A nature documentary or wildlife documentary is a genre of documentary film or series about animals , plants , or other non-human living creatures. Nature documentaries usually concentrate on video taken in the subject's natural habitat , but often including footage of trained and captive animals, too. Sometimes they are about wildlife or ecosystems in relationship to human beings. Such programmes are most frequently made for television , particularly for public broadcasting channels, but some are also made for the cinema . The proliferation of this genre occurred almost simultaneously alongside the production of similar television series which is distributed across the world.
29-642: First Life is a 2010 British nature documentary series written and presented by David Attenborough , also known by the expanded titles David Attenborough's First Life (UK) and First Life with David Attenborough (USA). It was first broadcast in the US as a two-hour special on the Discovery Channel on 24 October 2010. In the United Kingdom it was broadcast as a two-part series on BBC Two on 5 November 2010. First Life sees Attenborough tackle
58-645: A famous example, Walt Disney 's White Wilderness (1958), lemmings were herded to their deaths from a cliff by the filmmakers. Examples also occur in modern nature documentaries, such as Hidden Kingdoms (2014) and Blue Planet II (2017), indicating that such practices are still routine. Due to the difficulties of recording sounds on locations, it is common for nature documentary makers to record sounds in post-production using Foley and to use sound effect libraries. Compositing and computer-generated imagery are also sometimes used to construct shots. Wild animals are often filmed over weeks or months, so
87-586: A human presenter, the role varies widely, ranging from explanatory voice-overs to extensive interaction or even confrontation with animals. Most nature documentaries are made for television and are usually of 45 to 50 minutes duration, but some are made as full-length cinematic presentations. Such films include: In addition, the BBC 's The Blue Planet and Planet Earth series have both been adapted by BBC Worldwide and Greenlight Media for theatrical release. In some cases, nature documentaries are produced in
116-581: A jungle within a few minutes, so that the places seem to be teeming with life. You distort size by using close-up lenses. And you distort sound. What the filmmaker is trying to do is to convey a particular experience. … The viewer has to trust in the good faith of the filmmaker. Nature documentaries have been criticized for leaving viewers with the impression that wild animals survived and thrived after encounters with predators, even when they sustain potentially life-threatening injuries. They also cut away from particularly violent encounters, or attempt to downplay
145-618: A scientific and educational approach, some anthropomorphise their subjects or present animals purely for the viewer's pleasure. In a few instances, they are in presented in ethnographic film formats and contain stories that involve humans and their relationships with the natural world, as in Nanook of the North (1922), The Story of the Weeping Camel (2003), and Grass: A Nation's Battle for Life (1925). Although almost all have
174-495: A similar manner to other nature documentaries. The shows ( Walking with Dinosaurs , Walking with Beasts , and Walking with Monsters ) had three spinoffs, two of which featured Nigel Marven : Chased by Dinosaurs and Sea Monsters: A Walking with Dinosaurs Trilogy . Robert Winston presented Walking with Cavemen . Most nature documentary films or television series focus on a particular species , ecosystem , or scientific idea (such as evolution ). Although most take
203-652: A studio-based BBC magazine-program with filmed inserts, hosted by Sir Peter Scott from 1955 to 1981. The first 50-minute weekly documentary series, The World About Us , began on BBC2 in 1967 with a color installment from the French filmmaker Haroun Tazieff, called "Volcano". Around 1982, the series changed its title to The Natural World , which the BBC Natural History Unit in Bristol continued to produce as of 2023 . In 1961, Anglia Television produced
232-411: A tail. In the same hills palaeontologist Dr Mary Droser shows Funisia the first animal for which there is evidence of sexual reproduction . In Switzerland Attenborough visits a very large synchrotron which is used by Professor Philip Donoghue to take microscopic 3-dimensional pictures of the interior of fossilized embryos , including Markuelia an animal which lived 20 million years after
