Readers may recall using photoshopped images of polar bears on CGI ice floes. Here we go again.
Via the GWPF: Frozen Planet Fakery Row: Polar Bear Filmed In Zoo Using Fake Snow
Frozen Planet’s eight million devoted fans will not take kindly to being left out in the cold. It emerged yesterday a key scene from the hit BBC series showing a polar bear tending her newborn cubs was filmed in a zoo using fake snow.
Mixing real Arctic shots with zoo scenes, documentary makers fooled the audience into believing the footage was gathered by intrepid cameramen in the brutal sub-zero wilderness.
It was actually filmed from the comfort of a wildlife park enclosure using bears in a man-made wood den.
During the carefully worded Frozen Planet commentary, Sir David Attenborough’s script failed to explain how the moving scene was made.
The truth behind the trickery is only revealed in a hard-to-find video among dozens of clips on the BBC website.
Yesterday John Whittingdale, chairman of the Commons culture, media and sport committee, said it was “hugely disappointing” viewers were misled.
He said: “My view has always been that all broadcasters should not seek to give viewers a false impression and it is much better if they are entirely open.
“If this was not filmed in the wild it would have been much better to have made that clear in the commentary.
“It’s questionable how many people would visit the website and find the video clip which explained the circumstances of the filming.”
More than eight million viewers tuned into the fifth episode from the £16million seven-part series on November 23.
It began by showing genuine footage of a male polar bear scavenging for food during the harsh Arctic winter.
As howling blizzards filled the screen, Sir David explained: “He must live on his resources. This is a time to scrape by.” The camera then panned to a frozen hillside, before cutting to a close-up of a female polar bear hibernating with her newborn cubs.
Apparently referring to the same bear family, the naturalist said: “But on these side slopes beneath the snow new lives are beginning. The cubs are born blind and tiny. An early birth is easier on the mother.”
His commentary continued: “In two more months polar bear families will emerge on the snowy slopes all round the Arctic.” The camera then moves from the snowy tundra to the dark nest, watching the cubs nuzzle up to their mother, as he says: “But for now they lie protected within their icy cocoons.”
Viewers marvelled at the crew’s apparently daring exploits. One fan wrote online after the show: “The camera team would be in a whole heap of s*** if mummy had woken up.”
In reality, the den was made of plaster and wood beneath a German zoo’s polar bear enclosure. It was fitted with cameras shortly before the cubs’ birth.
read more at the Daily Mirror
On this particular count: “Meh”
I’m sure there’s plenty of other aspects of that alarmist series that one could pull to pieces. This looks like a storm in a teacup.
BBCGATE anyone?
Artwest, the BBC is currently under intense scrutiny for bias and propaganda. This is very important – not only are they not objective, they resort to lies.
For those posters who are saying “ho-hum, goes on all the time” – speak to a colleage of mine who came from communist Eastern Europe. It’s amazing how perceptive a constant dose of state propaganda makes one towards …well … er … lies. The BBC is caught out in one of Aunty’s lies – with her knickers down.
So, essentially, the polar bears of the icy north will turn into über bears and migrate to the coal riddled landscape of cold dark Germany or else they’ll suffer the new warmth of the north?
mrsean2k says:
December 12, 2011 at 12:39 pm
“Genuinely baffled as to why people think this is a story.”
The BBC, aka “the government,” is caught lying again. Sir David Attenborough, the BBC’s spokesman for nature was caught in the lie.
If you are going to make a TV series about nature but you simulate it in a studio then you have a duty to inform viewers that the series is actually about simulated nature.
never let the truth stands in the way of a good story… or factual documentary.
Katabasis
What are you on abaout?BBC coverage of Israel?Are you actually saying that the BBC favours Israel?
mrsean2k Is puzzled as to why this is wrong,after all the media have been doing it for years.Faked war scenes,faked street protests,faked disaster coverage.It’s all about fooling the viewer which isn’t hard.Saw it on TV,must be true,read it in the paper,must be true.
Dave N says:
December 12, 2011 at 3:58 pm
On this particular count: “Meh”
“I’m sure there’s plenty of other aspects of that alarmist series that one could pull to pieces. This looks like a storm in a teacup.”
Sir David Attenborough, the BBC’s face for nature, is a liar. How is that a storm in a teacup?
Just once, I’d like to see some honesty come out of the Envirobots. Just once.
