Life on Our Planet Special Edition

I N PAR T N E R S H I P W I T H N E T F L I X | O C T O B E R 2 0 2 3

E XC L U S I V E S P E C I A L E D I T I O N

1

DEN OF GEEK

AN IN - DEPTH LOOK BEHIND THE SCENES OF NETFLIX’S REVOLUTIONARY NEW SERIES EXPLORING THE COMPLETE HISTORY OF LIFE ITSELF.

4 DEN OF GEEK | LIFE ON OUR PLANET

CONTENTS

A FEROCIOUS FAVORITE The T-Rex is back but with a twist. The lead researcher and the VFX team delve into the scientific accuracy of the king of the dinosaurs' look, sound, and behavior. PG. 18

THE SOUND OF EVOLUTION Blockbuster composer Lorne Balfe takes us through the process of scoring the history of evolution. Using a 65-piece orchestra and drawing themes from nature, it's nothing short of epic. PG. 28

Life Finds A Way From early inspirations, years of research and development, groundbreaking VFX and a shoot that spanned multiple continents, the team behind Life on Our Planet explain how this sprawling show was created. PG. 8

IMAGE CREDITS: NETFLIX

SHOOTING FOR REAL

Though Life on Our Planet features prehistoric creatures brought back to life, much of the series was shot in real locations across the globe. We explore what it's like finding the perfect environments to capture moments in pre-history. PG. 22

IN THE LOOP ON LIFE ON OUR PLANET

S DAN TAPSTER LIFE ON OUR PLANET SHOWRUNNER

ix years in the making, Life on Our Planet (or “LOOP” as it’s known to me) is a series so ambitious that it was only made possible by bringing together some of the best in the business: Silverback Films— the world-leader in natural history; Industrial Light & Magic—second to none for visual effects; and Amblin Television—led by the master storyteller himself, Steven Spielberg.

Yet even this dream team was pushed to its very limits because with LOOP, we were trying to create something never attempted before.

But what exactly is it?

Well, to answer that, I’m going to give you the original pitch we gave to Netflix: We want to make a brand new series that took the ethos of David Attenborough’s 1979 Life on Earth, but updated for a new generation using epic natural history, stunning VFX, and a sprinkling of some Game of Thrones inspired

T H I S M A G A Z I N E WA S P R O D U C E D I N PA I D PA R T N E R S H I P W I T H N E T F L I X .

4 DEN OF GEEK | LIFE ON OUR PLANET

drama! Hopefully you’ll find that as intriguing as they did but given that we’re taking over this entire issue, I best elaborate!

LOOP is like the original Life on Earth because it tells the greatest story of all—the story of life. Spanning 4 billion years, LOOP showcases life’s journey from its almost miraculous beginnings in the primordial soup to the spectacular world we live in today.

Yet despite sharing the same story, there’s a key difference between these two iconic series—Scientific progress. Since Attenborough’s 1979 tour-de-force, our level of understanding of life’s story has increased exponentially—we now know so much more than we did back then. Such advances in science have meant that LOOP can not only tell the greatest story but can also do so in the most accurate way ever done.

Yet, as filmmakers, this presents a serious challenge because many of the story’s stars are extinct and have been for millions of years. To overcome that hurdle we followed in the footsteps of many Hollywood blockbusters by partnering with Industrial Light & Magic—experts at bringing prehistoric creatures back to life. From T-Rex to Trilobites and so much in between, we’ve together resurrected almost 70 ancient

2

IMAGE CREDITS: NETFLIX

1 animals, each created pixel by pixel to perfection.

But in spite of this, it’s neither the outstanding VFX nor the modern-day natural history that are LOOP’s greatest strength.

Instead, that comes from the other part of its original pitch—Game of Thrones. You see, the story of life is not a predictable walk through the past. Instead it’s a story of chance and chaos, of opportunity and disaster, of evolution and revolution. In place of the Starks, the Lannisters, and the Targaryens, LOOP has the reptiles, the mammals, and the dinosaurs! Great dynasties, each locked in a battle to survive. The winners live to inherit the earth, while the losers succumb to the worst fate of all: extinction. Sometimes their demise comes at the hand of a rival, but many creatures have been struck down by an even greater threat—the planet itself, by far the most dangerous character of all.

The moment we realized that LOOP was nature’s very own Game of Thrones changed everything. It’s what allowed us to tell the story in a way that had drama, pathos, humor, and shock. It’s what let us create dramatic openings to each episode along with edge-ofyour-seat cliffhangers. Ultimately, it’s what enabled us to make a series with a story so

compelling that it belongs on Netflix—a true serialized drama, perhaps a first in the natural history space.

In this issue, we’re excited to reveal just how we did it. But before you read on, there’s two final things I wanted to raise. First, there’s a reason why no one has ever attempted a series like this before: It’s hard! So hard that it took six years and almost 500 people, and I’m grateful to each and every one—Steven Spielberg and Morgan Freeman, of course, but also the unsung heroes of researchers, animators, scientists, editors, execs, cinematographers, coordinators, accountants, musicians, colourists, audiophiles, and, last but not least LOOP’s supremely talented directors.

Second is this: In creating LOOP, we wanted to make something that was more than just a drama or a documentary. We wanted the series to be a wake-up call for humanity. Throughout Earth’s history, there have been five genuine moments of apocalypse—mass extinction events where life has been brought to a near total collapse.

The asteroid that destroyed the dinosaurs is but one example. Science tells us we are now entering the sixth mass extinction. This time the culprit is not a rogue rock or a volcanic eruption but something far more deadly: Us. Humanity. Yet all is not lost. There is a way to right the wrongs we have made and repair that devastation. My hope is that LOOP contributes to the important conversations underway and brings more people into them.

After all, it is only by understanding the events of Earth’s past, that we can work together to save its future.

1. An agile young T-Rex is able to chase down and pose a threat to Triceratops.

2. Trilobites scuttle along a prehistoric seabed.

COVER ART DESIGNED

BY NEIL JAMIESON. IMAGE CREDITS: NETFLIX

LIFE ON OUR PLANET | DEN OF GEEK

5

MAGAZINE Rosie Fletcher PRINT EDITOR

Chris Longo

DIRECTOR OF EDITORIAL & PARTNERSHIPS

A RT Lucy Quintanilla CREATIVE DIRECTOR Jessica Koynock ART DIRECTOR Chloe Lewis ILLUSTRATOR

A DV E R T I S I N G

PRODUCT ION Kyle Christine Darnell

Vanessa Chouest

Matthew Sullivan-Pond PUBLISHER

Colby Olson

ADVERTISING ACCOUNT MANAGER ADVERTISING ACCOUNT EXECUTIVE

PRODUCTION MANAGER

COPY Richard Jordan SUB EDITOR Sarah Litt COPY EDITOR Nick Harley ASSISTANT PRINT EDITOR

DE NOF GEEK .COM John Saavedra EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

Rosie Fletcher EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

Jennifer Bartner-Indeck CEO AND GROUP PUBLISHER

E DI TO R I AL Alec Bojalad TV EDITOR Matthew Byrd GAMES EDITOR David Crow SENIOR FILM EDITOR Kirsten Howard NEWS AND FEATURES EDITOR Louisa Mellor UK TV EDITOR

Bob Bartner

A RT Lucy Quintanilla CREATIVE DIRECTOR Jessica Koynock ART DIRECTOR Chloe Lewis JUNIOR DESIGNER

MANAGING DIRECTOR

AU DI E NCE DEV & SOCI A L MEDI A Elizabeth Donoghue HEAD OF AUDIENCE DEVELOPMENT Maznah Shehzad AUDIENCE DEVELOPMENT STRATEGIST Lee Parham SOCIAL MEDIA COORDINATOR P H OTO & V I DEO PRODUCTI ON Nick Morgulis SENIOR VIDEO PRODUCER Andrew Halley HEAD OF VIDEO PRODUCTION H E A DQ UARTERS 589 8th Ave, New York, NY 10018

