High flyers
The team behind Aerial China have lofty ambitions for its second series, which used scores of drones and the latest high-definition cameras to capture the country’s vast beauty, Xu Fan reports.
Aerial China, the natural landscape documentary series that saw its first season draw over 300 million viewers from more than 500 broadcasts across a number of TV channels, is making its return.
The second season of the series debuted on China Central Television’s flagship CCTV-1 channel and documentary channel CCTV-9 on Sunday, and is scheduled to air on four other channels before ending on March 17.
Unlike most nature-themed documentaries, which shoot scenes from the ground, this series captures the vast diversity and spectacular beauty of China’s landscapes from a bird’s-eye view.
In the space of more than a year, the crew traveled over 200,000 kilometers and used 12 helicopters and at least 70 drones to shoot in six provinces — Fujian, Guangdong, Jiangsu, Gansu, Sichuan and Zhejiang — as well as the Inner Mongolia autonomous region.
Each province or region has an entire episode devoted to it, all spanning 50 minutes.
Scheduled to produce five seasons and a total of 34 episodes, the production aims to cover all of China’s 23 provinces, five autonomous regions, four municipalities — and the two special administrative regions of Hong Kong and Macao.
For Fan Zhiyuan, the executive chief director, the documentary franchise — which has so far topped the number of aerial shots and filming locations ever attempted in a single domestic documentary series — is “a love letter to China”.
He explains that the typical Chinese way to demonstrate admiration is not to speak out straightforwardly, but to express this implicitly.
“The voice-over narration and its editing resembles the way you would speak softly and gently to a lover,” says Fan.
Li Xiangdong, the executive producer of the series, said the crew began to prepare for the second season around two years ago.
He says the latest season stuck to the innovative format of the first season, which helped shape its popularity and achieve 9.2 points out of 10 on review site Douban since its debut in 2017.
“Aside from the shots from helicopters and drones, we also used images taken from satellites and widely used 4K ultra high-definition cameras to make the scenes appear sharper,” he says.
As in the first series, weather conditions proved to be their biggest challenge, especially since flight requirements depend much on the prevailing conditions.
“Even so, we insisted that a cameraperson’s feet should never touch the ground during the entire filming process,” says Li, teasingly.
Liang Hong, an executive producer and director of CCTV-9, believes the documentary will prompt the audience to take a second look at familiar scenery because of its fresh approach and surprising new perspective.
A quick and easy way to take in some of China’s best-known tourist attractions, the documentary features an array of natural spectacles, such as the volcanic lakes of Inner Mongolia’s Arxan and the picturesque scenery of Sichuan’s Jiuzhaigou National Park.
Remarkable achievements in infrastructure construction, the fruit of China’s economic development, are also highlighted in each episode.
For instance, the first episode about Zhejiang province in East China features the 36-kilometer-long Hangzhou Bay Bridge, one of the world’s longest ocean-crossing bridges, which has cut the driving time from Shanghai to Hangzhou from the previous four hours to two.
And for the episode depicting Guangdong province, the production team turned their lenses on Canton Tower, a 604-meter-tall landmark building located on the south bank of the Pearl River, before turning to the 55-kilometer-long Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge, a megaproject linking nine cities in Guangdong and connecting the two special administrative regions.
How Chinese have managed to pass on their traditions in a country with a history dating back more than 5,000 years is also another appealing aspect of the series.
Subjects exploring this theme in the second season include the annual ceremony held by the fishing community in Zhoushan, Zhejiang province, to worship the sea, and how villagers in Zhejiang perform dragon dances using wooden benches with lanterns fitted on them to celebrate the start of spring.
The franchise will also be translated into multiple languages including English, Spanish, French, Russia and Arabic, and will be aired overseas by China Global Television Network.
The third season, which includes Southwest China’s Guizhou province as the theme of one of its episodes, has recently started filming, according to the producers.
200,000 kilometers distance the crew of Aerial China traveled to shoot the documentary in six provinces and an autonomous region
70 drones number of unmanned aerial vehicles the crew used in the documentary’s production