Robert of Ottawa says:
December 12, 2011 at 4:06 pm
“Artwest, the BBC is currently under intense scrutiny for bias and propaganda. This is very important – not only are they not objective, they resort to lies.”
And they earned it. We are not giving them a break. They will find each misstep fully exposed.
More fraud from the Climate Crazies.
Derek Sorensen
December 12, 2011 at 2:33 pm
A lie is a lie, and a lie is always wrong. If you had any idea the damage this sort of idiocy has already done, you would not be so forgiving, or at least I hope you wouldn’t.
Robert of Ottawa says:
Artwest, the BBC is currently under intense scrutiny for bias and propaganda. This is very important – not only are they not objective, they resort to lies.
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Any filmmaking is a construction. Even in documentary: as soon as you chose a camera angle, as soon as you light, as soon as you select a frame rate, as soon as you edit, as soon as you add music, commentary or sound effects, as soon as you commit light to film or a sensor you are warping “reality”.
Shots of animals/birds/fish etc in their nests/burrows and other near-impossible conditions have been filmed in somewhat artificial conditions since the year dot. As long as such footage doesn’t misrepresent the behaviour of the creatures in question this has always been seen as unexceptional.
As I understand it the shots in the Attenborough programme were no different to how they would have been if the bears were in the wild and no contentious claim was made on the basis of those shots.
I know of no other broadcaster in the world who would have a problem with those shots. Maybe some particularly anal broadcaster somewhere might have insisted that they be particularly flagged but I doubt it. It would be seen as being somewhat like having to have a “slow motion” caption on screen every time a lion brought down a gazelle in case some people thought that lions moved that slowly.
My concern is that by concentration on issues where the average person thinks we are making a mountain out of a molehill we look petty.
It is also a distraction – look how much focus has been pulled onto this easily brushed-off issue in the media when the real story should be the BBCs general bias on CAGW.
The warmists must be loving this distraction.
For those who say, “So what, all documentaries have make believe in them.”…. Well the same thing could be said for people cynical about Communist politics, “So what, all public statements are vetted for political content.”
The fact is, fabrications are not facts and fabrications end up perpetuating myths or supporting lies…. A few examples of each would be the Lemming mass suicide myth created in a film documentary and now an accepted fact, Lysenkoism in Soviet and Communist Chinese politics which was responsible for the deaths of tens of millions and Anthropogenic Global Warming’s fabricated science and exaggerated catastrophic effects as an example in the modern era….
If a naturalist program wants to be relevant in the modern era, it needs to be truthful and transparent about its science, its methodology and cinematography. If they need to emulate a natural situation, then they should say so and explain what they have done.
…. Don’t forget. The Lemming myth was created to show that population increases cause madness and mayhem….. and was actually an Anthropomorphisation…. They were using lemmings, but meaning Humans….. 1960’s politics and the population bomb hysteria that passed as science back then….. Now it’s AGW and polar bears, huddled with their cubs in fake snow dens or drowning in CGI seas on melting CGI ice floes………. Same ol’ same ol’. Sigh…….
I knew there was a twist when the BBC made a program called “Frozen planet”.
Apparently our planet is “Frozen” despite thirty years of anthropogenic global warming climate change hysteria.
artwest
December 12, 2011 at 5:25 pm
Shots of animals/birds/fish etc in their nests/burrows and other near-impossible conditions have been filmed in somewhat artificial conditions since the year dot. As long as such footage doesn’t misrepresent the behaviour of the creatures in question this has always been seen as unexceptional.
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Misrepresent the behaviour according to who’s understanding of the animals normal behavior. The greeny propagandist?
But what I want to know is whether or not the temperature guage was duplicated.
artwest says:
December 12, 2011 at 5:25 pm
The warmists must be loving this distraction.
Because their Warming Model
“experiments”simulations use the same methods?Louise says:
December 12, 2011 at 12:37 pm
Do viewers really expect that all those close ups of e.g. krill and plankton are filmed in the wild and not a petri dish? How is this different? The web site said from the start where this filming took place, there was no subterfuge – it’s part of standard naturalist filming practices.
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Thank you Louise, you have just confirmed the bankruptcy of the “naturalist filming practises”. What else have they deceived the ‘sheeple’ with?