CHAIRMAN

Pete Indeck

CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER

Mark Wright

PART N ERS HIPS Chris Longo

DIRECTOR OF PARTNERSHIPS

ADVE RTIS IN G Matthew Sullivan-Pond PUBLISHER

Colby Olson

ADVERTISING ACCOUNT MANAGER

Vanessa Chouest

ADVERTISING ACCOUNT EXECUTIVE

advertising@denofgeek.com ADVERTISING EMAIL

DEN OF GEEK IS A TRADEMARK OWNED BY DEN OF GEEK WORLD LIMITED, A COMPANY INCORPORATED AND REGISTERED IN THE UNITED KINGDOM WHOSE REGISTERED OFFICE IS AT THE BROADGATE TOWER, 20 PRIMROSE STREET, LONDON EC2A 2RS. DEN OF GEEK US INCORPORATION DETAILS: DOGTECH LLC, 601 HERITAGE DRIVE, SUITE 484, JUPITER, FL 33458, PHONE: +1 561-656-2377,

6 DEN OF GEEK | LIFE ON OUR PLANET

IMAGE CREDIT: NETFLIX

LIFE ON OUR PLANET | DEN OF GEEK

7

LIFE

FINDS A WAY Fusing stunningly shot modern nature with computergenerated prehistory, the making of Life on Our Planet was as ambitious as the story it tells. Den of Geek talks to the series producers and VFX supervisor about how, like their onscreen subjects, they rose to the challenge.

BY RICHARD JORDAN 8 DEN OF GEEK | LIFE ON OUR PLANET

2

IMAGE CREDITS: NETFLIX

JEFF GOLDBLUM’S ICONIC assertion in 1993’s Jurassic Park is not just one of the most instantly quotable lines in cinema history; it also neatly sums up the four-billion-year history of life on Earth in four short words (five if you count the nonemore-Goldblum “uh” in the middle). Of course, the reality is far from that simple.

Now, 30 years later, the makers of Netflix’s phenomenally successful nature doc Our Planet have joined forces with the technical wizards at Industrial Light & Magic for an ambitious fleshing-out of that gigayears-old story of evolution.

A series nearly five years in the making, Life on Our Planet blends groundbreaking visual effects with state-of-the-art nature photography to tell the epic tale of how life has, indeed, found a way. Employing some Christopher Nolan-esque time-hopping and framing the action around five major mass extinction events, the series draws evolutionary lines between the lost beasts of yesteryear and some of today’s most fascinating creatures.

“We’d just finished the first season of Our Planet and started to think what the next big series could be,” says Keith Scholey, one of the series producers. “It was at this point that we wondered about tackling the biggest story

of all: the story of life.” Scholey and fellow producer Alastair Fothergill, founders of wildlife film production outfit Silverback, had worked with their idol David Attenborough several times before on series such as Our Planet. And fittingly, it was the natural history legend who provided inspiration for what was to become the duo’s most ambitious project yet.

“We remembered [Attenborough’s] firstever series, Life on Earth, which was way back in 1979 when Alastair and I were university students,” says Scholey. “That series made waves at the time, but no one had touched that subject since. The reason why it has been ignored is that it’s too hard! It’s too big a story to tell. But we love a challenge, and feeling that we could overcome those hurdles, we decided we must try.”

“Despite the fact that the original Life on Earth is dated in some ways, such as the cinematography and lack of CGI, it’s a totally gripping story,” adds Fothergill. “We wanted to take that and elevate it to a new level.”

The pair were joined in that quest by fellow series producer Dan Tapster, who’d also been in awe of Life on Earth as a youngster and who quickly became excited by the project’s narrative potential. “To have the chance to once again tell the story of how life originated, and then evolved, and then was destroyed

1

1. Super high-speed cameras were used to capture the flight of hummingbirds in Ecuador’s cloud forest.

2. An Edmontosaurus herd experience the K/Pg extinction event on the ground.

3. A recreation of the dinosaur-destroying asteroid colliding with the Earth.

4. Sharks on the hunt for food in one of episode one’s stunning opening sequences.

5. Cameroceras, a giant cephalopod, is brought back to life via cutting-edge VFX.

3

4

5 LIFE ON OUR PLANET | DEN OF GEEK

9

6. Two Diplodocus graze, unaware of what’s lurking in the forest.

7. A pair of Triceratops are confronted with the inferno of the K-Pg mass extinction event.

8. 66 million years ago and our planet was dominated by the dinosaurs.

only to go again was too good to resist,” he recalls. “I could see early on that we could make this a binge-worthy series, with enticing starts and edge-of-your-seat cliffhangers.”

Right from the get-go, the producing trio knew that the series would require three key components to work. First, the show needed stunning, cutting-edge nature photography, not only to capture the beauty and drama of today’s animal kingdom but also to provide realistic environments for the show’s longextinct cast of critters. Second, there was the push for scientific authenticity, utilizing the latest research gleaned from what the filmmakers refer to as a current “golden age of paleontology.” And third, and perhaps the most tricky, was that there would be a heavy element of computer-generated imagery involved.

“We realized after seeing [Ang Lee’s 2013 drama] Life of Pi that it was finally possible to recreate animals in a way that was photoreal, where you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between VFX and real life,” says Scholey. “That was the moment where we realized we stood a chance.”

“For a long time, one of the big challenges for CG was rendering hair and feather details,” Fothergill explains of the team’s initial reservations. “People have been doing skin and scales for quite some time; that’s why dinosaurs have been brought to life relatively successfully. But seeing the tiger in Life of Pi was what really made us think fur and even feathers were now possible—and that was crucial because while Life on Our Planet has

6

10 DEN OF GEEK | LIFE ON OUR PLANET

some amazing scaly dinosaurs, there are a lot of other extraordinary prehistoric animals.”

Enter executive producer Steven Spielberg and legendary effects house ILM, both of whom have form when it comes to recreating creatures of the past onscreen. But even with those big guns on board, the producers were committed to their vision that the CGI, while a massive part of the series’ appeal, shouldn’t steal the show—and that the fusion of real and photoreal should be “seamless.”

7

“We went into the series knowing that if you have too much CGI, the audience can drift off into feeling it’s fiction rather than fact,” Scholey says. “We deliberately chose to integrate natural history and CG to give the series veracity. When you’re brought back into reality with an up-to-date scene of a real-life animal, it absolutely helps the overall narrative. And finding that balance was probably the hardest thing to do.”

“Each episode contains around 30 to 40 percent CGI, and the rest is the very best in classic, blue-chip nature cinematography,” confirms Fothergill. “Right until the end, Keith, Dan, and I were very nervous as to whether that conceit would really work—not just the visual conceit, but also the intellectual conceit. It was a massive relief to us that it did, and I think that’s what makes Life on Our Planet completely unique.”

R E C R E AT I N G A LO S T WO R L D Luckily, that conceit was one that ILM also fully bought into. “We were in from the beginning,” says the series’ VFX supervisor, Jonathan Privett. “I was really excited by the fact that we were going to make it like natural history. The prospect of going out to places around the world, filming these incredible

8 shots, and then being able to put prehistoric creatures in them was amazing. I’ve always been a huge fan of the natural world, and I remember being glued to the screen watching [Attenborough’s original Life on Earth], so having a chance to work on something like this was really a dream come true.”

All of Life on Our Planet’s VFX sequences —with the notable exception of one—were animated against real-life “plate” shots filmed in real-world locations. Not only that, but the producers wanted the prehistoric and modern-day scenes to look like they were shot in the same way, too. “Natural history has a visual grammar, and we needed to impose that on our visual effects,” says Tapster. “So we embraced an idea called LIFE ON OUR PLANET | DEN OF GEEK

11

9 time-travel cinematography. When it came to planning the camera work of each scene, we would sit down with [cinematographer Jamie McPherson] to devise how we would shoot it if we literally had access to a time machine.

