
The tricks behind nature documentaries - ab9
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/21/AR2010092105782_pf.html
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avar
Regarding Man v.s. Wild: The entire premise of the show is false. They claim
to drop Bear Grylls in some remote location where he has to make it back to
civilization. But in reality they seem to just drive around and film him doing
stunts, see e.g.:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UpSlpvb1is>

Worse, a lot of the behavior on that show is terrible survival behavior. E.g.
when they did the episode in Iceland Grylls at one point jumped into a water
filled ravine to make it to the other bank, and planned to dry off in some
geothermal area he could see in the distance.

Firstly there's no ravine like that in Iceland that you couldn't easily walk
around in 5-10 minutes without getting yourself wet, and secondly jumping into
freezing water in the wilderness and thinking you can dry yourself off in some
unfamiliar geothermal area you can spot in the distance is beyond stupid.

Most of the world's geothermal areas (including Iceland's) are just a
collection of steaming holes in the ground, or water either too hot or too
cold to dry off in. It's much better to stay dry than to take such a chance.

There are examples like that in virtually every episodes. E.g. Grylls climbing
down a waterfall that he could trivially have walked around.

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grandalf
Any more examples of terrible survival behavior?

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feral
Its very hard to find examples of good survival behaviour in Grylls' work.

Essentially, if you are on your own, with no rescue coming, you must be super
conservative in everything you do. A simple and common broken ankle is now a
fatal wound.

With this in mind, you don't charge around everywhere like Grylls does. You
don't climb anything you could fall off, you don't make any big jumps. You
move slowly and carefully, conserving energy and minimising risk.

Pretty much everything he does, from start to finish, as he runs around for
the camera, while entertaining television, is a terrible survival template.
You find very few experienced mountain guides that run around like Bear does.

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jeebusroxors
I think the entire notion of finding your way back is silly. One of the keys
of survival is letting someone know where you are and when you will be back.

If you go missing, people will come looking with a general idea of where you
are, and how far you could have traveled. Once you start trekking around
because you saw a river and rivers always lead to civilizations, that's what
Bear said, you start increasing the area you could be, while wasting calories
and risking injury.

Conserve your energy, make yourself visible (fire, mirror, bright colors,
signals), and try to have a decent time.

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clutchski
I was up in Churchill, Manitoba this past summer, home to many polar bears.
Some locals told me stories about film makers who come to the North with their
"the bears are all dying" narrative already set, and being very distraught
when they couldn't be taken to a skinny polar bear, because they were, indeed,
all fat at that time of year.

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kiba
"Survivorman" is much more tame than "Man vs Wild", but I doubt "Survivorman"
would actually get more rating.

Who would want to watch a guy starve half of the time and subsists himself on
the small flora and fauna he can catch? Nobody. But it's much more realistic
and I think much more informative.

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kj12345
I always wish they would make clear "rules of engagement" in shows like Man vs
Wild. In other words the crew is not allowed to provide any assistance or
interference until the person trying to survive says its an emergency, and
they would show that moment on film. That would add drama and achieve a
clearer view of what the experience is really like.

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kj12345
Some of these examples are silly. Adding sound effects (Foley) is completely
standard practice. The fact that Winged Migration involves training birds to
fly next to cameras is fully documented in the "making of" feature on the
Winged Migration DVD and was never hidden.

On the other hand giving multiple animals a single name and pretending there's
an unbroken drama is disturbing because it genuinely distorts stories and
might teach the wrong lesson, for example that a species is doing fine, when
in fact it's facing major obstacles.

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Untitled
This is sad. What made environmental programs worse for me is the human
interaction (and human interest) stories that they try to create. Usually it
is a person catching or wrestling with a wild animal (they usually try to
justify this for some obscure reason instead of admitting it is for
television).

Probably the best example of this is Steve Irwin's shows.

But this probably just mirrors what people want. Everything should be instant
gratification - like getting drive through hamburgers.

I personally think that if they set up nice highres cameras at a watering hole
(with nice internet connection) it would be better. You would then be able to
watch the water hole all day and it would be cheap.

Imagine laying on a couch on a Saturday, reading a book while eying the
watering hole in HD on your television/PC...

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glhaynes
I believe there's definitely a role for "curated" [to tie it back to another
ongoing discussion] nature/environmental programs, but I really like your idea
of an HD watering hole feed. Does anybody know of anything like it? Something
that could just be left to run on your TV and maybe you might happen to catch
something amazing if you looked up at just the right time?

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danielnicollet
Image is always manipulated one way or another, willingly or inadvertently,
for the form or to change its meaning. Nothing really that new there. Like the
sound of the bear paw ion the water example: did anyone really think they had
a mike pole right above the beast? Did I miss something?

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gbog
I would like to see it again but I think Flaherty's Nanook
<http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0013427/> feels much more real than most of more
recent nature movies. Even if there is always some artificial human hand
behind (be it only the cutting of the reels), some movies are good and some
aren't, and in this documentary genre "good" should not mean bloody
spectacular, it should mean just real. In the article someone draw the line to
Gorilla suits, I would draw it much closer to Flaherty's way.

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apu
I wonder if one can define a loose version of the Heisenberg uncertainty
principle for all documentaries: the more closely involved the film-maker is
to the action, the more he/she influences it.

A scene which vividly comes to mind is in _Harlan County, USA_ , where the
film-maker gets shot at (!) by one of the anti-union thugs.

~~~
alextp
There is a fantastic documentary about a documentary, Santiago, (
<http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santiago_(document%C3%A1rio)> , unfortunately in
portuguese), that explores this very issue. When he was young, the director
tried to shoot a documentary about his family's former butler, but ended up
discarding the footage. Years later, after the butler was dead, he came back
to the footage and realized what a dick he was during the whole process. He
then edited it to tell a story of the common blindness of the documentarist.
It's touching, and makes it so you will never watch a documentary in the same
way after watching it. I have no idea if it was released internationally, but
it's definitely worth seeing.

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sliverstorm
I always like to imagine "Planet Earth" is free of most of this stuff, and I
hope I won't be proven otherwise.

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iuguy
One of the great things about the BBC natural history unit's programmes is
that on the DVDs/Blu-Rays/Broadcasts they tend to show additional footage of
how certain scenes were captured. They do tend to have the whole 6 weeks out
in the middle of nowhere waiting for the perfect shot stuff going on, but of
course that tends to be for one scene.

The other thing I've noticed the BBC do is they reuse footage from one
documentary in another, which I guess is fair enough if it's good footage. I'd
also be surprised if there wasn't some clever editing with audio to get the
results.

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smackay
I think the real point of the story is the push towards animals as
entertainment rather than the fact that some hard to get footage is staged
(though the two points are mixed together). The Economist had a good article
on just how profitable wildlife show are,
[http://www.economist.com/node/16793496?story_id=16793496&...](http://www.economist.com/node/16793496?story_id=16793496&CFID=144070123&CFTOKEN=64988477).
Consequently it is easy to see why content creators are keen to reduce costs
(cut corners ?) and boost ratings.

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grandalf
I've heard Chris speak and he's a fascinating guy. I haven't bought my copy
yet but I imagine the book is a great read based on his engaging speaking
style.

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mmphosis
I think that the title of this HN posting is misleading. The actual title of
the article is _Wildlife filmmaker Chris Palmer shows that animals are often
set up to succeed_

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danielsoneg
If this surprises you, I've got a fantastic investment opportunity I'd love to
discuss...

