Blue Planet II: Construction & Reconstruction

You mean that wasn't natural??

Over the Christmas period the nation was engulfed in the visually stunning and incredibly educational Blue Planet II. The series is narrated by Sir David Attenborough and was broadcast on BBC One. It came to an end on New Year's Eve with an extended recap special. The previous series The Blue Planet was a huge success back in 2001, winning 6 awards, with an additional 12 nominations. However, according to the British general public, there have been issues worth complaining about in the new series. Believe it or not Blue Planet II did not receive the same level of praise and respect it had 17 years ago. 

Overall this series is a well respected BBC production, with more young people tuning in to watch the first episodes than The X Factor back in November 2017. Unfortunately, over the past couple of months I have witnessed signs of unhappy viewers across several articles.

Since the uproar from the misleading scene of polar bear cubs in the 2011 Frozen Planet, the public have been extremely cautious and sceptical of nature documentary filmmaking techniques. The audience wants to see natural occurrences in the wild, but in order to teach about the natural world and tell a story, sometimes crucial behaviour must be constructed. The real problem for documentarians is convincing the audience that construction is justified and does not adversely affect truthfulness.

Blue Planet II was partly shot in controlled environments, including coral bleaching in a lab, deep sea samples in a chamber, a recreated rock pool as well as simply adding artificial lighting. Getting the balance right between accurate representation and storytelling is an issue that is becoming increasingly important for documentaries as audiences become more critical. Blue Planet II's Executive Producer James Honeyborne defends why the sources of footage is not highlighted during the programme by saying "you can't just break the spell". 

Plastic Ducks

The use of plastic ducks appeared misleading to some and ironic to others. In this scene, Attenborough tells the story of when thousands of plastic ducks were lost at sea after a cargo ship crashed in 1992, leaving them floating in the ocean even until this day. The programme uses footage of plastic ducks in the clear blue water to visualise the story and demonstrate currents.

Discovering that the ducks were placed by the crew, many viewers saw this as misleading, suggesting that the programme made indirect claims that these were the original ducks. Little did they know that outside of the episode itself, the production team made it very clear that they were simply used to illustrate a point and did not claim to be the same ducks.

The production team of course did plant the ducks in the sea for the purpose of filming (much more efficient and realistic than finding the real ones) but also collected them afterwards.

"Reconstructing the release of these ducks presented the team with a fresh challenge. While we wanted to tell their story, the team was also well aware of the ironies of putting plastic ducks in the sea. We were used to removing plastic from the ocean, and if we were to introduce any ourselves, we’d need to be very careful to make sure every single one was collected again afterwards." - John Ruthven, Producer 

These accusations of hypocrisy and misleading the audience is detrimental to both the reputation of the programme and the techniques of documentary making. I don't believe it is fair for Blue Planet II to receive these criticisms. Is it not evident that the programme aims to teach the public about our world and not to make a programme simply of nature as they found it? People must take into consideration the process of story-telling and the nature of filmmaking. 

"We want to tell all aspects of the oceans and we will use all the film craft techniques to do that.” - James Honeyborne. 

It makes a great deal of sense that it is not possible to film everything as it occurs in nature, some things are inaccessible, too small, only occur in particular times or circumstances or simply would take too much time. Overall, I believe it is a compliment to documentary filmmaking that the public is often shocked when discovering shots are constructed or reconstructed. It suggests that the illusion these shots create must be effective.