For instance, you wouldn’t shoot a T-Rex on a steadicam from 3 meters away because you’d get eaten….”

The location photography and VFX teams worked closely together to achieve the sense of realism that the producers were looking for, although Privett admits that filming this way did prove more technically challenging than simply creating everything from scratch.

The VFX chief had to extract detailed 3D information from the plate footage shot

by McPherson and then produce accurate models of the environments via a tricky process called photogrammetry before the CG creatures—or “assets”—could be set free to roam about them, making the process “harder and more time-consuming than having done it as a completely virtual world.”

Logistical restrictions meant that certain environments required slightly more CG augmentation than others—the first episode’s standout T-Rex versus Triceratops chase sequence, for example, was filmed in a “car park in Surrey” rather than a more exotic locale in order to accommodate the necessary high-speed tracking shots, with ILM later adding in foliage and trees to create a lush, late Cretaceous meadow.

Impressively, though, there is only one fully computer-generated sequence in the entirety of the series’ eight chapters: a scene 12 DEN OF GEEK | LIFE ON OUR PLANET

featuring the prehistoric deep-sea predator, Dunkleosteus—which Tapster calls “the biggest, most angry-looking fish there’s ever been” (“Our paleontologist said it’s the only animal he’s ever studied that he’s really glad is extinct because it’s too terrifying for its own good,” he reveals).

“Even the other underwater sequences, we did shoot for real,” Privett says, explaining that Dunkleosteus’ habitat proved more difficult because of the vast expanse of, well, nothing. “It’s hard in the deep blue because obviously there’s no [detail] to track in live-action photography. So we made that whole underwater environment, and we did a lot of research on the science of color and light absorption at that depth to make it work in a realistic way.”

BY UNDERSTANDING OUR PAST, WE CAN HELP SHAPE OUR FUTURE. – KEITH SCHOLEY, LIFE ON OUR PLANET PRODUCER

FA N TA S T I C B E A S T S Placing the prehistoric animals in live-action locations was only half of the challenge, though—the other was creating the beasts themselves. The filmmakers worked with lead scientific researcher Dr. Tom Fletcher and an army of consultants to help whittle down a huge list of potential creatures to around 65, each chosen for their value in driving the narrative forward and hitting “the main beats in the story of life,” according to Fothergill.

With the producers setting themselves a high bar of presenting “the most accurate VFX creatures there’s ever been,” each asset had to be thoroughly researched in order to provide ILM with every possible detail. The latest fossil evidence was used to inform the creature designs, movements, and behavior, helped by a technique called “phylogenetic bracketing”—studying an extinct animal’s closest surviving descendants to fill in the gaps.

Each asset ended up with a 60-page “fact file,” says Tapster.

Privett describes bringing these creatures back to life as a “massive undertaking”—a “totally immersive” operation that took more than four years to complete. “We have twice as many creatures [here] as you’ll find have

ever been made in the Jurassic World franchise,” he says of the show’s ambitious nature, adding that there were a total of 60,000 VFX shots submitted for review (there are 867 final shots across the completed series). And with the small but focused ILM team forced to work remotely for large parts of the production thanks to the arrival of a pandemic, the process of creature creation certainly wasn’t plain sailing. “It did come with quite a lot of creative challenges… and I think that we had to push harder to overcome those challenges that you get when people aren’t in a room together.”

Challenges aside, though, the results more than paid off. That much was evident early on, with the very first VFX scene to be completed: a clan of Lystrosaurs—a cute, pig-like creature notable story-wise for being one of the only survivors of Earth’s volcanocharged third mass extinction—and their first encounter with the fearsome, crocodile-like Erythrosuchid. “We went to Chile to shoot that,” says Privett. “So we had these amazing background plates. And the Lystrosaurus and Erythrosuchid were the first assets that we built; that was us kind of feeling our way, I suppose. But they did get a lot of love as a result of being first up. When I saw the first render, I thought, ‘Yeah, this is gonna be

9. The fearsome Dunkleosteus shows how terrifying the combination of a backbone with powerful jaws can really be.

10. The plucky Lystrosaurus was one of the first VFX “assets” to be completed.

10

LIFE ON OUR PLANET | DEN OF GEEK

13

11. A pack of hungry cave lions take on some giant woolly mammoths in one of the show’s most ambitious scenes.

12. Real-world plate shots filmed in Iceland doubled for an Ice Age tundra.

great.’ The Atacama [desert] is such a wonderful environment to explore, and the creature looks so fabulous in it.”

When the sequence was finished in early 2021, the time came for it to be shown to Mr. Spielberg. “We knew at some point that Steven would be looking at that stuff because it was the first thing that we shot,” Privett continues. “So a lot of care and attention went into it.” The producers shared ILM’s sense of anticipation…. “[Amblin Television co-presidents] Darryl Frank and Justin Falvey suddenly announced that they were so pleased with it, they wanted to immediately ‘show it to Steven,’” remembers Tapster. “At that point, all of us who were involved were simultaneously excited and terrified. After an anxious, sleepless night, I awoke to an email simply saying: ‘Steven loves it.’ I’ve printed that and kept it for posterity!”

It wasn’t just Spielberg who was a fan; the sequence impressed the academics, too. “ The Lystrosaurus asset was deemed to be so accurate by the paleo consultant that he asked ILM to borrow it to use in a scientific paper,” Tapster enthuses. That must have been a nice bit of feedback for the VFX team, right? “In a way, it’s the ultimate accolade, isn’t it—for someone whose life’s work is looking at these creatures to go, ‘Yeah, that’s the most accurate representation that we’ve had,’” says Privett.

“So yeah, very chuffed.”

The Lystrosaur sequence is also a good example of some fun Easter eggs the VFX team sprinkled throughout the series, paying homage to ILM’s Jurassic heritage, among other things: as the Erythrosuchid stalks its

11

14 DEN OF GEEK | LIFE ON OUR PLANET

prey, look closely, and you may spot some subtle nods to a certain “raptors in the kitchen” scene. “That’s one of them, definitely —that sequence is exactly inspired by that,” Privett smiles. “There aren’t loads [of Easter eggs], but there’s the odd cheeky one or two.”

A M A M M O T H TA S K One of Life on Our Planet’s other standout sequences showcases the sheer technical innovation on display. Set during the Ice Age, a scene that depicts a pack of cave lions squaring up to a herd of giant mammoths on a chilly tundra was the most expensive —and ambitious—of the whole production, becoming a calling card for what the series was able to achieve.

“That’s definitely the most complicated scene in the show,” says Privett. “We’re animating multiple creatures against empty plates filmed in Iceland. Both creatures are furry; they’re in the snow, which is sticking to them, and they’re moving in high winds. So it’s a full-on extravaganza.” Luckily, the fact that both species have close modern relatives in the form of lions and elephants meant the VFX artists could choreograph the animals’ movements more easily than some of the series’ other prehistoric stars. But creating realistic hides, especially given the complex weather at play, brought an even bigger challenge. To overcome it, Privett looked to another ILM project: The Mandalorian.

To create the Mudhorn, a huge rhino-like beast with a thick, wooly, mud-soaked coat,

12

the Star Wars show’s VFX team had “used a more efficient pipeline than the one that has been historically used at ILM,” Privett explains. It was a process that would enable the Life on Our Planet animators to combine the various VFX elements in a more “holistic” way. “The previous system didn’t allow for a lot of the elements to be joined together—it was done in silos, so the fur was separate from the snow, which was separate from the render.

This new solution brought all those elements together, which enabled us to put snow on the fur and the fur to react to the wind and the snow and the fur to stick together. It was definitely a step forward and much more user-friendly.”

The result is one of Privett’s favorite sequences of the series. “It took a long time to get it 100 percent right, but I’m really proud of it. The creatures in it look superb.” The scene, he says, is also a good example of how the team kept standards high while finding new, more efficient ways of doing things.

