Blue Planet II
Season 2 BBC Earth (*184) 18:30 Doccie
Having withdrawals while SABC2 nature doccie 50/50 (1983-current) is on hiatus? Don’t miss the special final episode of award-winning UK show Blue Planet II (2017) tonight, narrated by “the voice of nature shows” Sir David Attenborough. But Blue Planet II is so much more than “just a documentary”, explains producer Mark Brownlow over the phone. “This is one of the highest-rated nature series ever – and for good reason!”
Was it intimidating working with Sir David, who’s been doing these shows for decades? Yes and no – he’s like the godfather of nature doccies and he has been for over 50 years. He’s the voice of authority and he is also heavily involved, from writing scripts to having a very logical understanding and vision for editing content. Working with wildlife is notoriously difficult – what stood out as a lesson while filming? That you cannot predict nature and you cannot predict that “fabled” event. We were 30km off the Australian coast in 2014 when we started filming and the most common fish you’d expect to find, we didn’t see one for a month. Did you manage to do everything you planned in those four years of production? Not at all. Over 90% of the oceans are still unexplored. And don’t forget, we had a time frame and a budget to work with. We made sure that we started in Antarctica though because it was the most remote place on our filming schedule. Your tech toys and gadgets are probably specialised to your needs, right? Indeed – and we introduced a lot of technology that we had developed ourselves, like a four-hour rebreather dive system that caused no interference with the camera equipment. And we developed lenses for filming rays in the Sea Of Cortez in the dead of night. Blue Planet II really is an exceptional piece of work.