Frozen Planet

[Serial_Apologist]

I was pleasantly surprised by the final episode of this fantastic series. I was worried that the whole thing would be a lecture on global warming, but Sir David simply explained what was happening without trotting out the usual dubious scientific "evidence" that climate change is caused by human activity.

Dubious or not, the evidence of global warming, regardless of the balance of source possibilities, should be enough to make this recession a good enough pretext for putting what available money there is into cleaner technologies.

And it enabled us to re-visit one of the most remarkable images of the whole seven episodes- the birth of that 75,000,000 tonne iceberg in Antarctica.

I wonder where they managed to find scales large enough to weigh it...

[Mr Pee]

I wonder where they managed to find scales large enough to weigh it...

No idea, but that's what Sir David said it weighed. Who am I to doubt him???

[Serial_Apologist]

No idea, but that's what Sir David said it weighed. Who am I to doubt him???

[Chris Newman]

Am I alone in finding the stories in the Daily Mirror about the BBC cheating with polar bears nothing more than a desperate attempt to find a front page story story? In all the previous major Attenborough series the methods used to get special shots have been shown at the end of each episode including time lapse, computer generated imaging and zoo shots. The method used to film polar bear birth was clearly explained in the Planet Earth series and repeated in later series. That it was not specifically described in Frozen Planet is fine by me. Most BBC Natural History Unit fans will have seen it before and have taken it for granted. No misleading was implied. I can understand such articles in one or two other papers but am surprised at the Mirror.

Chris Patten was correct in his stiff defence of the BBC on this issue.

[aeolium]

Chris, if viewers had not seen that episode in the Planet Earth series then the section in the Frozen Planet episode would have been misleading. Footage was shown of Arctic slopes accompanied by the words "On lee-side slopes beneath the snow new lives are beginning", then cutting away to the animal park footage. Without an explanation, either then, or in the 10-minute slot at the end of the episode, I don't see how that could have failed to give the impression that one was being shown cubs in the Arctic. I think it's a pretty minor lapse, but it's still a lapse - BBC documentaries should not mislead in that way, simply to create an effect. A small revision to the commentary, or an explanation in the 10-minute slot, would have sorted it.

[Panjandrum]

It struck me as odd at the time, as there were no other comparable shots or narrative explanation as to how these intimate scenes had been obtained. I question why it was considered necessary by the BBC to interpolate this additional footage when the series purported to be an hermetic documentary on the polar regions. If the filmmakers were unable to shoot a live polar bear birth in the wild, such scenes should have been omitted.

[Ferretfancy]

A large number of BBC Natural History Unit sequences in the past have been shot under laboratory conditions by companies like Oxford Scientific Films, and all kinds of techniques are routinely used with sound as well as vision. It really is simplistic to expect anything else.

It's obviously not always possible to capture the real thing, which is why we rattled wooden coat hangers to imitate the sounds of stags fighting,or chewed celery in front of the microphone to capture the sound of a caterpillar on a leaf. This has been done since the days of Cherry Kearton, and Frozen Planet is no exception. All television is an artefact, just as stereo is, we live in a world of simulations, and are usually quite happy with it.

Anybody ever worked on this sort of programme learned to respect the integrity of all the production team and the immense trouble involved in telling a scientific story with conviction.
Perhaps the critics would like to see these programmes presented in the form of academic papers, subject to peer review and citing all sources. How many viewers would benefit from the experience ?

[Mr Pee]

I didn't see that particular episode of Planet Earth, and when watching Frozen Planet the context certainly led me to believe that what we were watching was the birth of Polar Bears in the wild- the narrative certainly suggested that. I was amazed that they had managed to film it, but then the series was full of remarkable footage, much of which beggared belief.

That fact that it was filmed in an animal park is not a big deal to me. But equally, I think the BBC should have mentioned the fact during the "Freeze Frame" sequence at the end, or left the footage out completely. If Sir David had said " beneath the snow new lives are beginning" and we'd then cut to the cubs first faltering steps, I think that would have been perfectly fine.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

This media hysteria only shows what a bunch of nincompoops they are. It's just like the hot air they created after the Furtwangler Tristan recording, making a mountain out of a molehill over the "trick" of getting Schwarzkopf to sing a couple of high notes that Flagstad was not comfortable with.

[Panjandrum]

It's obviously not always possible to capture the real thing, which is why we rattled wooden coat hangers to imitate the sounds of stags fighting,or chewed celery in front of the microphone to capture the sound of a caterpillar on a leaf. This has been done since the days of Cherry Kearton, and Frozen Planet is no exception. All television is an artefact, just as stereo is, we live in a world of simulations, and are usually quite happy with it.

Perhaps the critics would like to see these programmes presented in the form of academic papers, subject to peer review and citing all sources. How many viewers would benefit from the experience ?

Inadvertently, I think you have touched on the crux of the matter. If this programme is meant as pure entertainment - fine. However, your point undermines the credibility and integrity of the position of the programme makers in attempting to address the issue of climate change in a serious manner. If, as you say, it is "not always possible to capture the real thing", how do we know that the scenes we saw of ice sheets breaking up weren't just mock-ups filmed in the studio? Maybe the shots of the camera crew hurrying to save their equipment from being carried off on a floating piece of ice was a hoax? All of this gives ammunition to the US channels and other agencies which prohibited the final broadcast from being shown in their respective jurisdictions.

As an aside, I thought many of the images were spectactular, particularly when seen in HD. What a shame that we now have to wonder how much was genuine footage shot on location.

[scottycelt]

I didn't see the series, but I'm surprised that anyone would think that cameramen always get so lucky when filming in the wild for any TV series.

