COMBINING NATURE WITH CG TO PRODUCE A PREHISTORIC PLANET

By TREVOR HOGG

Images courtesy of Apple, Inc.

Going beyond the Hollywood portrayals is the Apple TV+ natural documentary series Prehistoric Planet, which travels back 66 million years to the Late Cretaceous period when dinosaurs reigned supreme. Serving as executive producers are filmmaker Jon Favreau (Iron Man) and Mike Gunton, Creative Director, Factual at BBC Studios. Directing the five episodes are Adam Valdez and Andy Jones who respectively worked as a visual effects supervisor and animation supervisor on The Lion King and The Jungle Book for Favreau. Collaborating closely together were digital artists from MPC and cinematographers from BBC’s Natural History Unit.

Progressing from The Lion King and The Jungle Book was not a huge leap for Jones. “Wildlife, natural history and what the BBC has been doing for years was our goal for a lot of the shots. In Jon Favreau’s mind, he always wanted it to feel as naturalistic and realistic as possible,” Jones notes. Nuances have to be incorporated into the animation to believably convey the emotional state of the creature. Explains Jones, “You want to lean away from anthropomorphism as much as possible because right away people will say, ‘Oh, we’re watching animation.’ Mammals share such a common bond with us, even elephants and giraffes have this look of concern for their kids, and we try to use some of that sparingly. We looked at larger lizards and birds a lot. The way birds care for their young is different. There is not this nuzzling.”

“The whole point is when you look at natural animals, they do things that are so weird and wonderful, so why not just portray that because it’s fascinating on its own? While the BBC Natural History Unit is obsessed with scientific accuracy, they’re also storytellers and know how to make things compelling; that was a real balancing act.”

—Adam Valdez, Director

Success is found in the subtle details. “You could say that the work we do is like a thousand of tiny traces on a thousand tiny items, and if it all stacks up correctly,  you get a win,” Valdez remarks. “Sometimes you don’t know what those things are until you’re in the midst of it. One of the things that we’ve learned over the last couple shows was that human audiences will project a lot onto characters for you. You don’t have to lean too hard in any visual storytelling. That’s the magic of the medium. Sometimes it’s a moment of stillness that could convey the idea that the animal might be thinking or feeling the event that just happened.” The events had to fit within natural order of things. Valdez adds, “The whole point is when you look at natural animals, they do things that are so weird and wonderful, so why not just portray that because it’s fascinating on its own? While the BBC Natural History Unit is obsessed with scientific accuracy, they’re also storytellers and know how to make things compelling; that was a real balancing act.”

As interesting as creating realistic dinosaurs was the process of making the show. “The trick was how do you make something that feels like you went and got the footage hiding out for eight weeks or hiding the track cameras all over and bringing the footage back,” Valdez states. “It’s a painstaking editorial process. What you learn is it’s not like BBC Natural History Unit [to] just go somewhere and film randomly. They know what’s interesting and what the dynamics are at a certain time and place. The Natural History Unit brought us deeply researched stories and our role was to go, ‘Okay, you have a notion, but what we’re going to do is make an animatic that is so tight that you know exactly where to go to get shot by shot.’” Shots were determined by the reality of documentary filmmaking. Valdez comments, “If you shot a hunt like a movie with eight camera positions, that’s not how they get those once-in-a-lifetime moments. They get them rarely [with one camera]. It was our job to make an animatic that felt 100% like they had shot it, and then give them a shopping list: go get these backgrounds, and precisely match the lens and how the camera is moving.”

“We went through quite a bit making the T-Rex because we definitely wanted to nail our version of what we really think the T-Rex is today. It was the first asset that we built and to show off what the series would be. Him and the baby T-Rex. As much we know about them in terms of fur, coloration, and the idea of what these babies would have been like, we needed our Baby Yoda!”