“I think the interesting thing about Life on Our Planet is it brings some of that level of Jurassic Park quality to something that previously, even with an enormous budget, would probably not have been achievable.

So with that challenge, ILM has really upped its game in terms of what it can deliver.”

Meticulous research, stunning real-world photography, and innovative VFX are all well and good, but the final piece of the puzzle when it comes to any nature documentary is an expert narrator who can tie it all together.

And if you’re going to be homaging one of Sir David Attenborough’s seminal works, you’re going to need a voice with a similar level of gravitas. For Life on Our Planet, that voice is none other than Oscar-winning Hollywood legend Morgan Freeman.

“Great narrators don’t just read words on a page; they tell stories,” says Scholey. “With

Morgan, you are so taken in by his storytelling skills that he draws you into the film.”

Fothergill adds that Freeman has “become something of the voice of God, and so to tell the story of life, a story that is big, profound, dramatic, and relevant, his voice fits perfectly.”

Tapster agrees that Freeman “completed the series,” bringing not just his dulcet tones and storytelling prowess but also his own affinity for the natural world. “What was really exciting about working with Morgan is he loved the subject matter. He’s fascinated about evolution and he’s passionate about informing people about the sixth mass extinction that we’re causing. In fact, when he read the final moments of the series, he was really moved by it. It was a special moment, for sure.”

The Earth-shaping extinction events depicted in Life on Our Planet aren’t simply there to provide a neat way of structuring the story—they also serve as a warning. As Freeman and all of the series’ creatives are keen to point out, perhaps the series’ biggest take-home is that there could be another one in our not-so-distant future.

“We hope that the audience will go on this journey and come to a very profound thought at the end: by understanding our past, we can help shape our future,” says Scholey. “After all, the sixth mass extinction that we’re currently living through is the first one created by an animal and also the first one that can be averted completely. The last scene of the series is very provocative and potentially challenging. It will be interesting to see what reaction we get to it. The hope is that when you see the facts as plainly as we present them, the audience will think: let’s do something about this.”

Ultimately, Life on Our Planet is all about hope—and if there’s one thing we know, it’s that life, uh, finds a way.

WITH MORGAN [FREEMAN], YOU ARE SO TAKEN IN BY HIS STORY TELLING SKILLS THAT HE DRAWS YOU INTO THE FILM. – ALASTAIR FOTHERGILL, LIFE ON OUR PLANET PRODUCER

LIFE ON OUR PLANET | DEN OF GEEK

15

LIFE ON OUR PLANET: BY THE

NUMBERS The eight-part show, broken down by stats.

69

CAMERA OPERATORS

(48 shooters + 21 drone operators)

440

65

PEOPLE

1,781

868

VFX CREATURES CREATED

DAYS

in the field across 45 countries

16 DEN OF GEEK | LIFE ON OUR PLANET

who helped make the series (including animators, field assistants, technicians, and scientists)

FINAL VFX SHOTS

165

SCIENTISTS consulted across the show

6

CONTINENTS VISITED

120

VFX ARTISTS worked on the show

217

FILMING TRIPS

IMAGE CREDITS: NETFLIX

500

26 FEATURED SPECIES

6 YE ARS IN THE MAKING

WEEKS spent in quarantine hotels

65PIECE

orchestra to create the music score

LIFE ON OUR PLANET | DEN OF GEEK

17

RETURN OF

THE KING Life on Our Planet’s lead researcher and VFX team tell Den of Geek how science helped them build a more realistic version of the legendary T-Rex. BY RICHARD JORDAN

MEAT ON THE BONES You may notice that Life on Our Planet presents quite a heavyweight T-Rex, much more chunky than previous depictions.

Fletcher explains: “There’s a tendency for people to look at fossil skeletons and just put the bare minimum of flesh on top, sort of a shrink-wrapping. But the science of that doesn’t stack up—T-Rex was a brute!”

Adding extra mass was just a first step in

18 DEN OF GEEK | LIFE ON OUR PLANET

making Life on Our Planet’s T-Rex look real, though. “It’s also about the tiny imperfections that all living animals have that make them feel alive—the scars, the fat, the ligaments, the wrinkles, and the dirt,” says Fletcher. “Adding all that wear and tear and soft tissue to T-Rex might make it look bulkier, but it’s great that we’re moving away from hungry-looking dinosaurs. Ours has the heft you would expect on a healthy apex predator.”

IMAGE CREDITS: NETFLIX

PREHISTORIC CREATURES DON’T COME MUCH MORE ICONIC THAN THE Tyrannosaurus rex. There’s a reason why it’s called the “king”—the giant Cretaceous carnivore has been capturing people’s imaginations for over a century, cementing itself in pop culture in the early 1990s thanks to a scene-stealing performance in Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park. So, recreating the T-Rex for Life on Our Planet was no mean feat. “It’s possibly the most charismatic animal that’s ever lived,” says the series’ lead scientific researcher, Dr. Tom Fletcher. “And in many people’s eyes, it’s the most impressive animal that’s ever lived as well. So it’s some job to bring it up to date and to really do it justice.”

With 30 years of updated paleontological research to work from, the team behind Life on Our Planet set out to show a new, more accurate version of the T-Rex than we’ve ever seen before.

Fletcher and the producers worked with Industrial Light & Magic, the effects house that had, fittingly, worked on Jurassic Park’s original tyrannosaur. “It’s obviously quite a big ask, if you work at ILM, to make a T-Rex,” says VFX supervisor Jonathan Privett. “For Life on Our Planet, there was the pressure of making it look incredible, but on top of that, Tom had waded through hundreds of pages of research. Our version is still pretty mean and ferocious and looks fantastic, but is more accurate to the science.”

Life on Our Planet presents a new-look, more scientifically accurate portrayal of Tyrannosaurus rex.

LIFE ON OUR PLANET | DEN OF GEEK

19

IN FINE FEATHER

The extra heft and external nuances aren’t the only changes; the show’s male T-Rex, in particular, has some snazzy new plumage.

“One of the biggest changes since the original Jurassic Park came out is that we now know a lot of dinosaurs had feathers,” says Fletcher, who explains there was a fine line to tread when it came to deciding how many “feathers” the T-Rex might have.

“There [became] a tendency with paleo art to stick feathers on every single dinosaur and make them really fluffy, which can look a bit odd. But even though Tyrannosaurus rex has relatives that had feathers all over their bodies, that doesn’t mean T-Rex itself 2 that. You have to think, ‘OK, T-Rex did. You have to think beyond is a huge animal living in a hot climate—it would overheat if it had a full covering of feathers.’”

The team looked at things like hairs on elephants, a modernday titan that’s used to warmer climes, to reach a scientific compromise: small quills on the nape of the T-Rex’s neck. “From a technical point of view, we discussed doing the quills as hair or feathers,” reveals CG supervisor Elizabeth Mitchell. “In the end, they’re a bit more of a solid model.” And the reason these quills are only on the male dinosaur? “Often, birds, which dinosaurs are related to—spoiler alert—have display structures and that kind of thing [on the males],” says Fletcher. “So that was a nod to the science there.”

LIP SERVICE

A toothy visage was essential to making the T-Rex one of the all-time scariest movie monsters, but the science says otherwise.

“Possibly the most disappointing thing for the producers was covering the teeth with lips,” Fletcher laughs. “Their teeth are the size of bananas; they are ridiculously huge and most depictions show them exposed. So to go to a producer and say, ‘I’m really sorry, but actually, the evidence suggests they were covered up… You’ve got to put your argument together as a scientist and say: ‘Look at a lion, look at a Komodo dragon.’ There’s a clouded leopard with huge teeth—they’re massive but covered with soft tissue—it’s only when it yawns that you appreciate how big they are.

“There are lots of scientific reasons why the teeth should be covered up, and evidence has come through that they should be. So we follow the science at the expense of it looking frightening; we made it look more like an animal than a monster. But I think it’s more terrifying because it looks more realistic.”

