Planet earth how many episodes

Four years in the making, the ground-breaking Our Planet project was filmed in 50 countries all over the world, taking in every continent. In total, it took more than 3, days to film Our Planet. More than members of crew came on board to help capture all of the incredible footage using the latest in 4K camera technology required to make Our Planet a reality.

There are eight episodes in the Our Planet series showcasing the planet's most precious species and fragile habitats, revealing amazing wildlife spectacles and places on Earth in ways that have never been seen before. Each episode allows you to explore a different biome of our natural world - from tropical jungles to frozen lands - taking you on a journey that will open your eyes to the full possibilities of nature on our planet.

We are the first generation that knows we are destroying the world, and we could be the last that can do anything about it. But together we can reverse the damage and restore nature.

With never seen before sequences, Our Planet will take you to corners of the world where the most amazing natural events happen and motivate you to make changes to protect the place that we call home. This series has inspired and continues to inspire people all over the world to understand nature and the challenges it faces like never before. Read on to learn more about the impact of the Our Planet project.

In its first year, the Our Planet project reached hundreds of millions of people around the world, through the series as well as digital content, media, education projects and partnerships. At the end of each fifty-minute episode, a ten-minute featurette takes a behind-the-scenes look at the challenges of filming the series.

It received critical acclaim, high viewing figures and audience appreciation ratings and a string of awards. It also became a hugely profitable global brand, eventually being sold to countries worldwide. Feedback showed that audiences particularly liked the epic scale, the scenes of new and unusual species and the cinematic quality of the series.

Programme commissioners were keen for a follow-up, so Alastair Fothergill decided that the Natural History Unit should repeat the formula with a series looking at the whole planet. A feature film version of Planet Earth was commissioned alongside the television series, repeating the successful model established with The Blue Planet and its companion film, Deep Blue.

Earth was released around the world from to There was also another accompanying television series, Planet Earth: The Future , which looked at the environmental problems facing some of the species and habitats featured in the main series in more detail. They directed the film crews in the field, backed up by a team of production co-ordinators and researchers at the Natural History Unit's offices in Bristol, England. In addition, the supporting team of scientists, guides, fixers, pilots, drivers and field assistants numbered in the hundreds or even thousands.

Investment in new technology enabled the series to be edited and delivered without using videotapes. Planet Earth' s distinctive use of satellite imagery and time-lapse effects were provided by design company Burrell Durrant Hifle, using NASA photography. The script was written by the producers with input from David Attenborough , though the US episodes feature different narration and are slightly shorter in length.

Production began in and was completed in autumn , shortly before the final six episodes went to air. The first year after commissioning was spent on researching and planning the shoots. To capture all the footage required by the producers, 71 camera operators filmed in locations in 62 countries on all seven continents, spending more than days in the field.

In , the technology was still largely untested in the field, and Fothergill was concerned about the difficulties of adapting to the new cameras. Despite the reservations, the HD cameras proved to be reliable and even out-performed traditional film cameras in certain situations. Their high sensitivity allowed the team to film at lower light levels than film cameras, in dark rainforests for example.

Because tape stock is smaller, lighter, and cheaper than film, the lengths of shoots were limited primarily by the capacity of batteries. This improved the chances of capturing interesting behaviour, and enabled longer aerial shoots.

The latter, a distinctive feature of Planet Earth , were shot using a technique borrowed from Hollywood action films. The camera was mounted in a device called a Cineflex Heligimbal , a gyroscopically-stabilised housing attached to the underside of a helicopter and controlled by joystick from inside the cockpit. The unit was lightweight, enabling lenses with a longer reach to be attached up to 40x magnification. This enabled him to capture steady images of individual creatures from a height which prevented the noise of the helicopter from disturbing them.

One of the producers' aims was to build as much unique footage into Planet Earth as possible, and the crews succeeded in filming a number of species, locations and events from the natural world which had never before been shown on television, including:.

The episodes are each an hour in length, comprising the main programme and a minute featurette called Planet Earth Diaries which details the filming of a particular event. In the UK, Planet Earth was split into two parts, broadcast in spring and autumn The first episode in the autumn series, "Great Plains", received its first public showing at the Edinburgh International Television Festival on 26 August It was shown on a giant screen in Conference Square.

Following the advertisements, interest was so widespread that the single was re-released. There were a number of revisions to the original British programmes. Actress and conservationist Sigourney Weaver was brought in to replace David Attenborough as narrator, as it was thought her familiarity to American audiences would attract more viewers.

The Discovery programmes also used a different script to the British original. The series was broadcast on Sundays in one 3-hour block followed by four 2-hour blocks, with the episodes shown in a different running order to the UK broadcast. The Planet Earth Diaries segments were not shown immediately after each episode, but collectively in Planet Earth: The Filmmakers' Story , a two-hour special which was broadcast after the series had finished its initial network run.

The series was eventually sold to countries. Now, over six billion crowd our fragile planet. But even so, there are still places barely touched by humanity. This series will take you to the last wildernesses and show you the planet and its wildlife as you have never seen them before.

The first episode illustrates a 'journey' around the globe and reveals the effect of gradual climatic change and seasonal transitions en route. Meanwhile, as spring arrives in the Arctic, polar bear cubs take their first steps into a world of rapidly thawing ice.

In northern Canada, the longest overland migration of any animal — over 3, kilometres 2, mi — is that of three million caribou, which are hunted by wolves, and one such pursuit is shown. The forests of eastern Russia are home to the Amur leopard; with a population of just 40 individuals in the wild, it is now the world's rarest cat. This is primarily because of the destruction of its habitat, and Attenborough states that it "symbolises the fragility of our natural heritage.

Other species shown include New Guinea's birds of paradise, African hunting dogs in their efficient pursuit of impala, elephants in Africa migrating towards the waters of the Okavango Delta, a seasonal bloom of life in the otherwise arid Kalahari Desert, and , migrating Baikal teal, containing the world's entire population of the species in one flock.

The Planet Earth Diaries segment shows how the wild dog hunt was filmed unobtrusively with the aid of the Heligimbal , a powerful, gyro-stabilised camera mounted beneath a helicopter. UK broadcast 12 March , 8.

The second instalment focuses on the mountains. All the main ranges are explored with extensive aerial photography. Ethiopia's Erta Ale is the longest continually erupting volcano — for over years.

Mark Linfield Self as Self …. Doug Anderson Self as Self. Justine Evans Self as Self. Mike Holding Self as Self. Tania Jenkins Self as Self. Jonathan Keeling Self as Self.

Michael Kelem Self as Self. Simon King Self as Self. More like this. Watch options. Storyline Edit. Each 50 minute episode features a global overview of a different biome or habitat on Earth Polar, Mountain, Cave, Desert, Plains, Fresh Water, Seas, Ocean, Forest , followed by a ten-minute featurette which takes a behind-the-scenes look at the challenges of filming the episode. Prepare to see it as never before.

Did you know Edit. Trivia For the air shots, a special airborne camera was used with a mm lens that was able to zoom into single animals from a kilometer away without disturbing them.

Connections Edited into Earth One of the snippets you may miss, though, is a rather brilliant video of one of the cameramen coming back to his Indonesian hotel to find a Komodo dragon in the toilet. Watch here. Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies. Want to bookmark your favourite articles and stories to read or reference later? Start your Independent Premium subscription today. How many episodes will there be and what will each focus on?