Industry Insider: PLANET EARTH to Rock Viewers’ Worlds in HD

By Clint Stinchcomb, Discovery HD Theater

As Mark previously reported here, Discovery HD Theater is premiering PLANET EARTH, a landmark HD series this Sunday at 8 PM ET. This has been an ambitious project to say the least. Five years ago, the BBC's Natural History Unit set out to chronicle animal life on earth like you’ve never seen it before. A small army of cinematographers, filming at 200 different locations around the world created the epic 11-part series PLANET EARTH.

I think what makes PLANET EARTH so remarkable is how it harkens back to the days of classic nature documentaries while also utilizing some of the most advanced technologies in HD today. From the Cineflex Heligimble camera stabilization system used to film distant animals and behaviors up close with out disturbing them, to the ultra-high-speed cameras used to capture rare animal predation, no angle is left unexplored.

One of my favorite features of the series is the production teams’ use of a computerized time-lapse system that ran for many months to display the changing seasons around the world, as well as sequences such as the aurora australis, sand storms in the Sahara, and the cherry blossoms blooming in Japan.

And while the technology used in the series is mind-blowing, the images you’ll see are even more so. Simply said, this series will take you places very few people have ever been before, like into Cave of the Swallows in Mexico, the world’s deepest cave at 1,300 feet; the remote Arctic island of Kong Karl Land home to dense populations of polar bears; and under the ice of Siberia’s Lake Baikal, the world’s largest lake, which is frozen for five months of the year. And seeing it all in HD makes it all the more real.

The series kicks off with a look at the north and south poles, with additional episodes dedicated to deserts, mountains, forests, deep oceans, shallow seas, the great plains, fresh water and caves. Sundays through April 22, PLANET EARTH will captivate you and have you wondering “how’d they get that on film…I mean in HD?”