DIFFERENT STRIPES Another evolution for Life on Our Planet’s tyrannosaurs is their skin tones and markings, with dark stripes along their bodies and, for the adult male, distinctive reddish markings on its face. Fletcher says that paleontologists have found fossils of some extinct species that do carry information about external colorings and patterns, but T-Rex is not one of them— meaning there is “a little guesswork when we don’t have the skin or the feathers preserved, if we just have the bones.” That license has strict limits, though. “If, for example, you’re a really large animal on the savannah, you are probably going to be gray or brown,” he continues. “If you’re in a dense woodland and you don’t want to be seen, you have to break your shape up. There are rules in nature today that we have to abide by.”

As for the difference between the two dinosaurs? “Again, that was a bit of scientific inference,” admits Privett. “The suspicion is that there is some dimorphism, but exactly how that presents itself is hard to know. If we look at phylogenetics, the descendants of a T-Rex—birds and, to a certain extent, reptiles— do have that difference. Often, the males are more brightly colored in a display way, so we inferred it. We thought the end result looked believable and seemed appropriate.”

FAMILY DINNER

One thrilling sequence sees an adult and two young T-Rexes chase down an unsuspecting Triceratops, with the youngsters playing a key role in the hunt—something that, again, we haven’t really seen before on screen. “T-Rex is such an odd dinosaur—it’s so bulky that some researchers have suggested that it probably couldn’t run, in the true sense of getting both feet off the ground,” says Fletcher. “The young T-Rexes look so different: they’re lean and graceful, with really long legs, and they could run fast like a velociraptor might. For a while, people thought the two were completely different species. The youngsters could chase things, but the adults couldn’t. So were the adults just scavenging, or were they doing something else?”

To solve this riddle, the researchers looked at fossilized “trackways,” which showed that very close relatives of the T-Rex sometimes moved in packs. “If you’ve got youngsters that are really mobile, really quick, and you’ve also got evidence for sociality, maybe there’s a division of labor,” Fletcher explains, “where the youngsters are chasing down something and the adult is immobilizing it. So that scene is very much born out of this idea that they were working together and there was some sort of cooperative hunting involved.”

R OA R A N D O R D E R

DANCING DINOS

Another key sequence shows off a little-seen softer side of the T-Rex, with a male dinosaur attempting to catch the eye of a potential mate. The “dance” that he performs, again, is based on a mix of fossil evidence and phylogenetics. “Until we invent a time machine, we’re never going to see a T-Rex dance,” says Fletcher. “But what we do see in theropod dinosaurs elsewhere in the fossil record are trackways with scrape marks in the ground, where they seem to have been doing a display.”

The courtship ritual was also inspired by a number of modern birds, as well as alligators and crocodiles—“the other side of the dinosaur family tree,” according to Fletcher. “Crocodiles will produce really low bellows to attract females; birds are vocalizing all the time, and they’re doing dances and all sorts of crazy stuff. You obviously can’t scale up a small bird dance to a T-Rex—it would be too frantic and look odd—so we had to tone that down enormously. But there were common elements like head sways, symmetry, the deepness and complexity [of the sounds]….”

All in all, it makes for a surprisingly sweet moment between two giant prehistoric predators. “T-Rex was capable of quite delicate behavior—we now know that its jaw was covered in nerve endings, so was most likely very sensitive and tactile,” Fletcher explains. “It’s important to see different sides of creatures,” Mitchell adds. “The T-Rex is so iconic—we’re used to it being the big scary creature. So it was exciting to work on a scene where they’re doing these different, unexpected behaviors, rather than the norm we’re used to seeing.”

H O W T H E T - R E X ’ S V O C A L S W E R E ( R E ) C R E AT E D To create the sound of the T-Rex, Fletcher and the team worked with Wounded Buffalo Sound Studios, which specializes in sound design for natural history filmmaking. Just as with the show’s VFX, sounds were recreated based on scientific principles.

“By looking at a cast of the T-Rex’s skull and its inner ear, you can see that the cochlea, which is the sound-receiving organ, is very long, so the animal was probably extremely good at hearing very lowfrequency sounds,” says Fletcher. “If you can hear low-frequency sounds, your vocalizations are probably going to be low-pitched as well— crocodiles, for example, can produce very low, resonating sounds… and they

do growl, which is pretty scary. So T-Rex was always going to be a low resonating, grumbling kind of sound, and that suits its size.

“The other side of it is using modern birds—nothing too complex, like a sparrow, but hisses are a probable sound. You can mix sounds that are a combination of the crocodile and the birds to come up with something that is likely. We’ll never know for sure, but by using anatomy and modern relatives, we can get pretty close.

“Wounded Buffalo has a huge database of modern animal sounds. So combining these things to make dinosaurs, I think, was quite fun for them. For the T-Rex, my note was always to make it as low as possible. I wanted it to be so low and loud that it broke people’s speakers because that’s probably what it would have done, but I think we would have gotten complaints!”

LIFE ON OUR PLANET | DEN OF GEEK

21

SHOOTING Life on Our Planet features a wealth of CGI magic, but it is supported by a background of ambitious and even groundbreaking reallife cinematography.

BY CHRIS FARNELL

“SUCH A WEIRD HABIT THAT I’VE GOT INTO TODAY,” says Dan Tapster, the showrunner for Life on Our Planet. “I’ll say, ‘Yeah, we were there to film mammoths. Yeah, people, we’re here to film a T-Rex.’” And yet, there isn’t really a better way to describe what the team of Life on Our Planet had to do for years to create the footage that makes up the documentary series. Of course, being CGI VFX, the prehistoric stars of the series are a good deal more compliant than the stars of your average nature documentary. But it also required much more planning.

“More so than with our normal series, there was a lot more preproduction,” says Sophie Lanfear, the producer-director and writer of episodes three and eight. “This had an extended phase of research and development before we even went into the field and shot stuff.

There was so much to get our heads around. Where do you even start with essentially 500 million years of complex life?”

22 DEN OF GEEK | LIFE ON OUR PLANET

T OY S T O R Y First, the makers of the show needed to talk with scientists and determine how these animals would behave. “We work with Tom Fletcher, our resident paleontologist, on what the characters will look like and how they interacted,” says Jamie McPherson, director of photography for the series.

From there, the next step is “playing with dinosaur toys and Lego.” No, really.

“We use the process we call preschool pre-vis, or plastic pre-vis, which was using plastic dinosaur toys to play it out and film

IMAGE CREDITS: NETFLIX

FOR REAL

it with my phone and make little Lego tracking vehicles,” McPherson says.

The whole scene is created in that process and then used to make storyboards and to show ILM, Netflix, and anyone else involved in the production.

“It’s kind of the starting point that lets us see the creatures in space—and is also an excuse to buy 50 prehistoric plastic animals,” McPherson tells us.

But toys will only take you so far, and central to the making of Life on Our Planet was the use of real filming in real locations.

“It makes the VFX feel much more real in my view,” says Lanfear. “Of course, we

could have had the backgrounds be CGI as well as the animals but by choosing to film real locations, the scenes became somehow more believable—I guess because they’re grounded in reality. This also helped make our VFX scenes blend in really well with our modern-day natural history ones.”

In finding those locations to film, scientific veracity was the watchword. But sometimes, the search for that veracity took the team to surprising places. For instance, an early episode features the tree fern forests where Arthropleura, the giant millipede, lived.

“We talked to the scientists, and for each scene they were like, ‘Here are the plants

1

1. The show’s woolly mammoth sequence, set during the Ice Age, was filmed in Iceland.

LIFE ON OUR PLANET | DEN OF GEEK

23

2. “Plastic pre-vis” saw DoP Jamie McPherson planning shots using a phone and toys.

3. The Fagradalsfjall volcano offered fiery footage to help ILM recreate one of Earth’s extinction events.

4. A tree fern nursery in Ireland provided the backdrop for the Arthropleura scene.

you can use, here are the plants you can’t use,’ and then we found this great tree fern nursery in Ireland,” says Tapster.

