#Blue planet sea of life full#
“We had a core team of 25 people when we were really going full throttle with the filming,” reflects Brownlow.Īlmost immediately, though, came a stark reality check – and a demonstration that a natural history show can never simply follow a script like a Hollywood shoot, no matter how detailed the planning. Once the narrative arc of each episode had been planned, production began in earnest. “They are part of the journey,” says Honeyborne. The show is co-produced with BBC America, China’s Tencent and CCTV9, France Televisions and Germany’s WDR. The final episode, Our Blue Planet, has an environmental focus.Īs these stories were refined over the course of the first year’s planning, the BBC pitched the project to co-production partners who stumped up a significant part of the budget. Then come five habitat based programmes, each overseen by a specific producer: The Deep, shot from a manned sub in the hidden depths of the ocean Coral Reefs, about the home of a quarter of all marine species Big Blue, about life out in the middle of the vast open ocean Green Seas, focusing on underwater forests of kelp and seaweed and Coasts, where two worlds collide.
Over the course of a year, the team worked up and planned seven specific episodes: a big opening film, One Ocean, to introduce the audience to the central premise of the series, which is, according to Brownlow, that “you’re going to see things you’ve never seen before.” This includes footage of animal behaviour that has never been filmed, such as a fish that leaps out of the water to snatch birds on the wing through to a tuskfish that uses a tool to open clams. “For something that ends up as entertainment telly, it does have an absolute scientific core to it.” “The basis of all these big, new stories are the relationships we have with our scientists,” stresses Honeyborne. This was done by plugging into a network of contacts among marine scientists for information about the latest discoveries about the oceans.
#Blue planet sea of life series#
Initially, Honeyborne worked with series producer Mark Brownlow and a small team of researchers and producers to find the stories and to script Blue Planet II. Blue Planet II has been four years in production and involved 125 expeditions to 39 countries. He won’t reveal the budget for the seven part series, but some of the stats about the making of the show hint at its size. “A generation on from the Blue Planet stories, it is an opportunity to tell a bunch of new stories,” says executive producer James Honeyborne. The NHU argues that there have been so many scientific discoveries in the oceans since then, as well as huge advances in camera and diving technology, that a sequel is justified.
It also sold to 240 territories around the world. The original David Attenborough-narrated series about the world’s oceans aired back in 2001, winning two BAFTAs, two Emmys and nearly 10m viewers in the UK. If any show can comfortably be predicted to become a blockbuster factual hit in the UK and around the world, it is Blue Planet II, made by BBC Studios’ Natural History Unit. The producers of Blue Planet II tell Tim Dams how tech advances and military planning helped them capture the secrets of the deep
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