The tricks behind nature documentaries

Regarding Man v.s. Wild: The entire premise of the show is false. They claim to drop Bear Grylls in some remote location where he has to make it back to civilization. But in reality they seem to just drive around and film him doing stunts, see e.g.:<p><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UpSlpvb1is" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UpSlpvb1is</a><p>Worse, a lot of the behavior on that show is terrible survival behavior. E.g. when they did the episode in Iceland Grylls at one point jumped into a water filled ravine to make it to the other bank, and planned to dry off in some geothermal area he could see in the distance.<p>Firstly there's no ravine like that in Iceland that you couldn't easily walk around in 5-10 minutes without getting yourself wet, and secondly jumping into freezing water in the wilderness and thinking you can dry yourself off in some unfamiliar geothermal area you can spot in the distance is beyond stupid.<p>Most of the world's geothermal areas (including Iceland's) are just a collection of steaming holes in the ground, or water either too hot or too cold to dry off in. It's much better to stay dry than to take such a chance.<p>There are examples like that in virtually every episodes. E.g. Grylls climbing down a waterfall that he could trivially have walked around.

I was up in Churchill, Manitoba this past summer, home to many polar bears. Some locals told me stories about film makers who come to the North with their "the bears are all dying" narrative already set, and being very distraught when they couldn't be taken to a skinny polar bear, because they were, indeed, all fat at that time of year.

"Survivorman" is much more tame than "Man vs Wild", but I doubt "Survivorman" would actually get more rating.<p>Who would want to watch a guy starve half of the time and subsists himself on the small flora and fauna he can catch? Nobody. But it's much more realistic and I think much more informative.

Some of these examples are silly. Adding sound effects (Foley) is completely standard practice. The fact that Winged Migration involves training birds to fly next to cameras is fully documented in the "making of" feature on the Winged Migration DVD and was never hidden.<p>On the other hand giving multiple animals a single name and pretending there's an unbroken drama is disturbing because it genuinely distorts stories and might teach the wrong lesson, for example that a species is doing fine, when in fact it's facing major obstacles.

This is sad. What made environmental programs worse for me is the human interaction (and human interest) stories that they try to create. Usually it is a person catching or wrestling with a wild animal (they usually try to justify this for some obscure reason instead of admitting it is for television).<p>Probably the best example of this is Steve Irwin's shows.<p>But this probably just mirrors what people want. Everything should be instant gratification - like getting drive through hamburgers.<p>I personally think that if they set up nice highres cameras at a watering hole (with nice internet connection) it would be better. You would then be able to watch the water hole all day and it would be cheap.<p>Imagine laying on a couch on a Saturday, reading a book while eying the watering hole in HD on your television/PC...

Image is always manipulated one way or another, willingly or inadvertently, for the form or to change its meaning. Nothing really that new there. Like the sound of the bear paw ion the water example: did anyone really think they had a mike pole right above the beast? Did I miss something?

I wonder if one can define a loose version of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle for all documentaries: the more closely involved the film-maker is to the action, the more he/she influences it.<p>A scene which vividly comes to mind is in <i>Harlan County, USA</i>, where the film-maker gets shot at (!) by one of the anti-union thugs.

I always like to imagine "Planet Earth" is free of most of this stuff, and I hope I won't be proven otherwise.

I think the real point of the story is the push towards animals as entertainment rather than the fact that some hard to get footage is staged (though the two points are mixed together). The Economist had a good article on just how profitable wildlife show are, <a href="http://www.economist.com/node/16793496?story_id=16793496&#38;CFID=144070123&#38;CFTOKEN=64988477" rel="nofollow">http://www.economist.com/node/16793496?story_id=16793496&#38...</a>. Consequently it is easy to see why content creators are keen to reduce costs (cut corners ?) and boost ratings.

I've heard Chris speak and he's a fascinating guy. I haven't bought my copy yet but I imagine the book is a great read based on his engaging speaking style.

I think that the title of this HN posting is misleading. The actual title of the article is <i>Wildlife filmmaker Chris Palmer shows that animals are often set up to succeed</i>

If this surprises you, I've got a fantastic investment opportunity I'd love to discuss...