Wildlife Filmmaker - Everybody's faking it

[Zakaree Sandberg]

Folks fake stuff? I'm shocked! Next thing you'll hear is that models don't actually look like that or scientists were faking global warming data. Incredulous!

hahahah! trueeeee

 

[Vladimir Cassel]

As long as the emotion and/or information comes across, who cares if something happened or didn't happen? It's like the ending of Inception. Who cares if he was still dreaming at the end? The emotional resolution would be the same regardless.

 

[Lauri Kettunen]

Vladimir, I think behind this there are two questions. At first, is the film crew ready to sacrifice or significantly disturb animals say for example by causing a threat to nesting birdsto get the desired image. And second, to which extent is it ethical to give the audience an impression of a document if the actions of the animals are staged or a result of digital artwork in post. There are a lot of people who are very sensitive on these issues.

The problem on the production side is, if absolutely nothing is accepted, the animals may not be feeded, no sound editing is allowed, etc., shooting wildlife documents become very laborious and thus expensive. In this sense the field is at least bit gray, but of course, the same applies to other fields, such as news production as well.

I guess in general it is a good thing that this kind of discussions occur. There are no absolute things, but the discussion is likely to remove the worst habits.

 

[Rudi Herbert]

Well, those purists who were to say that anything staged is not a real behavior would be as right as those entrepreneurial souls that entice animals with food, etc to exhibit actions that otherwise would be impossible, difficult or prohibitively expensive to capture in their natural guise. So long as whatever "help" the animals get is not detrimental to their health, and so long as the narrators don't claim the shown behavior to have been filmed totally naturally, then I don't have much problem with whatever artifice is used to get the images. I've done it, and in the underwater realm where I dabble, unless you chum the water for certain species, you would never get to see them feed naturally. We're doing these species a service by showing how amazing they are to the rest of the world, so I say, great, if you manage to lure a creature into doing something rarely seen if it will work towards creating awareness. That said, yes, there is a line (there's always a line) that cannot be crossed, more importantly when it pertains to the wellbeing of the species and less importantly, much less importantly really, when it comes to the credibility or authenticity of the footage. Example: there is a group of individuals that specialize in "extreme animal encounters" that came to me years ago for me to help them edit and produce a pilot from hundreds of hours they had of some amazing interaction with animals. But as I reviewed the videos, I realized that my growing suspicion that some of these "encounters" were completely against the known behavior of the animals were founded, and I was horrified. The girl beautifully caressing a 13 ft long marlin without the typically skittish fish seeming to notice had only been done after they had hooked the fish from a boat, fought it for hours to the very brink of death, and then unhook it, drop their model in the water and let her play with the exhausted creature at will, since the fish could barely move. It was amazing footage, but it was fake in the worst possible sense. They had done this with several other large species, including sharks, whale sharks, groupers, stingrays, many of which did not survive the ordeal, all for the sake of "never before seen" images. And these people were, believe it or not, in their own way, concerned about the environment. They were just way more concerned about their images and did not much care what it took to get them. And they got a show in Animal Planet, not through me of course, but they did. And there are stories like this in every field of nature documentary, of unscrupulous people doing horrible things, although you could argue that this proverbial line is quite movable depending on whose standards are being considered, I'll say again that, as long as the animals' health is not compromised, I'm usually fine with this. Then again, I am proactive when it comes to animals' health, and I contribute financially to several foundations that take unorthodox approaches to preserving animals, such as Sea Shepperd, of "Whale Wars" fame, and Food for Bears, a bunch of cinematographers and biologists that fly food to mother Polar bears with cubs every winter, and whose efforts have made a difference in whether those families survive one more frigid winter or not, even though many biologists criticize our work because it "disrupts" the natural flow of life for these animals. Anyway, interesting subject...

 

[Vladimir Cassel]

Vladimir, I think behind this there are two questions. At first, is the film crew ready to sacrifice or significantly disturb animals say for example by causing a threat to nesting birdsto get the desired image. And second, to which extent is it ethical to give the audience an impression of a document if the actions of the animals are staged or a result of digital artwork in post. There are a lot of people who are very sensitive on these issues.

The problem on the production side is, if absolutely nothing is accepted, the animals may not be feeded, no sound editing is allowed, etc., shooting wildlife documents become very laborious and thus expensive. In this sense the field is at least bit gray, but of course, the same applies to other fields, such as news production as well.

I guess in general it is a good thing that this kind of discussions occur. There are no absolute things, but the discussion is likely to remove the worst habits.

It's said that one can't even simply observe subatomic particles without affecting them. Everything is painted through the context of the observer. There's no true objectivism and everything, as a given, is in a gray area already. There's no 'line' to be crossed so much as a nonverbal common ground between presenter and observer. But it's not something concrete enough to cry foul over. Animals simply existing in nature and Ted Nugent rolling around in their carcasses can both be documentaries.

 

[Petr Dvorak]

"But he also taught a whole generation that it's fine to jump wild animals, stress them out and get in their personal space. That's not OK. We need to leave wild animals alone, not make money out of harassing them."

 

[Petr Dvorak]

Who said long time ago that everything what is on film is just a lie? :laugh:

Or it`s true, but only to the first cut.

 

[Pawel Achtel]

"But he also taught a whole generation that it's fine to jump wild animals, stress them out and get in their personal space. That's not OK. We need to leave wild animals alone, not make money out of harassing them."

This is what studios require. Discovery required Irwin and others to do what he did because it was cheap and someone was going to get hurt. These studios are not interested (in the cost of) blue chip Natural History. You can either jump crocks, chum water, glue a camera to the animal's back, pick up snakes and spiders or no finance, your choice. Do you want a nature film made?

I think it is disgusting.

 

[Shane Kelly]

These are real, though, right?

 

[Joe D'Arcy]

These are real, though, right?

The second one on the top row is not real but the other three were at the last Red Day.