The whole point of these Attenborough films is that education is provided in an entertaining way which may well include a wee bit of 'photo-stitching' in order to achieve the complete video story.

Can't see much wrong with that ...

[Mr Pee]

Inadvertently, I think you have touched on the crux of the matter. If this programme is meant as pure entertainment - fine. However, your point undermines the credibility and integrity of the position of the programme makers in attempting to address the issue of climate change in a serious manner. If, as you say, it is "not always possible to capture the real thing", how do we know that the scenes we saw of ice sheets breaking up weren't just mock-ups filmed in the studio? Maybe the shots of the camera crew hurrying to save their equipment from being carried off on a floating piece of ice was a hoax? All of this gives ammunition to the US channels and other agencies which prohibited the final broadcast from being shown in their respective jurisdictions.

As an aside, I thought many of the images were spectactular, particularly when seen in HD. What a shame that we now have to wonder how much was genuine footage shot on location.

I think you are blowing things rather out of proportion. I am sure that what we saw was filmed on location, with the exception of the birth of the polar bear cubs. I cannot imagine how the footage could have been mocked up- the Orcas hunting Seals, the Wolves chasing bison etc. And you only had to watch the Freeze Frame segments at the end of each programme to see the extraordinary lengths that the crews went to to get some of their footage.

I think the BBC should have made it clearer that the birthing sequence was not filmed on location- but that shouldn't colour our views of the whole series. This was a remarkable achievement, and the skill, endurance and courage of the camera crews was extraordinary.

[Ferretfancy]

Panjandrum,
As it happens I've been to Antarctica twice, and I have seen ice sheets breaking up, both on the Peninsula and in the Ross sea. The point is that spectacular break ups of calving glaciers occurs normally every year. It's the speed of climate change in the last couple of generations that gives cause for alarm, and this has been measured carefully since the mid 1950s. In my view films like Frozen Planet can legitimately use material edited from a range of sources as long as the context is explained. They are, after all, full of visual metaphors, but that does not mean that the science is absent.
You could, of course, follow Frozen Planet with a lecture complete with graphs and lists of statistics if you thought that was really necessary to complete the argument, but this is better done in print. Television is a very linear medium, and it is very difficult to use it to qualify ideas, since it needs to tell a story going from A to B to C and so on. If you wish to say that B and C may not follow A if the character of A has changed in some way, you create huge difficulties for the viewer. An article which you can read in print is better for this purpose, because as a reader you can refer back to arguments and sort out their complexities in ways that television is not equipped for.

If you really want to see a distorted natural history film, then the cinema documentary March of the Penguins really fills the bill. I watched it on board a ship in the Southern Ocean in the company of a couple of outraged ornithologists. There is a spectacular sequence in which a huge storm is approaching the penguin colony. and we are told that they are running round in circles in panic. In reality they are being swept by the downdraught from an invisible helicopter. Throughout the film we are repeatedly told about the privations suffered by the crew while filming it. In reality the colony is about four kilometres from a French research station that provides warmth, food, and hot showers every night. March of the Penguins was widely shown on US television without anyone turning a hair.

There is surely a clear distinction to be drawn between editorial tricks of the trade and downright distortion of zoological or climatic truth, and I think that the makers of Frozen Planet are very well aware of where the line should be drawn.

[ahinton]

Pretty much in full agreement with Mr Pee and Ferretfancy here on all counts. Trying to besmirch the extraordoinary Frozen Planet series on the strength of this single arguably minor oversight seems to me to be churlish in the extreme.

As to the climate change issue touched upon by Ferretfancy, I have to admit that I am of the school of thought that the jury remains out for the time being on the balance between what is occurring naturally and what is influenced by human activity and that, as a consequence, certain people with particular agendas are seeking to pursue them by placing undue emphasis on the latter, which will almost certainly prove to be very dangerous for the global economy in the long run once a better factual understanding of this balance has been achieved, by which time it will of course be too late; one has only to hear about glaciers melting and other such events for fingers to be pointed at human activity as the sole cause. It's a pity that far more widespread use of alternative sustainable energy sources (especially solar in those parts of the globe where this is possible) had not taken hold a generation or more ago for, had it done so and had the effects of climate change today still been broadly similar, the fact - and the historical precedent - of naturally occurring climate changes would be better appreciated; yes, many of those changes taking place today are of undeniably greater rapidity than much of what is known to have occurred in the past, but that in itself is no reason necessarily to assume that the causes are entirely different. I accept that there are steps that mankind can take and indeed should take, just as I accept that human activity has been and remains an aggravating factor, but I suspect that a massive reduction in the use of fossil fuels (were it to occur in the near future as indeed it should) will have more of a beneficial effect upon air pollution and its various consequences for nature than it will in arresting certain changes in climate. As a Canadian colleague somewhat ruefully remarked to me recently, "many people know that Canada is reckoned to be one of the best places on earth to live, so if climate change ultimately rids the country of much of its permafrost, we'll have mass immigration on an unprecedented scale; don't worry - we've got plenty of space for a few more tens of millions!". Anyway, apologies for the digression - back to the topic!

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

As a Canadian colleague somewhat ruefully remarked to me recently, "many people know that Canada is reckoned to be one of the best places on earth to live, so if climate change ultimately rids the country of much of its permafrost, we'll have mass immigration on an unprecedented scale; don't worry - we've got plenty of space for a few more tens of millions!".

That sounds remarkably like "I'm alright, Jack." A few more tens of millions will not solve the problem when there are seven thousand million people living on the planet today. Frankly, I'm appalled by Canada's recent pronouncement.