261-486: Is currently impossible to ally it with the Priapulids or other scalidophora . Zhang, X. G.; Pratt, B. R.; Shen, C. (2011). "Embryonic Development of a Middle Cambrian (500 Myr Old) Scalidophoran Worm". Journal of Paleontology . 85 (5): 898. Bibcode : 2011JPal...85..898Z . doi : 10.1666/11-024.1 . S2CID 85723012 . Duan, B.; Dong, X. -P.; Donoghue, P. C. J. (2012). "New palaeoscolecid worms from
290-546: Is the 428 million-year-old Pneumodesmus , a millipede . In December 2011, a second series of First Life was announced by media website Realscreen . The new series focused on the evolution of the earliest fish, reptiles, amphibians and mammals, and aired on the BBC in 2013, as David Attenborough's Rise of Animals: Triumph of the Vertebrates . Nature documentary Robert J. Flaherty 's 1922 film Nanook of
319-701: The BBC , the Discovery Channel and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation . During production, it had the working title The First Animals . At the News & Documentary Emmy Awards in 2011, First Life won in all three categories it was nominated in, for writing, graphic design and art direction and nature programming. The series was nominated for its photography and editing at the BAFTA Craft Awards earlier
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#1732772375915348-748: The Trilobites . Some of the biggest were the Eurypterids , or sea scorpions, such as Pterygotus , of which a large fossil exists in the vaults of the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh . Aysheaia is thought to be the ancestor of the first land animal. A very similar land animal, the velvet worm , still lives in the tropics including the rainforest in Queensland , Australia. The oldest known fossil of an air-breathing arthropod
377-719: The short subject form and are subsequently screened in theaters or broadcast on television. Often they are about the relationship between humans and nature. Notable examples include: Every two years the Wildscreen Trust, of Bristol in the UK presents the Panda Awards for nature documentaries. The "naturalness" of nature documentaries has been disputed. Some, particularly those involving animals, have included footage of staged events that appear "natural" while actually contrived by filmmakers or occurring in captivity. In
406-401: The suffering endured by the individual animal, by appealing to concepts such as the " balance of nature " and "the good of the herd". Among the many notable filmmakers, scientists, and presenters who have contributed to the medium include: Sir David Attenborough 's contributions to conservation are widely regarded, and his television programs have been seen by millions of people throughout
435-632: The Italian film Sesto Continente ( The Sixth Continent ) and the French film Le Monde du silence ( The Silent World ). Directed by Folco Quilici Sesto Continente was shot in 1952 and first exhibited to Italian audiences in 1954. The Silent World , shot in 1954 and 1955 by Jacques Cousteau and Louis Malle , was first released in 1956. In 1954, the BBC started airing Zoo Quest , featuring David Attenborough . Other early nature documentaries include Fur and Feathers shown on CBC from 1955 to 1956 and hosted by Ian McTaggart-Cowan ., and Look ,
464-634: The North is typically cited as the first feature-length documentary. Decades later, Walt Disney Productions pioneered the serial theatrical release of nature-documentaries with its production of the True-Life Adventures series, a collection of fourteen full length and short subject nature films from 1948 to 1960. Prominent among those were The Living Desert (1953) and The Vanishing Prairie (1954), both written and directed by James Algar . The first full-length nature-documentary films pioneering colour underwater cinematography were
493-595: The animals of Ediacara and one of the first to have a gut . One of the first big predators was Anomalocaris , found in the Burgess Shale in the Canadian Rockies . Its prey probably included animals such as Opabinia , Wiwaxia , Hallucigenia . Professor Justin Marshall shows mantis shrimp , which are similar to Anomalocaris . One of the most successful arthropod groups were
522-441: The audience to form an emotional connection with the subject and to root for their survival when they encounter a predator . In 1984, David Attenborough stated: There is precious little that is natural … in any film. You distort speed if you want to show things like plants growing, or look in detail at the way an animal moves. You distort light levels. You distort distribution, in the sense that you see dozens of different species in
551-435: The first cell divisions to the time of hatching; therefore they offer a unique opportunity to study the development of Lower Cambrian animals. The features observed indicate that the genus had a mouth surrounded by a ring of teeth, an alimentary canal , and an anus . However the characters preserved are inconclusive regarding the genus' taxonomic affinity; it can at best be placed in the scalidophoran total group, since it
