BSkyB - Kingdom of Plants 3D (2012) Part 4 Making of FHD
Using time-lapse and pioneering techniques in macro photography, David Attenborough traces plants from their beginnings on land to their vital place in nature today, exposing new revelations along the way. He moves from our time scale to theirs, revealing the true nature of plants as creatures that are every bit as dynamic and aggressive as animals. David discovers a microscopic world that's invisible to the naked eye, where insects feed and breed, where flowers fluoresce and where plants communicate with each other and with animals using scent and sound. He meets the extraordinary animals and fungi that have unbreakable ties with the plant world, from hawk moths and bats to tiny poison dart frogs, a giant tortoise and a fungus that can control the mind. And he does all this in one unique place, a microcosm of the whole plant world where, some 90% of all known plant species are represented The Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew. This spectacular adventure through the Kingdom of Plants is so immersive and compelling it has the capacity to amaze even the least green-fingered.
Part 4 Making of
We set out to capture the true splendour of plants, in their own timescale, as they interact with animals, fungi and each other. And what is more, we wanted to film all of this at a microscopic level. Kingdom of plants was to be a series with plants as the heroes, and we needed to do them justice. Our production team at Atlantic embarked upon an exciting technological adventure, developing our own specialist camera kit to shoot 3D in extreme close-up. At Kew the loading bay of the tropical nursery was transformed into a bespoke macro studio, we developed new ways of filming 3D time-lapse, and we built whole new rigs to capture the tiniest details of plant and animal structures. All of this took meticulous planning and a herculean effort in logistics alone, but the hard work has been rewarded.
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