“This guy’s garden in Ireland, basically, where he has some of the biggest tree ferns outside of Tasmania, and I think New Zealand,” adds McPherson. “There’s a microclimate that these things can grow in.

They’re over head height, the size of trees, these ferns. It’s amazing.”

While scientific veracity was always the priority, other more prosaic concerns also came into play.

2

“The act of getting the shot you needed also had a role in the location choice. We use Surrey in SE England for part of the T-Rex scene in part because the vegetation was correct, but, crucially, it had a car park which let us drive the camera-car around at T-Rex speeds with no wobble,” Tapster points out.

SET TING THE SCENE But if you are telling the tale of the entire history of life on Earth, there are times when you will need to go beyond Surrey. For instance, to show the volcanic eruptions that drew a curtain on the Permian age, a crew needed to actually camp in the environs of the erupting Icelandic volcano in 2021.

“The basalt that erupts from it, it’s very light, like meringue, but it’s really sharp meringue. So, when the wind blows, all the sharp bits of grain just get in your eyes and face. Then there’s that black dust,” recalls Lanfear. “There’s a good picture of Jamie and Ben Hardman, who is an amazing drone operator, and they look like chimney sweeps.”

Strangely enough, none of them seem to mind.

“I was in my element; the more remote it can be, the better!” Lanfear says. “We got special permission to camp [near the volcano]. At the time, it was some of the newest earth on the planet.”

“That’s such an amazing place to be,” McPherson agrees. “Camping near volcanoes is very exciting, a boyhood dream.

So yeah, that didn’t seem arduous at the time because you are in one of the most amazing landscapes on earth and getting to see these volcanoes go off, which is incredible.”

3

24 DEN OF GEEK | LIFE ON OUR PLANET

However, the act of getting to the volcano at the right time was a bit more of a challenge.

“Volcanoes almost didn’t happen for us,” Tapster says. “We waited for four years for an eruption because we made Life on Our Planet during a weirdly quiet time for volcanoes. We almost thought we were going to have to use FX or library footage. Then suddenly Iceland erupted and kept erupting for weeks. Then, three months later, La Palma erupted and we were spoiled for choice!”

Fortunately, drone specialist Hardman was already on the site in Iceland, and Tapster credits him with shaping a lot of the style of the series with his aerial shots of apocalyptic wildernesses.

“He got access to the volcano and was there within about six hours of it erupting. So, he was one of the very first people that got there.

And he sent us back some amazing footage,” Tapster says.

Because the eruption lasted for as long as it did, McPherson was also able to get to the site and shoot some footage of his own alongside some woolly mammoth scenes he was there to film. Filming volcanoes to stand in for prehistoric landscapes, however, brings its own challenges.

“If the lava started heading towards a grass-filled area, we can’t show that because it’s for a scene based during the Permian Era, and grass hasn’t evolved,” Tapster says.

Grass was a common problem, given that it only evolved a relatively recent 55 million years ago.

“Grass was the bane of our lives. We were picking grass out of beaches with tweezers,” Tapster recalls.

McPherson agrees: “There was a lot of gardening.”

SHOOTING I N V I S I B L E S TA R S For most of the prehistoric sections of Life on Our Planet, these locations are backdrops for CGI stars. But that didn’t make the act of filming them any less involved.

“You have to work out where the [creature is] going to come from and how the scene plays out in that space,” McPherson says.

“But we film them dynamically as if there is a creature there.”

McPherson’s dynamic filming style proved integral to making Life on Our Planet feel like a nature documentary showing living

4

creatures. “Jamie is one of the leading camera operators in natural history filmmaking. His style has been one of the most revolutionary styles, I think, probably since Planet Earth,” Lanfear tells us.

“We are trying to shoot it like a high-end natural history series,” McPherson says.

“We’re moving, using tracking vehicle work quite often to make it all come to life. It’s a very exciting process.”

But where most nature photographers have animals to film, McPherson did not even have the benefit of a cardboard cut-out when shooting the prehistoric scenes, in case it gave away what they were filming.

“Often, it was a just big stick with markers for where the top of [the creature’s] head was and where its eyes were, so that we could frame it,” McPherson says. “Then you take that out, and we have people run through the frame acting the scene out in various embarrassing ways.”

He adds: “I always filmed them running, so we’ve got bloopers.”

Sometimes, however, there isn’t even a stick on set.

“For the most part when shooting VFX, we are literally filming nothing, which is a very, very odd experience,” Tapster says.

“But what Jamie is really good at is going to a location and knowing what we’re trying to get in intricate detail. Then he looks at the landscape and has this inherent understanding of animal behavior. He’d say, ‘That animal is going to come out of there in that direction, and this animal is going to

GRASS WAS THE BANE OF OUR LIVES. WE WERE PICKING GRASS OUT OF BEACHES WITH TWEEZERS. – DAN TAPSTER, LIFE ON OUR PLANET PRODUCER

LIFE ON OUR PLANET | DEN OF GEEK

25

do this slightly differently to how we planned, but looking at the landscape, that is how it would work.’ And then we’d go filming.”

McPherson, however, is grateful to be shooting subjects who are so cooperative, even if they are imaginary.

“It’s finding the best-case scenario,” he says. “If you had a real tiger or bear coming out of the woods, where would we want to come from with the lighting to make it the most amazing shot possible?”

L I V E AC T I O N

5. The team used a new stabilized rig system to capture a Komodo dragon hunt.

6. Filming young Komodo dragons, which live high up in the trees to avoid cannibalistic elders.

Life on Our Planet is a story that stretches from the earliest microbes to the modern day and features some animals, such as sharks and, notably, dragonflies, which have been around since before the dinosaurs. For those creatures, CGI wouldn’t do, but even here, the filmmakers were looking for something different from a typical nature documentary.

“We were going to shoot what we had written in our scripts. So, in that respect, it was easier than some other natural history series because we knew exactly what we needed to shoot,” says Lanfear. “It meant we could focus on the style of the series and the visual spectacle of it.”

In shooting these animals, Life on Our Planet’s film crews achieved spectacular footage. The Komodo dragon footage, for example, draws a direct line from the present day to prehistoric jungles but also shows us things we’ve never seen before.

“There was a time in the Triassic where this is what the world looked like, dominated by giant reptiles,” Tapster says. “But we found a great bit of the story, which is, ‘If you are living in a world of giant reptiles, what the

5

hell do you do when you’re little, a baby, a hatchling?’”

McPherson captured beautiful footage of hatchling Komodo dragons restricted to the trees while the dominant adults roamed below, as well as an epic and dramatic hunting scene.

“We had this new system with a buggy that you can push around to follow the dragons to film them moving through the forest,” McPherson explains.

Ultimately, the filming of the giant reptiles was disrupted by events that felt every bit as dramatic as the world-changing phenomena the series documents.

“We were in Indonesia when the [Covid] lockdown happened, and so we only had 10 days on location,” McPherson recalls. “So, we were very lucky that during those 10 days, we got some footage the likes of which has never been seen before.”

“When we went into lockdown, Dan and Fiona [Marsh, production manager] were like, ‘If we don’t get you home, we don’t know that you’ll even be able to get home,’” Lanfear tells us. “Imagine if they were stranded in Komodo for six months!”

As well as the Komodo dragon shoot, Covid also disrupted the crew shooting snow leopards in Nepal.

“That was so remote,” Tapster says.

“They could only get comms once a week by undertaking a seven-hour round trip to the nearest village. And so, they had this weird experience of the growth of Covid.”

This team also captured one of the most dramatic and unexpected scenes of the entire series.

“Twenty years ago, I worked on a series about mammals and snow leopards were the Holy Grail; they were almost impossible to film. But more recently, there’s this one location where they had become a little bit more reliable,” Tapster explains. “But still not that reliable, which is why the shoot was so long. The team was hiking around the

6

26 DEN OF GEEK | LIFE ON OUR PLANET

8

7 9 10

Himalayas for seven weeks, but eventually, they worked out where the family of mum and cubs lived and where that very old male was hunting.”

