Production team
With a budget of £16 million, Planet Earth is the most expensive documentary series the BBC has ever made. The corporation signed a co-financing deal with the Discovery Channel and NHK (Japan’s state broadcaster), its production partners on The Blue Planet, to spread the cost of the ambitious project. Under the terms of the deal, Discovery retained the US rights and NHK the Japanese rights, while BBC Worldwide retained the rights for the rest of the world. Together, the Discovery and NHK financing amounted to 60–70% of the cost of the series, which paid for the upgrade to the high-definition format. BBC Worldwide also funded the additional £7.4 million budget of Earth, the feature film.The production duties were handled by the BBC Natural History Unit under the leadership of executive producer Alastair Fothergill. The individual episodes were overseen by six producers: Vanessa Berlowitz, Mark Brownlow, Andy Byatt, Huw Cordey, Jonny Keeling and Mark Linfield. They directed the film crews in the field, backed up by a team of production co-ordinators and researchers at the Natural History Unit's offices in Bristol, England. In addition, the supporting team of scientists, guides, fixers, pilots, drivers and field assistants numbered in the hundreds or even thousands.
Post-production was carried out using BBC Resources' facilities in Bristol. Investment in new technology enabled the series to be edited and delivered without using videotapes. Planet Earth's distinctive use of satellite imagery and time-lapse effects were provided by design company Burrell Durrant Hifle, using NASA photography.The original score was composed and conducted by George Fenton, a veteran of previous BBC natural history documentaries, and performed by the BBC Concert Orchestra. The script was written by the producers with input from David Attenborough, though the US episodes feature different narration and are slightly shorter in length.
Filming
Production began in 2002 and was completed in autumn 2006, shortly before the final six episodes went to air. The first year after commissioning was spent on researching and planning the shoots. To capture all the footage required by the producers, 71 camera operators filmed in 204 locations in 62 countries on all seven continents, spending more than 2000 days in the field.The decision to film Planet Earth in high definition (HD) was initially regarded by the BBC as a risk. In 2002, the technology was still largely untested in the field, and Fothergill was concerned about the difficulties of adapting to the new cameras. Despite the reservations, the HD cameras proved to be reliable and even out-performed traditional film cameras in certain situations. Their high sensitivity allowed the team to film at lower light levels than film cameras, in dark rainforests for example. Because tape stock is smaller, lighter, and cheaper than film, the lengths of shoots were limited primarily by the capacity of batteries. This improved the chances of capturing interesting behaviour, and enabled longer aerial shoots.
Panasonic VariCam HD cameras were used for land-based footage and Sony HD cameras for aerial sequences. The latter, a distinctive feature of Planet Earth, were shot using a technique borrowed from Hollywood action films. Michael Kelem, the aerial cameraman, had previously worked on Mission: Impossible III and Black Hawk Down. The camera was mounted in a device called a Cineflex (Heligimbal), a gyroscopically-stabilised housing attached to the underside of a helicopter and controlled by joystick from inside the cockpit. The unit was lightweight, enabling lenses with a longer reach to be attached (up to 40x magnification). This enabled him to capture steady images of individual creatures from a height which prevented the noise of the helicopter from disturbing them.
TV firsts
One of the producers' aims was to build as much unique footage into Planet Earth as possible, and the crews succeeded in filming a number of species, locations and events from the natural world which had never before been shown on television, including:- Wild Bactrian camels filmed eating snow in the Gobi desert
- An Amur leopard mother and cub in the forests of eastern Russia
- A sequence showing a snow leopard attempting to hunt a markhor in north-west Pakistan
- Arctic wolf and African wild dog hunts filmed from the air
- The highest-ever aerial footage of Mount Everest and the Karakoram
- Desperate lions hunting and killing an elephant at night
- A piranha feeding frenzy filmed in the water with the fish
- Unprecedented access to the dramatic Lechuguilla Cave in New Mexico
- The oceanic whitetip shark, a rare ocean wanderer
