Is it just me, I bet it isn’t, that thinks the Earth Flight series is unmissable but also a bit tacky? I enjoyed Thursday’s programme, they were in Europe, and there were some very memorable sights: the polar bear eating barnacle goslings, the swallow catching a feather in flight, the cranes dancing, all those starlings over Rome and a host of others.
But there were a few slight errors in the commentary and some unfortunate and confusing cuts from one piece of action to another. The story line was a bit thin and clunky. In a way, I wish I’d listened with the sound turned off – but I like trying to identify the bird song – I’m just like that.
But you can’t beat the moving image to put nature across to you – or can you?
This week I visited the Veiolia Environnement Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition at the Natural History Museum. The building itself is amazing and wonderful but so was the exhibition – and nothing moved. But I have to say the images moved me.
You will have your own favourites if you visit the exhibition, and I won’t tell you mine, but you’ll find it difficult to choose, I predict.
I did like the horned (shore) lark as it reminded me of my visit to the USA where I saw this species running around in fields near Cornell in NY State and also at the very top of the Bearthtooth Pass in Montana – or actually at the Montana-Wyoming border where the larks were running about on the snow that blocked my route into Yellowstone. And there were bobcats from the Badlands NP too that brought back memories of the place although, unfortunately for me, not of bobcats. But there were also images taken in back gardens of Europe – amazingly sharp and beautiful images, such as the one of the great tit with outspread wings and tail which showed a tatty left primary and a tatty tail feather that if you had been there you would never have had the acuity to notice.
Do you have a preference for still or moving images?
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Yes I think that Earthflight is unmissable despite the poor commentary and the poor continuity, stunning sequences abound, this week I particularly enjoyed the Sand Martins taking Mayflies in Hungary as well as most of the bits mark mentions.
As to a preference of moving or still, I love them both, as a keen but very amateur photographer of wildlifeI am beginning to understand the huge amount of skill and patience not to say luck involved to get “That Image” and some moving images are equalling stunning. so for me I choose not to choose in this case.
Agreed Mark. There are some glaring mistakes in the commentary. I do not think Cranes stop off in the Carmargue in fact most Cranes move up towards the Atlantic coast. It feels like they had some good shots of the Camargue horses so they needed some birds to go with that. All the episodes have been full of such awful howlers.
The programme also seems a tad unreal. They appear to have used a combination of tame birds filmed flying with computer generated images or so it seems. This would leave some viewers wondering how on earth they could get such pictures. Once again there is no expanation by the BBC.
I do think that when you are making a wildlife film for educational purposes you could get the facts right. There are so many people who could have written a script that is correct. It is arrogance to ignore that.
Ir is one of the most disappointing series I have seen on BBC but I still watch it because there are some extraordinary shots. Still disappointing.
Why can’t people just enjoy seeing things we have never seen.In many ways this is as good as any wildlife on TV has ever been.
Think the first words uttered by some people must have been critical of something or other.
I forgive its mistakes for the incredible footage. Was watching with my mouth open on occasions. Saw a Sparrowhawk carry off a Snipe today, a stunning moving image !
For a programme of such frequent beauty, it is a real shame that the script seems to have been written at a different level, I agree. All the way through I wanted to switch the sound off and replace with something like Rautavaara, but it meant riffling through CDs and then I’d miss the visuals. Given the months of dedication and hard work by the camera crews, to have errors and staged events was a shame. What will be good, however, is that people who are not experts will have been inspired by much of what they saw and may not remember too much before they start digging and delving for themselves. That is the power of the educationary force of beauty, majesty and grace.
Realised earlier that I missed answering your question, still or moving?? Both have their appropriate places and both have a power to engage. Still on the telly looks a bit odd, even on the news, and my soul goes pale at the idea of moving pictures as part of the Wildlife Photographer of the Year….where it is the very power of a still image to evoke a story and summon up questions that, for me, makes the stunning beauty or power of the images so important. It is possible that it may relate to the amount of time you have available to capture the attention of the viewer??
