Some people like to say there's nothing left to discover in the world. As humans continue to develop better technology, the far-flung corners of the metaphorical map continue to be coloured in.
But not really. With thousands of hours of footage taken over more than three years, the BBC is here to prove you wrong. Earth: One Amazing Day -- the "sequel" to the acclaimed 2007 documentary Earth -- arrives in Thai cinemas this week, bringing with it a new and vibrant spin on the BBC's usual natural history films, including that famous scene, akin to an action movie, of snakes chasing baby iguanas, which went viral as a clip last year.
The film's director Richard Dale and producer Stephen McDonogh were in Bangkok this week, and we talked to them about this exciting endeavour.
It's been 10 years since the original Earth. How did this sequel project come to be?
McDonogh: The original told the story of an entire year on Earth. Ten years later, the world is a much different place, and the technology that we've got at our disposal to tell these stories is really the reason why we've decided to dive back into cinema. We felt we could tell a new story with a new narrative -- that circular story of one day, every day, on this planet. Once we had found that, we knew that the simplicity of the message, and how we could bring together the ambition of filming these natural behaviours in environments around the world, was something that we could author.
Dale: Put it this way. Your phone now has a better camera in it than we were able, as professionals, to use 10 years ago. Now, we can do something that we couldn't do then which is to be very close and intimate with these animals.
How does this sequel differ from the original, or any other nature documentary out there?
McDonogh: We wanted to bring the resources of the BBC's natural history expertise into something for the big screen. This is a movie -- we want you to eat popcorn with your family and friends, enjoy it and be entertained by it. It's a different type of storytelling that people are used to seeing from the BBC, which usually tells stories in a more encyclopaedic way.
Dale: It's an entertainment piece. That's the primary aim, really, if I think about it, and it isn't political, it isn't environmental. We're just showing you and reminding you that your world is special. We want you to watch the film and go 'wow, what a lovely place, I'd love to go there. Wait, I am there'.
We often hear stories about how natural documentary photographers have to put themselves in extreme conditions just to get the one perfect shot. Has technology done anything to make that process easier?
McDonogh: We spend months and months, if not years, in research and location scouting. The whole idea is to reduce the rate of failure. The truth is that we fail far more than we succeed because it is so difficult to capture these natural behaviours, even after going into their habitat so they won't react to our presence at all. In the new film, we have this wonderful sequence with dancing bears, naturally scrubbing their backs in the wild. Those shots were taken by cameras with motion sensors, which activate when they walk into the shot, which is how it is possible. Having all these tools, lightweight cameras and technology has allowed us a whole new way of telling a story.
Dale: Sometimes we're trying to capture an event that happens once a year -- animal breeding patterns for example -- and it happens in one specific place. We have a famous sequence on the Galapagos Islands with these snakes chasing little baby marine iguanas. It happens on one particular part of one particular island once a year. So no amount of going out there and sitting in a hole will be any use if it's the wrong time of the year. So you have to work very closely with scientists who are in the field studying them.
You've collected thousands of hours of footage to create this 90-minute film. How did you choose which pieces of footage to include?
McDonogh: We worked with a total of 60 terabytes of footage, which works out to be about 250,000 DVDs of footage. But what you'll see is a 90-minute film. And it's not all the best of the best, because the point is that the footage is relevant to the film. The most amazing shots that we've caught along the way are not in this film, because they do not fit the narrative.
Dale: They don't tell a story. That's one of the things, I think, that's different from a film just about animal behaviour -- which is primarily going to be interested in animal behaviour -- and a film we're trying to make, which is a film about stories of the natural world, which resonate with us and our own story. Someone earlier said the word touching, and I think it's certainly a very touching and inspiring film. Or at least that's what we're trying to do.
Were there any notable shots that you wanted to be in the film, but aren't?
Dale: There's a sequence that was in the film for a certain point, and it was there for a long time, and I fought for it, but it ultimately didn't earn its place and it went. It was of a family of Canadian mountain geese, who in order to avoid getting killed by foxes, nest on these cliffs 200m tall. But there's no food up there. So when the little geese hatch, they'll stay up there for a couple of days, but there's no food for them, and they'll starve if they don't get off. And they can't fly for at least 20 days, but on day three, they jump off the cliff, led by their parents.
And remember, these baby geese do not fly, they just plummet. And of course, the bulk of them -- not all of them -- survive, and they go on to live in the grass with their parents. And it's such an interesting story in a way, the brutality of nature, and the unintuitiveness of it. It's nature's kind of roulette.
McDonogh:It was when we were filming off the coast of Mexico. On a Full Moon, in the ocean, we were trying to film the behaviours of these manta rays, who come into the area once a year to mate. Within the same time, there is a bioluminescent algae that is drawn out by the Full Moon. We actually got the shot we wanted, which is when these manta rays swim through these algae and make them light right up.
This mystical moment of bioluminescent algae makes these creatures glow in the dark. And we caught it, but there wasn't enough of the manta ray in the shot, and the quality isn't good enough for the big cinema. It looked amazing on my phone though.
