For my first blog post I wanted to do a documentary review. Environmental science and nature in general has always been a true passion of mine throughout my whole life. The natural world never ceases to amaze me every day. BBC network has created a beautiful art piece called Planet Earth that I’m sure many of you have also seen. It takes them years to make these films due to the unpredictable actors in their films, which consist of animals and plants around the world. Their first documentary series was released in 2006 and took four years to create, traveling to over 64 different countries.

The most current series though, is the main topic for my blog entry. Planet Earth 2 was released in 2017 and took 2,089 days of shooting, about 5.7 years to make. They traveled to over 40 countries to capture the most epic and meaningful clips of the natural world that all eyes should see. Throughout the most recent series David Attenborough, the creator shined a light on how much the earth has been changing in the current years. This was different to the first series. It became apparent to the filmmakers that things have truly changed in the environments although they had seen them no longer than ten years ago. The documentary is split up into episodes due to its length. They categorize the episodes based on the ecosystems. For instance there are different episodes for forest, oceans, desserts, etc.  This is the same between both Planet Earth 1 and 2, but an additional ecosystem was added to this most current ecosystems. This was Cities. They show how certain animals have adapted to our man made ecosystems and how their environment was destroyed but monkeys for example, have been able to learn how to survive in a concrete jungle.

I love that Attenborough added these small changes in his filmmaking to make a huge impact and open the eyes to people who might not be able to see the actual effects of the human impact and climate change due to the anthropocene. I feel our society separates themselves from the natural world and every other creature that shares the planet with us. This makes it easy for humans to not care if their ecosystems are deteriorating because it won’t affect them directly. This is a very close-minded way of living life and this documentary has the ability to educate people of what isn’t right outside their front doors. Many people live in very urban communities with little nature or recourses to be able to immerse themselves in nature. This documentary is available on Netflix, which in this day and age, the mass of people have, this means they now have an opportunity to learn about all of the environments and ecosystems and all of the species within them. It may not be as rewarding as being in these areas, but the quality of this film is unbelievable and actually demonstrates certain thing that one would not be able to experience even if they were right in the forest. For example, one technique these filmmakers use is time-lapse film. This is where they leave a camera recording a plant or mushroom or what have you for a long period of time, months even, and then speed up the film. By doing this one can view the whole lifecycle of an organism in as little as thirty seconds. The creators of this film have an obvious and true passion for what they are doing and are sharing a true gift by letting the public experience this art piece of a documentary.

This documentary like previously mentioned is available on Netflix.com or for more information you can visit http://www.bbcearth.com/planetearth2/

http://www.bbcearth.com/planetearth2/gallery