I feel a great photo and a great video both deserve equal respect for the amount of dedication that has gone in to the work that makes you say “wow that is amazing!” For that reason I feel they are very equal.
With regards to Earthflight, the series is simply brilliant. Regardless if they have used tame birds for some of the filming, it is still truly a marvelous series and we should appreciate that. Does it really matter if they are tame? Surely we should be enjoying the visuals. I must be honest I haven’t noticed the errors in the script but probably will if I watched it back, but where credit is due Mr Tennant, I feel, is great at narrating.
Steve – Welcome to this blog and thanks for your comment.
Hmmmmm…. I have to say I am a little disappointed with Earthflight. It promised so much and has made good on those promises only in brief moments in an otherwise pretty ham-fisted effort.
That said, I absolutely agree that the footage of the swallow catching a feather in flight was magnificent.
I was lucky enough to film (and webcast) a family of swifts breeding in our attic for the last two years
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ae_2Yl8BcKE&feature=g-upl&context=G2649854AUAAAAMgAJAA
and watched with great interest, our swifts bringing gurt big feathers into their nest, so that was a personal treat for me.
As was the footage of the mayflies. Beautiful photography.
The rest seems a little too contrived though and way too anthropomorphic. I understand that from time to time, I think its probably necessary to occasionally assign human emotions to animals to engage the often unscientific viewing public, but Earthflight really does push the boat out with anthropormorphism in my view and I find that frustrating.
Both my wife and I are left feeling a little cheated after each episode having been put through a load of (very good footage admittedly) of aesthetically-pleasing places, shot from above (from all angles, many times) with some imprinted geese thrown in, almost as an extra.
http://www.scotsman.com/lifestyle/arts-blog/camerman_takes_to_edinburgh_skies_for_earthflight_episode_1_2046229
After what seemed like an eternity flying over Chateau de Chenonceau from all angles (the imprinted geese must have been tired after take after take there to satisfy the editor!) I took my opportunity to go make a cup of tea.
It wasnt just the chateau though either, the camargue section seemed beautiful for sure, but ultimately utterly irrelevant. I felt like I was watching an old guinness advert through that part!
I’ll keep watching, if only for the brief swallow/feather moments (WONDERFUL!) and hoping that the producers will move away from cranes, storks, flamingo and imprinted geese now. All these birds have no flying prowess at all compared to my beautiful swifts!
On the subject of footage versus still photography. A swallow / feather moment can only really be done justice with a moving image and there are plenty of other examples I could give. But whilst footage like this is improved very often with a little sympathetic music, strip away the banal anthropormorphic commentary please!
As a keen amateur photographer myself though, I will always prefer the still image. I would regard photography as an art – very often the Veiolia Environnement Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition has a lot of “arty” shots as winning images and I really appreciate that. A good, arty still makes the viewer (onlooker) think about the moment captured – and often obliges them to form often many more opinions on the photograph itself (as well as the subject) than when watching nice footage of the same moment.
I think it can almost be compared to painting a moment or filming it and I’d probably be more appreciative of the painting than the film.
Just my take on it though.
Doug
Doug – thank you for a great comment.
Mark please enlighten everyone about what all of the mistakes are in this earthflight film.
i guessed that barnacle geese flying over London would be highly unlikely, but only a couple of years ago there were between 36 and 88 barnacles on Rainham marshes. Also Cranes have been recorded on the Camargue albeit in smallish numbers. I would guess that the film crew would launch a feather into the air in order to capture that action shot, so this may not be as magnificent as you may suggest..
DavidH – I wasn’t making a list of clunkiness! But, as I recall those rather unusual barnacle geese arrived over the white cliffs of Dover which is an interesting way for them to come, flew down the Thames, up Loch Ness (which I think was described as North West) and ended up on Svalbard. That makes quite a nonsense of barnacle goose migration. It doesn’t really matter except that there are only two likely explanations – carelessness about the facts of the migration the programme claims to celebrate, or deliberately mashing it up so that the images look good (those white cliffs, that cityscape of London).
