Abingdon Living Jan - Feb 2020

"we set out to connect
people with the natural
world...the viewer gets a
sense of the extraordinary
scale of this existence."
Photograph by Elizabeth White
Copyright BBC NHU
you have to be careful to not go too
soppy and anthropomorphic. But I’ve
always defended anthropomorphism.
Whenever people criticise, my reaction
is ‘well I think you’re being rather
anthropocentric!’. We can be a bit
anthropocentric, in our thinking that we
are so different.
When watching a programme that you
produce, it gets a bit fearful at times
because you can see a creature being
pursued. It can be difficult to watch!
One of the things that’s very important
about this is that there can be a danger
of tripping into melodrama. Some of my
colleagues and I have had arguments
about this. The evolution of these new
photography approaches that we were
talking about is proximity. Trying to
get the camera, and therefore you the
audience, as close as we can physically
but also emotionally to the action. And
you cannot help but feel caught up at
times. What was lovely about Planet
Earth II and the technology that had
been involved, was that we were able
to bring that to a fine point. The snakes
and iguanas sequence is a phenomenal
example of that sense of proximity
and viscerality, where you have people
across the country hiding behind their
sofas shouting ‘Run, baby, run!’. They
are empathising with a creature that is a
reptile and a tiny little thing. But if you get
that sense of involvement then people are
completely transfixed.
These things feel like they have been
big leaps, but in actual fact we’ve been
doing it for a while, but the stars aligned
with Planet Earth II and I think there was
something in the air, some zeitgeist going
on there and people wanted it. 2016 was
quite a miserable year for a number of
reasons, they were feeling at woe with the
world, and something about Planet Earth
II made them look up and look out and
feel joyful. I think one of the things the
press kept picking up on was that despite
the intimacy and some of the terror, that
at the end of it people overall felt joy.
One of the things about this concert
is that being on stage, the sense of
joy that I felt, and that I felt back from
the audience…I’d never experienced
anything like it. Initially I thought I was
going to be petrified, I was going to
be standing on stage in front of 5,000
people. But I wasn’t the slightest bit
nervous. You could just sense a warmth
from the audience. What the concert
does is it actually amplifies another key
thing that I think was unique about Planet
Earth II, and that was that at the time
everyone was saying that television as a
media was falling away. People weren’t
watching television, they were consuming
media, as they say. Something about
Planet Earth II got people flocking
back to their television. They made an
appointment to view at 8pm on a Sunday,
and not only that but they did it as
co-viewers. So families came together,
football clubs…there was this incredible
sense of we are all going to get together
to watch this. And there was something
about this group viewing that I think
enhanced the experience of joy and that
is why when you go to the concert you
get that amplified!
When people watch these programmes,
what do you think it is about them that
makes people behave differently?
How long have you got?! There’s a
conceptual answer and a practical one.
The conceptual one is that we set out to
connect people with the natural world
and that’s what happened. They realised
there was more to the world than their
own lives. The viewer gets a sense of the
extraordinary scale of this existence, but
they also form empathetic connections;
sometimes feeling that some of their
troubles and woes can be absolved when
watching the dynamics of their own lives
being played back to them through the
dynamics of animals. So I think there’s
some catharsis there. But equally, there
were a number of examples where after
having seen a sequence in Planet Earth,
there was a rush to digital media to find
out more about some of the things they
had seen – particularly in cases where
there was some conservation spin on it.
One of the things that was a real key
moment in this series was the sudden
magnetic attraction for young people.
As a television producer I am constantly
being asked "where are the 16-24 year
olds?", the group that don’t watch
television and certainly don’t watch BBC
terrestrial television. Suddenly with Planet
Earth II, they all wanted to watch these
shows. That’s incredibly important to
us, as they are the next generation. But
also, their perspective on the planet I
so different from my generation. What’s
interesting with the Planet Earth II concert
is that when the lights went up, I looked
out and 50% of the audience were
people in that group. They weren’t just
kids being brought along by Grandmas
and mums, they were cool hipsters from
as far as the eye could see!
Whether you're a hipster, a grandma,
or somewhere in between, you can find
out more information on the concert
series by visiting planetearth2live.uk
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