Archive notice: This article was originally published on April 8, 2008. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
Five years of production, more than 2,000 days in the wild, 40 camera operators filming at over 200 locations — this is the ultimate portrait of our planet.
These films break all previous boundaries of nature documentary filmmaking.
They show our world as it has never been seen before — from great rivers and impressive gorges, through mighty mountains and mysterious caves, to vast deserts and extensive wetlands.
The camera perpectives are well chosen: there are many wide shots, and the filmmakers like to play with zooms. This works well in High Definition because, even when there is a lot to see, the details are not lost.
The Blu-ray box, consisting of five discs in a cardboard slipcase, presents the impressive footage in Full HD resolution of 1920 x 1080. It totals 650 minutes.
planet earth is also available on HD DVD, but buyers get the “Uncut Version” only in the Blu-ray edition. This means that each episode is five minutes longer than the ARD TV version!
The two previously unreleased bonus documentaries “Desert Lions” and
“Snow Leopards“ are, however, available in both the Blu-Ray and the and HD DVD box!
(English with German subtitles)
See never-before-seen see animal behaviour
- Wolves hunting caribou — a complete hunt was filmed from the
air. The speed at which the wolves pursue their
prey makes it impossible to follow the action on the ground,
but the use of a new system to stabilise the
camera in the air allowed us to follow such an
event by helicopter for the first time.
- Snow leopards hunting markhor in the Himalayas — never
before had close-ups of snow leopards in the wild been taken
with a telephoto lens. Previous impressions had
always been captured with remotely controlled cameras. We filmed a
whole range of different behaviours, including the
intimacy between mothers and their young.
- Golden eagles catching demoiselle cranes in flight on their journey across the
Himalayas.
- Grizzly bears leaving their dens in the Rocky
Mountains with their newborns, and unique footage of grizzly bears
feeding on moths.
- Footage of a new species of blind cave fish in Thailand.
- Desert lions hunting oryx in the Namib —
filmed for the first time both on the ground and from the air.
- Amazon river dolphins herding fish in the Amazon and
presenting stones as “gifts” during courtship — the only
known situation in which wild dolphins use tools.
- Diving long-tailed macaques.
hunting behaviour.
Unknown Filming Locations
- The remote island of Kong Karls Land in Spitsbergen. Unique
images of the habitat of the world’s largest concentration
of polar bears.
- The Gobi Desert in winter — covered in snow.
las Golondrinas (“Cellar of the Swallows”).
- The depths of Lake Malawi — home to many endemic
species.
- Beneath the ice of Lake Baikal: the largest lake on Earth is
frozen for five months every year. Our cameras dive
beneath the ice for the first time and reveal a world much
more reminiscent of an ocean than a lake.
- The first high-resolution images from inside Lechuguilla
Cave, the world’s most beautiful cave system, which was only discovered in
1986.
- The first high-quality aerial footage of Mount Everest.
that contains more of the highest peaks than any other.
- The tepuis in Venezuela — remote, pristine plateaus.
#planet_erde
The Blu-ray box is priced at 75 euros. Available to order from amazon.de, among others
