Netflix and Spielberg are collaborating on a series about the history of life on Earth
The series “Life on Our Planet”, produced by Netflix in collaboration with Steven Spielberg, deals with the history of life on planet Earth in a format that forces the viewer to spend a long time in front of the screen.
Tomorrow, Wednesday, the series, which extends for eight episodes, will begin showing in various parts of the world on the Netflix platform. This work allows viewers to witness the last five stages of mass extinction that the Earth witnessed, achieved through the use of visual effects generated by computers.
The work, in the voice of actor Morgan Freeman, narrates that life has always found a way to withstand every disaster it has encountered over four billion years, starting from the barbaric ice ages and ending with meteorites.
And every time, the species that survive the disasters engage in a battle for dominance, within a pattern of battles similar to what appears in the series “Game of Thrones,” in which vertebrates and invertebrates or reptiles and mammals face off, instead of the Starks and Lannister (two ruling families in the series).
The general executive producer of the work, Dan Tapster, says: “What we wanted to do and what was our intention from the beginning was to tell the life story in a series, and make the viewer relate to the work. The story is very dramatic.” He adds: “I hope that we have achieved our goal, as this work may be the first of its kind in the field of natural history.”
Aside from the suspenseful endings that stand out in the work, it shows great tension with a series of lovable and vulnerable creatures that evolve despite the hardships surrounding them, at least for a few hundred million years.
Tapster points out that dealing with Amblin Television, the executive producer of this work, director Steven Spielberg, made it possible to implement a series that “contains more emotions and feelings of compassion” than other works about natural history.
The work selects major species such as the first fish with a backbone, or the first vertebrate animal to migrate from the ocean to land. Since 99% of species are extinct, the creators of the work had no problem choosing between them.
“There are at least a billion extinct species, and we had to limit that number to 65,” says Tapster.
But the animals chosen were often unlikely heroes and lucky survivors, such as the bizarre Arandaspis fish, which emerged from the demise of the ocean’s great monsters and reshaped the future of life.
“Arandaspis fish are crap and weird,” says visual effects supervisor Jonathan Privet. “But they’re in the work because they play a crucial role” in development.
The series uses visual effects from Industrial Light & Magic, the company created by George Lucas, creator of the Star Wars series, and is particularly known for its pioneering work in creating 3D dinosaurs in the movie Jurassic Park, which Spielberg directed before Three decades.
The monsters of the ancient past, from dinosaurs to much earlier stages when giant Cameroceras (horned creatures) lived in the sea, are displayed above the real backgrounds filmed by the series’ makers.
To do this, the producers had to scour the planet in search of contemporary landscapes that closely resemble the habitats of creatures up to 450 million years ago.
“The animals actually live in a real world,” says producer Keith Scholey. “I think it’s fluid, and I think it’s a very authentic way to take us back to that time.”
The series’ makers also had to use visual effects tools to remove annoying modern species, such as fish, mammals, and even grass.
“The grass was a big nuisance,” Tapster recalls, adding that “grass has only been around the world for about 30 million years… and for us that meant we had to do a lot of gardening.”
The series enters the competition in a crowded market, as it will go up against the latest BBC series, David Attenborough’s Planet Earth III, which was also launched this week.
It also follows Prehistoric Planet on Apple TV Plus, which is also narrated by Attenborough and uses computer-generated effects to recreate the age of the dinosaurs.
But the series “Life on Our Planet” also aims to stand out from the competition, due to the message it carries with its timing and content.
Despite the series’ interest in suspense and plot twists, we are not revealing a secret if we say that it ends with the survival of life, and humans at the highest peak of beings.
However, with the sixth mass extinction event due to humanity’s impact on Earth, there is also a profound warning in this work.
“In the five events we have seen so far, there has been one common denominator, which is that the dominant species that went into this extinction never emerged,” says series producer Alastair Fothergill. “We’re making the sixth event, and I think you might think we’re the dominant genre at the moment,” he adds.
“In a weird way, there’s a message of hope in all of this, because not only is this the first extinction event caused by a species, but we also have the power to stop it,” Tapster explains.
(AFP)
