees does it take to change a lightbulb... Five!"

Edit: Sry Moir, just saw you were from Jersey so I'm sure you know what the Telegraph is like, personally I don't read it. Caught it whilst visiting the parents.

[Zakaree Sandberg]

yah the LOW LIGHT HD camera they were talkin about interests me! it didnt look low light at alll

[Jeremy Hughes]

I missed it... And it came on here in Canada a few months ago and I missed all of them. Don't have a high definition TV anyway.

[Cail Young]

The show has been aired here in Australia in 720p a couple times... incredible.

[Johnny Friday]

Sharky,
Did you say inflatable and "feel small"? Shouldn't you have chosen a larger "inflatable" I know I would have.

[Illya Friedman]

Satellite HD is terrible. Digital cable varies from acceptable to worse than satellite. What drives me insane is that DirecTV and Dish both broadcast their 1080i as 1280x1080 in most cases and it's still highly overcompressed. The macroblocking and break-up of the picture in fast high-detail scenes was practically unacceptable. I know the 1280x1080 drives the guys at HD.NET insane, but what can they do... They've protested and wish circumstances were different, but it is what it is.

HDLite drives everyone crazy! But that being said, on DirecTV Discovery has one of the higher bit rates which helps a lot... Discovery is far, far better than Showtime HD or TNTHD. At least all the DirecTV 720p channels are passed through, and if you've got an excellent scaler the 720p networks look almost like OTA.

I.

[Ralph Oshiro]

yah the LOW LIGHT HD camera they were talkin about interests me! it didnt look low light at alllYeah . . . still don't know what they're talking about (and I'm not talking about the nightime infra red photography of the elephant-lion attack). They mention it again in the "below the canopy" photography in, I think, "Pole to Pole."

[Moir]

I'm sure you know what the Telegraph is like, personally I don't read it. Caught it whilst visiting the parents.

It's OK, you don't need to make excuses for reading the Torygraph ;)

It does sound like it was a real story, then, and not apocryphal. There's no hope for the world, is there.

[JohnF]

I saw "Planet Earth" on all three major transmission systems here in the UK.

Analogue SD, Digital SD and HD transmission.

Guess what? Analogue without exception looked better than both digital SD and HD...

IMO I probably will stop watching broadcast TV when they switch off the analogue transmitters, unless they drastically improve bandwidth for digital tranmission. It's so bad sometimes that it seems YouTube gives a better picture!!!

Incidently the UK government refers to the analogue switch off as "Digital dividend" as they are going to sell off all the "now free" frequencies to the highest bidder!

But whoops they forgot that wireless mics are included in those frequencies and they've no intention of giving them any priority. Not to mention that this decision was made in the early 90's (1993-4) so we will be committed to a transmission system based on the crappy technology that was available back then and again not to mention the bandwidth limitations.

What a mess...

JohnF

[PaulClements]

It's a joke John, my parents live in a valley in the midlands, the area doesn't currently have a digital signal and they can't hook upto sky because of their position, the due date for turning the digital signal on there is actually after the analogue is turned off. It's a bit daft.

[Dan Blanchett]

I watched it on a 13-year-old Sony TV, obviously SD, and it looked pretty awesome to me. Especially that high-speed shark breach footage. Imagine what JAWS would have been like if Spielberg knew about that nasty trick! (not that I'd change a single frame of JAWS, it's a masterpiece).

On a side note, I keep wanting to make the jump to decent size HD LCD, but I'm still uncertain what to buy. I'll probably jump onboard when I get my RED.

[Steve Gibby]

Hey Thinkbug,

I recently bought an LG 246WP 1080p monitor at Best Buy for $699 - and I love it. I believe it uses the same 24" screen as the Dell 24", but my LG has HDMI and the Dell doesn't. I wanted HDMI for BluRay/HD-DVD purposes. I'll need to use an AJA or BM HD-SDI to HDMI adapter ($450) from the dual HD-SDI on RED One to review dailies of the RED One footage in 1080p on the LG. It also seems like a good candidate for a client monitor in the field/on the set.

Link: http://www.lge.com/products/model/detail/l246wp_1_6.jhtml

[Dan Blanchett]

Hey Thinkbug,

I recently bought an LG 246WP 1080p monitor at Best Buy for $699 - and I love it. I believe it uses the same 24" screen as the Dell 24", but my LG has HDMI and the Dell doesn't. I wanted HDMI for BluRay/HD-DVD purposes. I'll need to use an AJA or BM HD-SDI to HDMI adapter ($450) from the dual HD-SDI on RED One to review dailies of the RED One footage in 1080p on the LG. It also seems like a good candidate for a client monitor in the field/on the set.

Link: http://www.lge.com/products/model/detail/l246wp_1_6.jhtml


Gibby, thanks for the tip. I'll check it out.

[Steve Gibby]

P.S. - I bought the fully black frame one, not the silver framed one in the pic on that link...

I'll be interested to see how the HD-DVD or Blu-Ray box set of Planet Earth looks on that monitor. It looked good on my TV.

Planet Earth is an awesome series...well done...

[Mike the beginner]

Hey Thinkbug,

I recently bought an LG 246WP 1080p monitor at Best Buy for $699 - and I love it. I believe it uses the same 24" screen as the Dell 24", but my LG has HDMI and the Dell doesn't. I wanted HDMI for BluRay/HD-DVD purposes. I'll need to use an AJA or BM HD-SDI to HDMI adapter ($450) from the dual HD-SDI on RED One to review dailies of the RED One footage in 1080p on the LG. It also seems like a good candidate for a client monitor in the field/on the set.

Link: http://www.lge.com/products/model/detail/l246wp_1_6.jhtml

The LG 245WP is probably the same model as yours Gibby. It sells here in the uk for around £580.00. without VAT. Wish we could get our stuff as cheap as you guys:sad:

On a brighter note, we got the David Attenborough Wildlife Collection of 14 DVDs for free when you bought one of the national newspapers:biggrin:


Mike the beginner

[KETCH ROSSi]

Caught the first episodes on Discovery HD tonight. Simply breathtaking cinematography, some utterly astounding shots. Anyone else watch it?

I'Am with you 100%, I was wayting for this release for some time now, I watched on my V.47inch 1080p and was stunning to see the quality and clarity of those images, never mind the content imself, that is a all different story, talking about passionate and dedicated filmmakers?

I hope I will have my new Sony Pearl up and running on the 133inch screen by the next episode.

Ciao,

KETCH ROSSI