580-506: The first of the award-winning Survival series. Between 1974 and 1980, the Spanish nature documentary television series El Hombre y la Tierra (The Man and the Earth), produced by TVE and presented by naturalist Félix Rodríguez de la Fuente used 35 mm film, which posed significant logistic and technical challenges at the time. The show gained international recognition. During
609-448: The footage must be condensed to form a narrative that appears to take place over a short space of time. Such narratives are also constructed to be as compelling as possible—rather than necessarily as a reflection of reality—and make frequent use of voice-overs, combined with emotional and intense music to maximise the audience's engagement with the content. One common technique is to follow the "story" of one particular animal, encouraging
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#1732772375915638-543: The late 1970s and early 1980s, several other television companies round the world set up their own specialized natural-history departments, including the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in Melbourne , Australia and TVNZ 's unit in Dunedin , New Zealand — both still in existence, the latter having changed its name to " NHNZ ". ITV 's contribution to the genre, Survival , became a prolific series of single films. It
667-429: The latest fossil discoveries and their nearest equivalents amongst living species to reveal what life may have been like at that time. Visual effects and computer animation are used to reconstruct and animate the extinct life forms. Attenborough's Journey , a documentary film profiling the presenter as he journeyed around the globe filming First Life , was shown on BBC Two on 24 October 2010. A hardback book to accompany
696-486: The most common is Fractofusus (thousands of specimens). In the Ediacara Hills Attenborough is shown by palaeontologist Dr Jim Gehling fossils of Dickinsonia . In the same place there are also fossils of Kimberella , a slug -like animal and Spriggina . These animals are the first to have been mobile and have bilateral symmetry , Spriggina being the first to clearly have a head and
725-534: The same year. The first ancient living being mentioned in the episode is Charnia , an Ediacaran lifeform whose fossil was first found in Charnwood Forest . Stromatolites , which still live in Western Australia are also shown. With the palaeontologist Dr Guy Narbonne , Attenborough visits Mistaken Point where there are hundreds of fossils of Charnia and other animals of which
754-518: The series, authored by Matt Kaplan with a foreword by Attenborough, was published in September 2010. The series was directed by freelance film-maker Martin Williams and series produced by Anthony Geffen, CEO and Executive Producer of Atlantic Productions , with whom Attenborough has collaborated on a number of 3D documentaries for the satellite broadcaster Sky . It was produced in association with
783-552: The subject of the origin of life on Earth. He investigates the evidence from the earliest fossils , which suggest that complex animals first appeared in the oceans around 540 million years ago, an event known as the Cambrian Explosion . Trace fossils of multicellular organisms from an even earlier period, the Ediacaran biota , are also examined. Attenborough travels to Canada , Morocco and Australia , using some of
812-848: The world. Series narrated and/or presented by him include: Steve Irwin 's documentaries, based on wildlife conservation and environmentalism, aired on Discovery Channel , and Animal Planet . The series comprises: Markuelia Markuelia is a genus of fossil worm-like bilaterian animals allied to Ecdysozoa and known from strata of Lower Cambrian to Lower Ordovician age containing five species . An advanced X-ray imaging technique called X-ray tomographic microscopy has been applied to splendidly preserved, uncrushed Markuelia fossils found in Hunan province in southern China and in eastern Siberia . When details in features smaller than one micrometre across can be observed, these fossils are seen to represent many developmental stages, from
841-537: Was eventually axed when the network introduced a controversial new schedule which many commentators have criticized as " dumbing down ". Wildlife and natural history films have boomed in popularity and have become one of modern society's most important sources of information about the natural world. Yet film and television critics and scholars have largely ignored them. The BBC television series Walking With , narrated by Kenneth Branagh , used computer-generated imagery (CGI) and animatronics to film prehistoric life in
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