Planet Earth

If you’ve watched the Discovery Channel or any of its affiliates at all during the past few months, you’ve probably seen the hype for their “planet earth” miniseries. We watched the first episode last night, and I have to say that it was pretty incredible.

Many of the things they showed had never been filmed before, like a mother and baby giant panda in their den in the wild, and a snow leopard chasing down prey. I won’t give away any more about the content, because I’m sure they’ll repeat the whole series, and the Science Channel is rerunning the latest episode on the following Monday night.

Besides the excellent content and narration, I thought the cinematography was impressive. The quality of the film alone seemed to be well above your normal documentary—bright, crisp colors, and incredible definition. We don’t even have HD, and I was amazed.

Some of the shots left me wondering how in the heck they got them, like perfectly steady shots of a huge flock of cranes flying up near the peak of Everest. There was another of a grizzly scavenging for food on a rocky hillside. The shot started with the bear taking up nearly all of the screen, and zoomed waaayyyy back until the bear was smaller than the pixels on my TV, and the mountain was framed in the screen. I thought lens technology like that was limited to spy satellites and space telescopes.

They showed a lot of time lapse scenes of landscapes, clouds, starry skies, etc., but there was one that seemed just darn near impossible. It was a time-lapse-and-pan that showed a landscape through all four seasons. The camera panned across as the time-lapse whizzed the seasons by. I was blown away by how smooth it all was. That had to be a seriously slow and smooth rotational motor … and how the heck did they keep that camera in place and so steady for 12 months???

I definitely recommend getting your Battlestar Galactica fix some other way next Sunday, and tuning in to planet earth.