'You never quite know what you're going to get:' Planet Earth II explores 'the joy of natural history'
Thanks to camera technology advances, viewers get eye-level with the animals, visit new locations
Remember cheering on that baby iguana who narrowly escaped a horde of ravenous snakes in that viral online teaser video back in November?
That little marine iguana is now getting some proper screen time in Planet Earth II, BBC Earth's new series premiering in Canada on Saturday.
That fateful scene took place on the uninhabited Fernandina in the Galapagos Islands and was never filmed before, according to producer Elizabeth White.
"Nobody has actually seen that number of animals hunting at the same time," White told CBC News of the racer snakes shown in that episode, the first of the six-part series.
"And that's the joy of natural history: you never quite know what you're going to get."
In that introductory instalment, called "Islands," viewers also meet sloths, Komodo dragons and chinstrap penguins on Zavodovski Island.
The series subsequently unfolds by habitats, including the episodes "Forests," "Jungles" and "Deserts." Like the 2007 original, Planet Earth II is hosted by British naturalist and broadcaster David Attenborough.
Canada makes several appearances in the new series, with grizzly bears filmed in Alberta appearing in "Mountains" and raccoons from Toronto in the final episode "Cities" — a revelatory look at wild and sometimes unexpected urban animals such as hand-fed hyenas in Harar, Ethiopia and leopards in Mumbai.
Technological leap forward
The biggest change since the original Planet Earth series, which was acclaimed for its high-definition footage, has been the size of the cameras, according to White.
This time around, drones, remotely operated night cameras, miniature cameras as well as new handheld ones immerse the audience right into the animal world and bring the action to where feathers are literally flying.
"Our cameras are not such big, heavy beasts that they were 10 years ago," White said.
"And with this series, we particularly wanted to put you on the animal's eye level, so it was all about fitting into their world."
For instance, her team brought in drones to film — from above — the world's largest penguin colony on remote Zavodovski Island, a feat that's never been done before. The shoot took a year to plan and encompassed a sea voyage lasting six weeks, two weeks of camping on the island and a dangerous landing by boat onto steep, rocky cliffs pounded by massive waves.
"I think it's an amazing island. It's a very visceral island. As you approach it, it's this big malevolent crater and yet, as you get closer, you see all of these tiny little bodies going around doing their business all amongst the colony," White recounted.
As dangerous as that trip was, it was worth it to observe the colony of 1.5 million penguins, with the adults risking their lives daily throwing themselves off those same cliffs to swim out to sea for food for the newborns, she said.
"Being around penguins is wonderful. They are such interesting little characters. The different species have got their different characters. The chinstraps we found were quite kind of removed. They eyed you from a distance. Whereas the macaroni [penguins] on the island were very kind of flamboyant and they'd come really close to you."
The series creators planned their shoots in the style of feature films: with plot lines, different animals as characters and even scoring the footage with action movie music in mind.
White, who produced "Islands," also used the storytelling concept of juxtaposition — heaven versus hell, prison versus paradise — to frame the drama taking place before her.
"On Zabadovsky Island there's this huge great stinking volcano, and yet it's penguin paradise," she noted.