Some of us realized that years ago.
Posted on 09/29/2010 8:51:28 PM PDT by fight_truth_decay
Filmmaker Pulls Back Curtain on Deceptions in Nature Films
As executive producer of wildlife documentaries that include the titles "Wolves," "Dolphins," "Bears," and two films on tigers, Chris Palmer has spent more than 25 years helping to guide armchair adventurers through the wonders of nature.
Palmer, who describes himself as an adventurer who has swam with whales and sharks, gotten up close and personal with Kodiak bears, camped among the wolves, and trudged through an Everglades swamp.
But in his new book, Palmer, whose work has appeared on IMAX screens and on primetime television, points a finger at himself and other nature documentary filmmakers, shedding light on what he sees as a pervasive practice of faking nature.
"Wildlife films, too many of them, involve deceptions, manipulations, misrepresentations, fraudulence, and the audience doesn't know,'' said Palmer, 63, in an interview with "Nightline's" John Donvan.
(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...
Read Ted Danson's Shooting In the Wild review.
It appears Danson viewed this book as saving the planet, as he writes: "One of the most effective tools of conservation has been the documentary film" .."major contribution to our understanding of the role mass media plays in protecting our planet."
Perhaps Danson didn't take the time to read the book or was only protecting himself from the accepting the truth that the lemmings were actually hurled off the cliff and did not voluntarily jump to their watery deaths.
Other reviewers, who may have actually read the book, noted the dark side of filming documentaries as Rick Bass states: "It's unlikely we will ever look at documentaries the same way after after reading the book"..."dignity", "honesty" and "responsibility".
"The main reason nature documentaries have taken shortcuts, is simple.. it's money," says Palmer.
They preyed on our fears! and the fears of small children..remember Gore's opening film presentation on man made global warming - polar bears clinging to the remnants of an iceberg? It was revealed the film snip Gore used was shot in August, summer; when the fringes of the Arctic ice cap usually melts and not very far from the coast. The photographer, an Australian marine biology student Amanda Byrd, said she "didn’t think the bears were in any jeopardy".
Nothing new. Marty Stouffer’s “Wild America” PBS series several years ago had staged scenes.
http://www.cbc.ca/fifth/cruelcamera/fakery.html
"Has swam"?! Good grief.
actually, you probably need “trained” animals to get the real shoots.
Not only for safety issues, but because the camera etc. will cause the real animals to change their behavior.
Same thing in “docudramas”: To get the “real” story you might have to change things around so that the important part of the real story isn’t destroyed by details.
Done swimmed.
Thanks for the site. Will take some time -interesting.
Sometimes the audience doesn't know. Some of us are familiar enough with animals and nature to at least be suspicious of some of the film we see. Other times the setups are obvious.
I see a significant fakery in still wildlife photography too, a lot of it is 90% Photoshop.
Some of us realized that years ago.
I remember watching this documentary on sharks, and this pulled this dead shark out of the water, ripped its stomach open, and pulled out a human skull... Now, out of all of the sharks in the world, what are the odds of them catching that exact shark?
You don’t think that they killed someone and then fed him o the shark?
You don’t think that they killed someone and then fed him o the shark?
Some of the fakery is so obvious it’s unbelievable what the narrators are saying.
Attenborough has been caught red handed on this something like 5 times in the last decade.
The Wild Russia series is another bad one.
On the other side.... when trekking through Costa Rica I had two British twits/cameramen from BBC stumble upon my hiking group as they had been lost in the rain forest over night. Was absolutely hilarious scene and when we finally got them back to a hut they told us they’d been out in that area 28 of the 30 days they were being paid to film and had not yet been able to find several of the species they were paid to film. SO in desperation they stuck around until too late in the evening and got lost...
How ‘bout has swum??
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