BBC’s Bafta winning iguana scene caught in fakery row
IT was described as one of the most dramatic TV chases ever.
Planet Earth II’s memorable film of a panicked iguana being pursued by a mass of snakes won a Bafta and went viral on the internet.
But it turns out the nail-biting BBC clip might not have been all that it seemed.
The producer behind the film yesterday revealed it was ‘stitched’ together using several different takes, and was not – as viewers were led to believe – one iguana making a desperate dash to safety.
Elizabeth White, who was in charge of the ‘Islands’ episode, shocked the audience at the Media Production Show when she said: ‘It wasn’t the same iguana, no, and often we have to augment it with other clips.
‘Unfortunately lizards, snakes and iguanas aren’t good at “takes”.’
She went on to explain that the awardwinning moment was the product of two cameras, which were both trained on the beach in the Galapagos as newly-hatched marine iguanas were chased by racer snakes. She added: ‘For continuity, it was better to crop the scenes together [using] the two cameras we had at the time to create the best possible scene.’
At the Bafta TV awards last month, Planet Earth II – which was narrated by Sir David Attenborough – picked up two awards, for best specialist factual programme and Virgin TV’s ‘must see moment’ for the snakes versus iguana chase, which was voted for by the public. The film proved so popular that American chat show host Ellen DeGeneres used it as a metaphor for hope when starting her post-US election show in November, saying it was proof that ‘things can turn out to be OK’. The Galapagos sequence, filmed on Fernandina Island, was widely praised by critics and viewers on social media after its broadcast.
Behind the scenes footage from the episode was released which revealed the gruesome fate of hatchlings which didn’t manage to escape.
It is not the first time the BBC has been accused of misleading viewers in one of its flagship nature programmes.
In 2011, an episode of Frozen Planet featured dramatic footage of a polar bear tending to her cubs in the snow. Some eight million viewers were led to believe the scene had been captured by BBC cameramen inside an underground cave in the brutal sub-zero temperatures of the Arctic wilderness.
It was in fact filmed in a den made of plaster and wood in a wildlife enclosure at a Dutch zoo, sparking criticism from the Commons culture, media and sports committee that viewers had been misled. In 2001 the filmmakers behind Blue Planet were accused of using deceptive techniques for a segment which showed a lobster spawning scene shot in a British aquarium. Viewers were led to believe the scene took place off the coast of Nova Scotia. Planet Earth II became the most watched natural history programme for at least 15 years and the ‘Mountains’ episode was the eighth most popular show in 2016. Series producer Tom Hughes-Jones shed some light on how a series of that scale was financed, suggesting it had cost in the region of £7million.
New technology, including ultra high-definition cameras and drones, was used to get the highest quality shots, and the crews travelled around the world gathering footage. He said: ‘For wildlife shows only about 12 per cent of it is paid by licence fees.
‘BBC Worldwide invests heavily in wildlife shows because they know they can stick a voice from Kazakhstan or a voice from China and it would translate very well. They are a really good money maker for Worldwide and so there isn’t really much money going on it. I won’t say what it was for Planet Earth II, but for big landmark shows like this, you are looking at £1million per episode.’
‘A really good money maker’