Planet Earth II

Lions being a bit ambitious there?

On a side note, the low bitrate available on Freeview (average of 5Mb/s) really does make some of the fast moving scenes look bad. Need to get a Freesat box.
 
Found that a bit meh if I'm honest. The mustangs and bat v scorpion were the highlights.

The lions v giraffe would have been great if I hadn't already seen it in the trailer.
 
Vonhelmet said:
I'm curious what effects people think they're adding. I'm sure they can pick up some amazing sound with parabolic microphones.
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The skull cracking sound from the jaguar v caiman last week. The sounds of crunching from worm v centipede. The 'whooshing' sound of a monkey jumping (in the cities episode).
 
Stunning camera work as usual but 20+ separate scenes with lens flare is starting to annoy me now, that's one every 2min40 FFS!

PS In before easyrider tells everyone they don't know what they're talking about :D
 
Shame this isn't done in 4K. It's epic enough in HD but 4K would be totally mind blowing.

Good episode tonight on the deserts, those locusts were something else :eek:
 
Yas786 said:
Shame this isn't done in 4K. It's epic enough in HD but 4K would be totally mind blowing.

Good episode tonight on the deserts, those locusts were something else :eek:
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It is filmed in 4k, though maybe not broadcast in 4K. You'll have to get some super duper blu ray I guess.
 
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Vonhelmet said:
It is filmed in 4k, though maybe not broadcast in 4K. You'll have to get some super duper blu ray I guess.
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Ahh ok, the diaries after the main show shows them using some very expensive equipment...could be the Red camera system I think.

Saying that it still looks immense on my 4K set with sky q...what I should have said originally is that its a shame BBC don't broadcast it in 4K goodness.

Think ill be waiting awhile for the 4k blu ray players to fall in prices, at the moment they are expensive.
 
I've only caught bits of teh series sofar but thoroughly enjoyed it :)

Re the broadcast in 4k, the BBC unfortunately can't do anything like that until there are enough viewers with the equipment to justify the extra costs involved in a 4k broadcast (they'll record it and probably edit it in 4k though as they tend to look ahead with this sort of thing), and that probably means until something like 50% of the population have 4K available on their main TV they won't start regular broadcasts in the format.
 
The BBC were one of (if not) the first to broadcast 1080p though, even before Sky etc but I think the jump to broadcasting 4K, cost wise, is just too great right now.
 
Planet Earth 1 was the bbc's first series recorded in HD at a time when a lot of people had barely heard of HD. Whether it was the first HD series full stop I'm not sure.
 
As much as I love BBC Documentaries. Somehow having seen them all this series feels like a repeat of stuff I've seen before.

I'm sure I've seen the mountain goats before and the leopards and the jungle birds of paradise etc etc. I hoped they'd go a bit further a field to some unusual locations.
Might just be a coincidence of having seen a lot of nature shows.
 
Vonhelmet said:
I'm curious what effects people think they're adding. I'm sure they can pick up some amazing sound with parabolic microphones.
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Producers confessed they often can’t pick up detailed sounds such as footsteps due to the “limited range of microphones”.

The BBC said: “Range and ambient noise ensure quite a lot of wild sounds simply cannot be recorded in the field.

“As a result, wildlife film-makers often turn to sound designers to recreate something that sounds like it would in the wild — a soundtrack that is true to nature.”
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I'm not against sound effects being added in PP. The lion/giraffe thuds sounded great last night.

I am, however, against sounds effects for such things like lightning strikes and lizards licking their own eyeballs. It's not needed.
 
I found the "Deserts" curiously unsatisfying, which is a first for PE2. There were just so many things left hanging. Just a throw away comments that "the bat must have no immunity" to explan why repeated scorpion hits didn't kill the bat. No mention of what happens to a few billion locust corpses at the end of the cycle etc. It was all spectacle with little actual education in that episode. I mean, just a simple comment about how the locust bodies would enrich the eco-system etc would have shown the point of it. Just pointing out that it's "apocalyptic" doesn't add anything.

Saying all that, it's still beautiful to watch.
 
I think the reason why I'm not so impressed as the series goes on is that we've seen 90% of it all before (as someone else mentioned). Just look at how much "wow" stuff that was new to TV was in the 1st episode vs the Desert episode where most of it has been "done" before and the next episode "Great Plains" looks even more "seen it before" from the trailer.

bledd said:
Capybaras are great, we had one in our house for a few weeks, so adorable. They love being underwater, it would sit in a bowl of water and blow bubbles :D
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Are you sure you didn't just drown a big rat? :D
 
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