Planet Earth

Gedalia_w said:
This is not one those "cack excuse for cheap cgi to sensenalise science and sell it to the lowest common denominator rubbish". This is quality **** we're talking about, for God's sake man, its got Attenbourough on board!

I can't imagine what the Beeb is going to do once Attenbourough retires. I've read that he's going to only do one or more of these big shows and will be retiring in the next few years.
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made me laugh out loud!!!! :D
 
caught this program halfway through, what gets me is how this time lapse photography stuff works though, they would be panning past a tree or something and you would see the plant growing, how is this possible? I can get it when the camera is stationary, but movement in the camera??

I must admit it made me chuckle to see the baby elephant walk into the tree after they came out of the blinding sand storm!
 
Gedalia_w said:
I hope at least some of you watched it tonight. It was breathtaking, especially that 40x slowed down great white shark jumping clear out of the water with a seal in its jaws!

Can't wait for next week.
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Agreed!, the Great White is probably my favourite Predator,and that was an amazing piece of filming.
 
This was absolutely breathtaking. Watched it with family.

*Slowed-down scene of jumping whale/shark/thing*

*absolute silence in the room*

"...How much is the license fee again?"

Absolutely fantastic stuff.

Was a fantastic programme, although i thought the diaries bit at the end didn't quite fit somehow. Sounded very "Look at us, we are using the best gear".
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Which is very exciting! It means it's the first time that some of the shots have ever been filmed, which is amazing for us, the viewers, but also for the team doing it. Camping out, chasing wild animals and filming from over a kilometre away? Catching the tiniest movements of huge animals? Absolutely fantastic stuff! :D
 
The photography was fantastic, every shot was perfect and managed to convey the atmosphere of the environment. The Great White in particular; managed to give a sense of the pure energy needed to hurl itself out of the water. Attenborough's narration was not up to the usual standard but it is understandable given that this is the introductory episode. Again this is probably worth the License fee alone imho and again I will be getting the DVD to add to my attenborough collection as soon as it is availiable. :)



OT: Did anyone watch the thing about the icebergs & the Titanic? Even though the Titanic tie in was a bit naff, I thought the information about the behaviour of the bergs was great and the photography also was very impressive in it's technicality and skill in shooting.
 
I was really looking forward to this and thoroughly enjoyed it until the last 10 minutes with all that diary nonsense. A seperate 'making of' documentary would be fine but to me it ruined the majesty of some of the wildlife.

Own up, who didn't say "Awwww" at the polar bear cubs. :)


EDIT: As for earning the license fee nonsense, yes I agree that programmes like this make it well worth the money but then the BBC ruin it all woth crap like Eastenders and 1Xtra. Youhave to look at the overall performance of the corporation rather than one series.
 
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AJUK said:
EDIT: As for earning the license fee nonsense, yes I agree that programmes like this make it well worth the money but then the BBC ruin it all woth crap like Eastenders and 1Xtra. Youhave to look at the overall performance of the corporation rather than one series.
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Tbh, I only watch TV on a sunday night so just for TopGear and these documentaries, it s well worth it imho. :)
 
Guys, the reason there was that 10min making of at the end of the show is that they have to fill the last 10min with something as these shows are sold (and co-funded) by large American networks and the show has to fit into an hour timeslot that must include adverts. Thats why the actual episode is only 50min long.

This has always been the case. For example, the last great natural history show Life in the Undergrowth also had 10min at the end of each episode explaining how they got their incredible upclose shots of the insects.
 
I was awed and dumbstruck by the whole program. God that must take some patience and skill to get shots like those. The great white had me wide eyed and slack jawed.

The poor elephant walking in the wrong direction :(

Also made me laugh when the baby elephant walked into the tree and also when the line of elephants stopped and they walked into each other :)

Wild hunting dogs, wolves, polar bears - amazing!

I will probably watch it agaiin on Saturday!
 
Not just American networks, they hope to sell the series to about 100 countries - which is good as it must've cost a fortune to make :eek:
 
Beansprout said:
Not just American networks, they hope to sell the series to about 100 countries - which is good as it must've cost a fortune to make :eek:
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Programmes like this are viable products to be sold around the world thereby making the producers and the BBC millions. So why do we still need to pay the license fee?
 
AJUK said:
Programmes like this are viable products to be sold around the world thereby making the producers and the BBC millions. So why do we still need to pay the license fee?
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They said it'd reduce to cost to the license payer to <a smaller amount>, not make money from it, so I presume that the success of one series isn't enough to cover all the BBC's operating costs.

I don't know the figures for the BBC's revenue, but I guess they'd be interesting to see.
 
They might make millions later but that doesn't mean that'd have enough money to pay everyone involved in the making of it. As far as I know, the BBC is a non-profit organisation, there are no shareholders to please. All the money they make will be ploughed back into production. I like having a channel that doesn't have to bow down to advertisers. Good stuff.

EDIT: BBC balance sheets: http://www.bbcgovernors.co.uk/annreport/report05/BBC_94-135.pdf

Seems they've been running on a deficit for (at least) the last couple of years. It's decreasing however, and it says they hole to be in balance by the end of the five-year-plan (thoug not sure when the plan started).
 
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What that doesn't tell you though is how massively overstaffed (all with big fat pensions) the BBC is. Ian Collins, a DJ on Talk Sport, used to work at the BBC and during a debate on the license fee he commented that in the commercial sector they have one person to do a job whereas the equivalent job in the BBC is done by three people. That is why there is a deficit, they are just like a big self rightous local authority suffocating on their own political correctness. /rant over :)
 
AJUK said:
What that doesn't tell you though is how massively overstaffed (all with big fat pensions) the BBC is. Ian Collins, a DJ on Talk Sport, used to work at the BBC and during a debate on the license fee he commented that in the commercial sector they have one person to do a job whereas the equivalent job in the BBC is done by three people. That is why there is a deficit, they are just like a big self rightous local authority suffocating on their own political correctness. /rant over :)
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The other side of the coin is that a commercial org has its main interests to reduce costs, so will employ the absolute minimum.

But yeah, public bodies (Beeb, NHS) = bloated. Generally.
 
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