—Andy Jones, Director

Biomes determined the creatures, not the other way around, with the episodes titled ‘Coasts,’ ‘Deserts,’ ‘Freshwater,’ ‘Ice Worlds’ and ‘Forests.’ “That gives you one point of view on the nature of life and planet as a working ecosystem together,” Valdez observes. “Animals are our way in, whether it’s chimps, lions or dinosaurs. That’s why you see it framed the way that you do. Paul Stewart was in charge of ‘Coasts’ as the writer, producer and natural history partner. All of those particular stories have to do with the fact that where the land and sea meet you have a lot of dynamics. You have a lot of biodiversity, food source, territory and raising young. That’s the framing concept for the whole show.” The final sequence in ‘Coasts’ deals with the birth of a baby Tuarangisaurus. “For a Tuarangisaurus to make a baby that’s 12 feet long and 25% of the body mass of the mother is a massive investment, so they’re going to raise one at a time,” Valdez explains. “Then it turns out that the family shows some investment around the young as well. They found fossil evidence that backs all of this up. You find evidence of these sea creatures in the sands and earth where there was previously the Western Interior Seaway, a huge stretch of water that divided North America which had huge coastlands. The show hints on these ideas all the way through.”

“If you shot a hunt like a movie with eight camera positions, that’s not how they get those once-in-a-lifetime moments. They get them rarely [with one camera]. It was our job to make an animatic that felt 100% like they had shot it, and then give them a shopping list: go get these backgrounds, and precisely match the lens and how the camera is moving.”

—Adam Valdez, Director

When it comes to proper pronunciations of dinosaurs’ names, Jones laughs. “It’s never set in stone how to pronounce it until Sir David Attenborough says it! The Deincheirus was one of the fun dinosaurs in the series for me because it’s such a weird-looking animal with a big duck bill and massive claws. This is one where scientists would say, ‘He had these massive claws that probably could be used to defend himself in some sort of battle with males.’ But what else could these claws be use for? Let’s tell a story that’s not about fighting.’ We know that he probably ate seagrass or some sort of grass or some sort of vegetation. Those claws would be used to rip up and dig up the grasses and roots. Dealing with all of the flies is another thing. His claws could scratch a little bit, but his arms are so small that he can’t reach his whole body. The Deincheirus spots a scratching tree post to go up and start using that to scratch. For the ending of the episode, we wanted to tell the story of what happens when you eat so much food; his bowels get loose, he fertilizes the entire place and moves on. The Deincherius is a great character!”

“Deincheirus was one of the fun dinosaurs in the series for me because it’s such a weird-looking animal with a big duck bill and massive claws. This is one where scientists would say, ‘He had these massive claws that probably could be used to defend himself in some sort of battle with males.’ But what else could these claws be use for? Let’s tell a story that’s not about fighting.’ We know that he probably ate seagrass or some sort of grass or some sort of vegetation. Those claws would be used to rip up and dig up the grasses and roots. … For the ending of the episode, we wanted to tell the story of what happens when you eat so much food; his bowels get loose, he fertilizes the entire place and moves on. The Deincherius is a great character!”

—Adam Valdez, Director

‘Ice Worlds’ is a serious episode that explores family dynamics and the relationship between predator and prey. “It’s similar to ‘Deserts’ in the sense that you have these extreme environments, and it requires animals to go to greater lengths to survive,” Valdez observes. “You have this match that creates this endless loop of predation. and [questions] how does the prey species survive constantly being hunted. You have to figure out as a family group. The pack of Pachyrhinosaurus are rhino-like creatures that resemble Triceratops. They’re huge and powerful. The Nanuqsaurus don’t stand a chance attacking the group. But they are significant predators that are also big. What happens in the winter is that predators will work together as a team. You have a team of predators and a family group. It becomes a war of attrition, a siege. If we hound this family enough, eventually they’ll make a mistake, and we’ll take advantage of that mistake. It’s heavy. It’s like a standoff. You have to sit there and see who will last longer through the storm and winter that is around them.”

Going through the most iterations was an iconic dinosaur. “We went through quite a bit making the T-Rex because we definitely wanted to nail our version of what we really think the T-Rex is today,” Jones reveals. “It was the first asset that we built and to show off what the series would be. Him and the baby T-Rex. As much we know about them in terms of fur, coloration, and the idea of what these babies would have been like, we needed our Baby Yoda!”

For Jones, figuring out the motion of the creatures was a major task. “When I first saw the design of the giant pterosaurus, I thought there was no way that thing could fly,” he explains. “It’s the size of a giraffe. Figuring that out and having people watch it and believe it, is cool. Shooting at Palouse Falls was so much fun. We knew the environment when we prevised it, so we had a good layout. Actually, getting the shots was way challenging because we were hanging people on ropes to get the cameras in the positions that were needed. It was a fun sequence all around.”