“When you try to go down to 1,000 meters, usually you are filming inside the sub and that really gives you a limited perspective,” said Mark Dalio, Alucia’s founder and creative director.
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“We knew that was going to be really important when it comes to how we feel about the creatures of the deep sea.”Īlucia, which worked on four episodes of the “Blue Planet II” series from its ships, M/V Alucia and M/V Umbra, was also tasked with rigging better underwater cameras that could film at those depths. You’re actually creating a beautiful image,” said Honeyborne. “That means it’s not just like you’re putting a spotlight into the deep ocean. One could provide lighting while the other vehicle shot the scenes. Working on many of the episodes’ dives with Alucia Productions, the nonprofit media company that hosted the New York screening, the filmmakers had the rare advantage of diving with two submersibles in tandem. (Photograph copyright Espen Rekdal 2017.) These mussels thrive on the shorelines of a brine pool, where the expedition dived into the depths of the Gulf of Mexico. They tagged the carcass with a beeper and returned to it again and again over a period of 12 to 14 months, chronicling its slow decay at the hungry mouths of a succession of wildlife.Ī hermit crab with pincers to help it pick at giant mussels. We did not have seven six-gilled sharks come in and sort of rip it to shreds in front of our eyes. Working with scientists, they found a falling sperm whale to film near the Azores. For example, even though what is termed a “whale fall” has never been studied in the Atlantic, she said, previous studies in the Pacific Ocean gave a sense of the incredible yearlong smorgasbord on its carcass that would unfold. While some scenes were about exploration, many, she said, were planned and storyboarded in advance. The scenes were put together from some 1,000 hours of shooting in the deep ocean, where producers leveraged cutting-edge filming techniques and knowledge of some 250 deep sea scientists to capture images, the episode’s producer, Orla Doherty, said. The episode captures scenes such as bluntnose six-gill sharks feasting on a sperm whale carcass, an eel convulsing in shock after entering the intensely salty brine pools in the Gulf of Mexico and the first documentary film footage of Antarctica’s chilly, deep waters, where bioluminescent Antarctic krill rule. Today, even the deepest parts of the ocean also face threats from humans, which include seabed mining, plastic pollution and destructive fishing practices.) (He took issue, however, with how this and other deep sea films characterize its habitat and wildlife as spooky, alien and less known than the surface of Mars. To date, only 5 percent of the deep sea has been mapped in detail, let alone explored by humans, and any film that connects mainstream audiences with the unique and bountiful biodiversity there is certain to challenge the public’s understanding of the boundaries of life on this planet.Īs deep sea scientist Alan Jamieson wrote in a review of the episode in Nature Ecology and Evolution, it still takes a landmark documentary to capture the behaviors of many of the deep sea wildlife featured. These invertebrates attach to the seabed or to another benthic invertebrate, such as a sponge.
We don’t think of them like that.”Īmong the film’s biggest achievements is its second episode, “The Deep,” which takes audiences to the deep sea and will air on BBC America and other stations on Saturday.Ī feather star in the deep waters of the Antarctic Sound. “Many people tell us that the oceans are cold, dark, alien, remote. “We have a shared ambition to tweak the needle and just to move people’s feelings about the oceans,” said Honeyborne at a screening and panel held at New York City’s historic Explorers Club in January. This past Saturday, “Blue Planet II” debuted in the United States, and the filmmakers are hoping to see similar enthusiasm from U.S. viewers. The Atlantic called the film, narrated by the venerable David Attenborough, the “greatest nature series of all time.” In China, according to executive producer James Honeyborne, it’s now been watched 225 million times.
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BBC’s seven-part ocean documentary, “Blue Planet II,” was 2017’s most watched TV series in the United Kingdom, playing a part in Prime Minister Theresa May’s recent moves to take up the cause of marine plastic pollution.