One day, they spotted the male up a mountain, hunting an ibex, and very quickly set up the camera and tripod.

Tapster recounts: “They turn the camera on, and five seconds after turning it on, he did the sprint, jumped to the ibex, missed it, and fell down the cliff.”

Sadly, both snow leopard and ibex fell and died in the struggle.

“For the team, it was a real bittersweet moment because they had been tracking this guy for six weeks,” Tapster says. “But that was the behavior we were trying to get. He had become locally known for jumping at these mountain goats and rolling down the cliff with them. Yet this time, he just got the timing wrong.”

Less tragic but equally stunning is the incredible footage that Life on Our Planet has achieved swimming alongside humpback whales thanks to the latest stabilized camera systems. “Back in the day, these systems were used for helicopter filming. There are these

huge gimbals that allow you to stabilize a very long 1,500-millimeter lens,” he says.

“You can shake the camera, and it just looks like it’s on rails. It doesn’t move at all.”

McPherson’s innovation was to transplant that kind of mounting onto other vehicles, from four-by-fours to snowmobiles to the buggy that filmed the Komodo dragons.

“Jamie revolutionized the way in which natural history is shot with the use of camera stabilized systems,” Tapster says.

But the whale shoot marked the first time the technique was used underwater.

“It’s basically an underwater camera gimbal that you remotely operate on the surface,” explains McPherson.

That brings its own challenges.

“It causes so much drag as soon as you put it underwater and accelerate the boat,” says Tapster. “It had to be really over-engineered to cope with the forces it was under. That took a lot of trial and quite a lot of error, but eventually, they got a system that worked.”

Life on Our Planet has done the impossible, bringing long-extinct creatures back to life, but it also gives us totally fresh perspectives on the animals with us today.

As Tapster says: “The goal for Life on Our Planet was to not only film our subjects in as dramatic way as possible, but to also use that lens to give our planet ‘context’—to let people really understand our planet and its animals like never before… and I for one think that that’s mission accomplished.”

7. A new “camera buggy” let the team get closer to the action than ever before.

8. State-of-the-art stabilized camera systems allowed the team to achieve incredible footage of humpback whales.

9. Filming snow leopards in the Himalayas gave the series one of its most dramatic moments.

10. Cameras capture gannets plunge-diving at high speeds into the sea to catch fish.

LIFE ON OUR PLANET | DEN OF GEEK

27

THE SOUND OF

EVOLUTION Composer Lorne Balfe delves into the process of scoring life itself.

BY TONY SOKOL

1

28 DEN OF GEEK | LIFE ON OUR PLANET

IMAGE CREDITS: NETFLIX

LIFE ON OUR PLANET IS AN AMBITIOUS UNDERTAKING, breaking down the history of the world through stories of survival, extinction, catastrophe, and evolution. The documentation of the earth’s development is more than a mere visual representation of the journey from primordial ooze, however. Evolution has a sound. Its theme is a universal harmonic, but the passing tones are dissonant.

Life on the place we call home relentlessly grew over its four-billionyear history, and the series required a composer whose mission is sonic

exploration: Step forward Scottish composer Lorne Balfe, who scored box office blockbusters including Top Gun: Maverick —on which he worked with Lady Gaga—and several Mission: Impossible films. The musical veteran found new ground with Life on Our Planet. “I’ve never done anything in this genre,” Balfe tells us. “I always tried different things. If I do an action movie, I have a break and go to Disney, like Ticket to Paradise with George Clooney and Julia Roberts.”

Life on Our Planet is not set in paradise, although some landscapes fleetingly pass for Eden on the surface. It begins in a pristine but lethal environment.

Out of noxious gas and raging waters, a single cell develops, known as LUCA, the Last Universal Common Ancestor. This ancient bacteria is the greatest single character in the history of the planet. Its reach is epic, and the conclusion is as dramatic as all stories ever told. It makes for an intriguing project.

“You choose something because it interests you, whets the appetite,” Balfe says.

“What I liked was doing things in the past and present. That was very unique to me.

Also, getting to help tell a story to something that has the voice of God.” He is speaking of the narrator, the allknowing Morgan Freeman. Life on Our Planet presents Earth as a cruel and unforgiving place, but Balfe found the creative team welcoming. “I’m the newbie,” Balfe says.

“The audience is expecting a certain thing.

The creatives from [production company] Silverback have a vast knowledge of storytelling in this genre. As soon as we started talking, I started seeing it.”

Balfe is working in the tradition of pieces like “Rite of Spring,” “The Blue Danube,” or “Here Comes the Sun.” The soundtrack has to capture nature thematically and strives to be timeless. “It’s about understanding the

2

1 LIFE ON OUR PLANET | DEN OF GEEK

29

1. The Life on Our Planet score was recorded by a 65piece orchestra.

2. The asteroid that kickstarted the K-Pg extinction caused huge, tsunami-like waves.

3. The pig-like Lystrosaurus, one of the only surviving species of the Permian extinction event.

4. A pack of hungry Deinonychus poised to make a kill.

next generation that’s going to be watching this and learning from it,” Balfe says. “If there’s a theme you automatically can grab onto, that will always help the storytelling.”

Sound and vision have always been interconnected in Balfe’s artistic process. “I never wrote music that wasn’t to-picture,” he says. “I always needed some bigger force to instruct while creating.” The directors of Life on Our Planet suggested the universal source material.

“It’s strange,” Balfe says. “There wasn’t any direction of composition, no discussing music in great detail. We discussed the emotion and how the audience is going to relate to it.”

The series asks viewers to expand their worldview, and the music helps bridge fantastical realities to familiar territory.

The audience may have never heard of the long-extinct Terrorbird or understand how the Lystrosaurus held a key to surviving the Permian Extinction, but their stories are compelling, regardless of their theoretical design and imagined onscreen rendering.

Balfe’s accompaniment breathes life into the filmmakers’ vision.

“When you are seeing something that might not necessarily exist, you can still have empathy for it and understand the journey, because this show is really about the journey,” Balfe says.

Even some musical instruments were chosen for their physical presence and how they represent the basics of adaptability and survival. “I wanted to have the concept of life and breath,” Balfe says. “That’s why we ended up recording Anna Lapworth, who’s an amazing organist, at the Royal Albert Hall. It’s a very classical instrument that’s got life to it. The air that’s pumped through it… I tried to create a school that ‘what you hear is what you see.’”

4

30 DEN OF GEEK | LIFE ON OUR PLANET

Like most screen projects, some of the soundtrack was composed for filmed footage, and other sequences allow the music to propel the experience. “There was a clear bible of musical themes,” Balfe says. Holding it all together are the central themes of survival, predators, prey, and sustenance.

“We started this by creating the food groups,” Balfe says. “You’ve got to have a clear building block. You know what the story is.

You’ll be going into the world of mammals; you know you’re covering world extinction.”

The composer had to create distinct and recognizable leitmotifs for a multitude of creatures, events, and the character of evolution. He also had to organize the primitive chaos of sound into a narrative structure that would propel a story through eight episodes.

“It was important to create suites and themes that will cover the whole series,” Balfe says. “What is our connection to the concept of extinction and the fact that it does happen, has happened, and will happen? It’s about mortality. So it’s getting into an emotional state to understand how to write about it.”

3

IMAGE CREDITS: NETFLIX

One might think a musician writing accompaniment to the whole of nature might do physical exploration to get in the mood.

But Balfe took no long walks in the forest or trips to locations barely known to man. “I live in a basement,” he explains. “I’m like Vegas. I don’t have clocks or daylight. There’s a reason most composers have bad complexions.”

To prepare for Life on Our Planet, the first thing the musician did was get to the roots.