The web site is not the primary medium conveying the subterfuge of the producers … these actions need to be openly disclosed at the time of viewing, not requiring one to research hidden information. This is the same as those unreadable fine print disclaimers on products hidden behind affixed labels. I’d love to know your thoughts on ‘truth in advertising’.
Here’s the review of Frozen Planet’s last show from the London Telegraph:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/charlesmoore/8950190/Frozen-Planet-David-Attenborough-stumbles-on-the-melting-ice.html
At least he’s old. …Lady in Red
Speaking of faked nature shows, anyone remember Marty Stouffer? (I can’t remember the exact name of his show.)
I watched him at work at what was known as the Okanagan Game Farm near Penticton in southern BC (Canada) back about 1970. He did a lot of fake stuff there. To do a scene of a coyote, first he trained it to go to a food source by using a a remote activated beeper at the food. Then he located a bunch of those beepers (out of camera sight of course) where he wanted the coyote to go for his story. Then he sequentially activated those beepers to get the coyote to follow the script.
This didn’t exactly misrepresent coyote behavior but it forever changed how I saw that show, and many others. Not to mention still photos.
It was not a German Zoo, it was a zoo in Rhenen, The Netherlands. Even here the information seems to be wrong.
Can’t help but think of the small row over CBS faking Boston fireworks shots last year during their live New Years Eve show. http://tinyurl.com/3oowmpf Once discovered, they tried to pass this deception off as perfectly acceptable because the supposedly live coverage was ‘entertainment’ not ‘news.’ Of course, how many people would actually tune in to watch if right up front they were told it was created with CGI/mixed images? Or at least if they did, they would know that’s what they were getting and have accepted it up front. People believe – and certainly should be able to believe – that live coverage means just that – accurate, real, and live. For those reading who aren’t in the USA, CBS is one of the 3 conventional national networks here.
The same with documentaries. Lord knows it would be easy enough to insert a few words in the dialog, or a sentence or two, right in the documentary as they shift to the non-wild scene to let folks know that it’s too dangerous or difficult or whatever to get the actual shots, so these are from a zoo (or ranch or xyz…). Or at the very least, to have that stated by the narrator in the opening part of the documentary – not buried in filming credits at the end or a later “how it was made” piece that likely won’t be seen by the vast majority of those who watch the actual documentary.
Frankly I recall seeing that segment, or one just like it and at the time wonder how the heck they managed to get the shot. I wound up thinking, well, ok, maybe they pushed optical fiber thru the snow into the den… then of course, the question becomes, how did they manage to find the den? Did they REALLY keep a feed like that active for the weeks or months necessary to catch the babes being born and then coming into sight? I finally just dismissed it as an unknown. But assumed that must be what the inside of a polar bear den looks like. Well, foolish me. Personally, I’d have like to have known.
How many kids watching documentaries assume that we’re so omnipotent that we’re able to actually do all these things? For that matter, how many adults? “Gee, scientists are so smart they can manage this, so they must be right when they say….” Is that REALLY what we want for our society? What does it do to education, and to people’s abilities to trust and to discern real from unreal, right from wrong, when these sorts of things happen. Even worse, rather than getting upset when instances are discovered, so many people respond with a cavalier “they can fake anything, anyone believing anything seen is real is just a fool?” This is right along the same lines as those who excuse politicians for telling obviously lies, because hey, they’re politicians and they all lie, so what’s the big deal? Well, it is a big deal, and it’s not acceptable. This sort of attitude is what contributes to little exaggerations turning into big exaggerations turning into outright lies.
Meanwhile, clearly problems of this nature with media will only get worse as technology continues developing – and to the extent that once such problems are discovered, people are willing to accept fakes, disinformation, misdirection without much more than a shrug. I haven’t finished reading most of the comments yet (I got down to the well said comment by davidmhoffer December 12, 2011 at 1:58 pm) but am a bit appalled some who seem to be implying that Anthony (for bringing this to our attention), or other commentators (who think it’s a serious issue) are somehow in the wrong. That we ought to just accept this sort of thing as to be expected and no big deal. Certainly there are other issues that are bigger, but that doesn’t make this sort of thing trivial or something to be taken without a qualm. Not unless we’re happy to never know if what the media is presenting is accurate or not, and are willing to just lap up any propaganda that someone in control or power cares to feed us.
I was initially fooled by the number of people here who do not mind being fooled. But then the old adage readily came to mind. “We are never fooled, we fool ourselves”.