And, as pointed out by Derek – the Camargue is not really on the crane migration route and so it looks a little as though they were ‘put there’ so that a few white horses could be filmed splashing their way photogenically through the marshes. If that was what happened, is that good film-making or stretching the truth for an attractive image?
The swallow catching a feather was a swallow catching a feather! I don’t mind where the feather came from.
And thank you, Doug, for reminding me that the sand martins catching mayflies was just amazing! Amazing because sand martins are amazing, because mayflies are amazing, because sand martins catching mayflies are amazing and because the number of emerging mayflies was amazing. Just amazing!
My original blog was not very critical of the programme – I described it as ‘unmissable’, I said I enjoyed it and it had very memorable moments but had some slight errors. That’s hardly panning it is it?
You did say it was a bit tacky! I take your points Mark, but the commentary did say that it was possible for Barnacle Geese to be blown off course and find themselves over London. The thing about wildlife filmmaking is that it is almost impossible to start with a storyline and then go out and film the clips that you require. What you need do is mould the clips that you already have into some kind of story or sequence. What was implied was that those vast numbers of cranes were in the camargue when clearly they were not, but the program didn’t actually state this as being the fact. As Dennis said you have to just sit back, relax and enjoy these programmes without always feeling the need to be critical about them.
I personally thought it was excellent throughout
Regarding Barnacle Geese – May be it was the same script writer from ‘Robin Hood, Prince of thieves!’ Landed at white cliffs of Dover, ran through Hadrian’s Wall, [Now famous Robin Hood’s Sycamore – Front cover of next book!!], fought Little John at Aysgarth Falls, Yorkshire and still never found Sherwood Forest!!
Re Earthflight. Tacky, for sure, but I think we need to remember that the BBC will have an eye on worldwide sales to recoup their considerable outlay on this, and that means interesting the Americans. The potential audience there may recognise Venice, London, and perhaps even the Chateau de Chenonceau, so these places have to be in. Good for European tourism too.
It offends me also, but only a small proportion of viewers are knowledgeable birders and therefore troubled by the strange migration route of the common crane – via the Camargue, Venice, the Loire valley, the bulb fields of Holland and Lake Hornborga in Sweden, if I recall correctly. So perhaps we should just delight in the visuals, as you suggest, and if we need further intellectual stimulation we can ponder about how the more amazing scenes were constructed. Microlights and imprinted birds seem to be one of the key factors, but that’s still no small undertaking. And I’m prepared to suspend disbelief over the short term. But in the end, and like some of your other respondents, I was even more impressed by the sequences of sand martins catching mayflies and the murmurations of starlings. I hope you noticed some former RSPB Film Unit cameramen were credited! Certainly Mike Richards was one of them, but I think he may pre-date even your time with the Society, Mark.
I was particularly pleased to read that you have a soft spot for the Veolia Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition. You might have mentioned (but perhaps overlooked?) that the great tit was photographed by a young Brit, Jamie Unwin, in the 15-17 year old category. Remarkable! All your readers should go if they get the chance.
Still photographs can have an extraordinary power, and indeed be quite moving. It’s a shame so many conservation scientists are slow to recognise this, and all too often use photographs as an afterthought – a last minute way to fill a space in a report or pretty up a Powerpoint presentation – and they’re missing a trick. But I sense the landscape is changing here, and it’s great to have an endorsement from an eminent (and clearly more enlightened) scientist like yourself.
If it’s not taking too much of a liberty, some of your readers may be interested to know about the 2020VISION project a few of us are engaged in. This ambitious initiative aims to use photography to communicate the value of nature’s capital to a much wider audience, and promote the message that a healthy environment means healthy people. Lots more splendid and uplifting photographs here!
Website: http://www.2020v.org
Blog: http://blog.2020v.org/
Chris – welcome to this blog. And thank you for your comments. I’ll be reviewing your new book here fairly soon – watch this space!