Netlflix
“The timeline takes us back more than two billion years, during which life on this planet begins, evolves, and is threatened.”
It is very nice to use modern photography techniques to recreate life since its inception and the developments that have occurred in it from ancient times until our present era, within the documentary series titled “Life on Our Planet,” produced by Netflix and with the production participation of international director Steven Spielberg. And audio commentary by Morgan Freeman.
This natural series, fueled by computer-generated images, is characterized by the aesthetics of its celebration of the enormity and splendor of our world, and how plant and animal organisms have adapted in different historical eras, reaching their final form, in light of the environmental crises that affect climate and thermal emissions, and the great damage that humans were the primary cause of. .
The wildlife series is now evolving again, and life on our planet is part of a new breed that looks at humanity as it kills itself, saying: Hey, nature has been through worse than this before. Here, we are told a story that will continue with splendor. As a wonderful cinematic epic.
The concept is very similar to that of Chris Packham’s BBC Earth series, taking us over a timeline spanning more than two billion years, during which life on this planet begins, evolves, and is frequently threatened by mass extinction caused by climate change or sudden catastrophes.
The natural world, of which humans are only a small part today, is itself a small part of the species that once existed, but the creatures of the present have inherited their main characteristics from the creatures of the past that have disappeared.
Digital extinct animals
The “Life on Our Planet” series makes use of computer-generated imagery (CGI) techniques, as well as photography in natural environments and scenes of real animals, with elaborate editing that makes it very difficult to distinguish between real and CGI scenes.
According to this vision, some extinct wild animals have been brought back to life digitally. There are some scenes where unreasonable numbers of dinosaurs gather in the same scene to get a beautiful picture. There are shots of raging volcanoes and huge asteroids. Likewise, there are carbon dioxide molecules vibrating and almost causing… In killing everyone.
As we see in documentaries on the historical development of organisms, we see in this series fighting and mating, with the difference that in “life on our planet” it begins 374 million years ago. For example, we see where Dunkleostus struggles to break the ammonoid shell, and how two arthropods, the ancestors of millipedes, meet. , to have a good time in the forest 345 million years ago. Meanwhile, we see a spider the size of a grain of rice twisting its legs in a disco-like manner in an attempt to attract a female.
These small moments illustrate how mammals, reptiles, vertebrates, fish, cephalopods and other lineages established themselves through natural selection, in eight episodes in a series that documents life that has waged endless war throughout history.
Creativity by Morgan Freeman
Freeman’s voice often resembles a sports commentary mechanism, with the difference that now the difference is billions of animals from the same biological group, versus a race of another species. “Under the waves, life took over, and it was about to change our planet forever,” he says in one episode. “. As the moss evolves into plants with stronger cell walls that can grow skyward, he comments, “The green revolution was coming that would change the landscape forever.”
A tone of high gravity, as when he says when fish transform into creatures with lungs and primitive legs that allow them to live on land: “Evolution from fin to tip took millions of years. But once it is complete, life on land will never be the same again.”
That is, despite the high photography and montage techniques, it remains difficult to capture all life-historical events in pictures, so the deficiency is corrected with Morgan’s words, which make us feel the enormity of what happened.