“I did research about the oldest instruments,” Balfe says. “I was looking at the bone flutes found in the caves. Knowing that’s your past and mixing that with an electronic school of production, so it’s then-and-now, sometimes you don’t know what you’re hearing or seeing.

That was the sonic experiment.”

The sonic experiments may be difficult to achieve properly, but they come across as simple because they are fun. Balfe says: “Opening title sequences are the hardest because you’ve got a minute and a half to sell a story about what the next eight hours is going to be. Nine times out of 10, it will be a song.”

The composer learned brevity early in his career. “I did jingles for a long time. It was a harder job because you have 30 seconds to sell a product. I’ve never seen any difference between jingles and film scoring.”

Although Balfe began as a percussionist, with piano as his primary instrument, his musical vocabulary evolved during creation.

“When you’re composing, you have to think in the style of the instrument. There are a lot of vocals because I always wanted to remind the audience this is where we end up as human beings.”

Balfe needed modern Homo sapiens to identify with their place in the ongoing story of Life on Our Planet. “I wanted a connection, and the voice is very important. Before any instrument, the voice was the first thing we were able to create music with.”

To properly capture the soundscape for Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One, Balfe recorded more than 500 musicians across the globe. The score for Life on Our Planet is written for a mere 65-piece orchestra.

Balfe says dynamics have nothing to do with how many players are in the band.

“Numbers don’t count; it’s the intention,” Balfe says. “With Mission: Impossible, it was the locations. I wanted to connect the musicians to the actual geographical point of view. With this show, there was a concept of singular musicians who brought very unique instrumentation.”

WHEN YOU ARE SEEING SOMETHING THAT MIGHT NOT NECESSARILY EXIST, YOU CAN STILL HAVE EMPATHY FOR IT AND UNDERSTAND THE JOURNEY BECAUSE THIS SHOW IS REALLY ABOUT THE JOURNEY. – LORNE BALFE, LIFE ON OUR PLANET SCORE COMPOSER The players needed more than musical chops at auditions; they had to fit their parts. “I treat the musicians the same as a casting agent,” Balfe says. “You choose who you feel connected to. It was very fortunate that I got to work with the London Symphony Orchestra, and also the Royal Scottish National Orchestra. Two of the top orchestras in the world contributed to this series. And it was very special, being able to have all the directors come to the recording sessions.”

Over the course of the series, attuned viewers will notice that even the most chilling of themes accompanying perilous battles of predator and prey end on hopeful notes. This is because every death is a stepping stone to a more advanced way of surviving. Balfe has the same attitude toward his adaptations.

“The only reason that you stop experimenting is time,” Balfe says. “When that clock stops, then you’ve run out of time. But it’s really about evolving. You think differently when you’re working with great musicians; you experiment, they bring something to the table. They improvise, so it’s constantly evolving.”

Stevie Wonder wrote an album called Songs in the Key of Life, which begs the question of whether Life on Our Planet has a key. “There is a technical thing about sample rate,” Balfe says and grins. “Most of my music is in the key of C. There can’t be a rule because instruments can’t play certain ranges, so the key doesn’t matter. You just have to keep evolving and changing it.

The perfect key is harmony.”

LIFE ON OUR PLANET | DEN OF GEEK

31

TOP 10 PREHISTORIC ANIMALS Life on Our Planet sees 65 prehistoric animals brought back from the dead.

Each of them has their own amazing story to tell. Based on a combination of factors—from science to story to whether they’re cult classics or unsung heroes, here’s the team’s top 10.

1 | LYSTROSAURUS This curious, pig-sized proto-mammal was at one point destined to be a mere footnote in history. But then the Permian Extinction came and Lystrosaurus inherited the Earth. Skills that previously weren’t special suddenly became game-changers when the apocalypse ushered in a new era. Skills like being small, living in burrows, and enjoying a varied diet let Lystrosaurus thrive when others did not. So much so that in the years following the mass extinction, Lystrosaurs made up 75 percent of all vertebrate life on land—something no other animal has done before or since.

32 DEN OF GEEK | LIFE ON OUR PLANET

2

3 4

2 | PLATEOSAURUS

After the Carnian Pluvial Event 232 million years ago, a new dynasty of creatures took over our world: the dinosaurs. One of the earliest was Plateosaurus—a kind of prototype sauropod. The adults were the biggest animals of the time, but the babies were adorable, as depicted in Life on Our Planet. If you could bring one animal back to life as a pet, Plateosaurus would be it. It’s just a shame it has to grow so large!

3 | WOOLLY MAMMOTHS

In addition to bringing back to life creatures that have never been depicted before on screen, Life on Our Planet also animates iconic species such as the woolly mammoth, a creature that roamed through the Ice Age. Remarkably, woolly mammoths only went extinct around 4,000 years ago, but because scientists have found remains frozen in the permafrost, bringing these immense beasts back to life —for real—is not impossible.

4 | ANCHIORNIS

After the Carnian Pluvial Event, dinosaurs had a reputation for being red in tooth and claw, but there are always exceptions, and Anchiornis is one of them. This is one of the first avian dinosaurs, meaning it could fly. Well, sort of. It could perhaps “fall with style.” It’s a charming pioneer of its age, and what’s more, the colors depicted in Life on Our Planet are 100 percent accurate since scientists have been able to extract color pigments from its fossilized feathers, meaning that what you see on screen is literally how it looked.

5

5 | ARANDASPIS

IMAGE CREDITS: NETFLIX

Here is a bullied underdog that made good thanks to an ice age and became a key ancestor for us, being one of the first vertebrates.

Half fish, half E.T., it’s such a bizarre-looking animal that when Morgan Freeman first laid eyes on it during the narration recording, he burst out laughing and could barely stop.

LIFE ON OUR PLANET | DEN OF GEEK

33

6 | SMILODON

Smilodon, as depicted in the very first episode of the series, is a work of art as a VFX asset. The detail that went into creating the saber-toothed predator is mind-blowing— the way its fur moves, the shape of its tongue, the ridges on its teeth, the micro-hair around its nose. It should be in the Louvre in addition to making this list.

7 | ARKANSAURUS

Sneaking its way into the Top 10 is a character that barely appears in this series.

Arkansaurus is the white-feathered runner that is chased by a pack of ferocious raptors called Deinonychus. The latter are amazing, of course, but too aggressive to put into a list like this. Arkansaurus, with its beautiful feathers, its amazing eyes, and its constantly surprised expression, is much more like it. Even with its brief cameo, it makes an impression as a kind of dinosaur ostrich on steroids.

6

8 | DOEDICURUS

7

The baby Doedicurus is perhaps the cutest creature in the series, definitely fulfilling the “I want one” factor. The adults are impressive, too. The size of a VW beetle and armed with a thick shell, there are very few creatures alive today that resemble this prehistoric oddity.

Add in its spiked tail, and it really does seem like evolution was having an off-day when it resulted in this species.

8

9

9 | ARTHROPLEURA

The mega millipede, measuring up to 2.7 meters, has to be seen to be believed. Which is ironic given that it was mostly blind. It was one of the first arthropods to truly flourish on land, and just the idea of wandering through a forest and finding one is too tantalizing for it not to be on the list. Plus, we need some creatures that couldn’t cause us harm, right? Especially because of what’s coming next.

10 | TYRANNOSAURUS REX

10 34 DEN OF GEEK | LIFE ON OUR PLANET

It’s impossible for the greatest predator of all time to not be on this list. At the end of Chapter 5, two T-Rexes show off their incredible courtship skills to each other. Seeing the way that the male is initially terrified of the female and yet nervously stands his ground to show off his moves is amazing. As their courtship continues, we see a softer side of this iconic species, with the male eventually winning over his new mate. Perhaps their reputation as being vicious and, at times, vengeful is misplaced. If the Jurassic Park movies were real, perhaps we wouldn’t be terrified of T-Rex but simply in awe of it.

LIFE ON OUR PLANET | DEN OF GEEK

4

4 DEN OF GEEK | LIFE ON OUR PLANET