Frozen Planet scandal: Sir David Attenborough defends fake polar bear footage

Daily Mirror (UK) ^ | 12/13/2011 | Simon Boyle

[faucetman]

I don’t care what they have to do to get their shots, but TELL US. Full disclosure. Planet Earth series didn’t fake shots and they also told us how they did it. Stayed out in the freezing cold for weeks or months to get a shot. They could have saved a lot of time & money by going to a zoo and faking it. But then it wouldn’t have been REAL.

[Lady Lucky]

Dittos.

" " Good shot, hsalaw :) " "

[TomGuy]

Fake but accurate,

so, where is our grant money?

[TomGuy]

I've known for a while now that animal programs use different tricks to enhance the experience. Not sure if it's done in every show, but I heard a long time ago that the sounds of the wild are put in later.

Many of the so-called Reality TV programs are also staged, rehearsed, re-filmed and edited before they are shown on TV.

It is the nature of the industry.

[Old Teufel Hunden]

"He has said something to the effect of “Hey, I am just an entertainer!"

The left's head minstrel....

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

***SIR David Attenborough yesterday defended Frozen Planet’s fake polar bear footage****

Reminds me of the faked polar bear shooting scenes in the 1971 TV “documentary” SAY GOODBY.
A helicopter is used to haze a mother polar bear and two cubs. Then the “hunter” shoots, and the camera gets a real good closeup of the slow death of the mom, with the final scenes of two little terrified cubs.

Then the truth came out. It was wildlife agents drugging the mom with a dart gun for tagging(you can see the dart leave the barrel when he fires the gun). She was left unharmed after the tagging was done. But oh what good anti-hunting propaganda was made of the film.

Then there was that other travesty that came out about the same time...THE GUNS OF AUTUMN.

[Dan Cooper]

Fake? The next thing you know we will find out the Bear Grylls really doesn’t sleep out in the woods when filming Man vs Wild. :-)

Or that it is actually beer that he is drinking...

[freedomlover]

In a surprising justification for duping millions of viewers, the TV star argued that owning up to splicing archive film with real Arctic scenes during the programme would have spoiled the underlying message mood.

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Fixed

[count-your-change]

I wonder why this is treated as something new. Sir Davy is just saying ‘Get over it, this is how we do entertainment’.

[cyclotic]

Just like the beach CD’s where you hear the waves hittin ghte Beaches of Monaco of some such nonsense. In one of them, the producer was searching for a particular sound which he finally achieved by dropping a mic in his toilet and flushing.

[Cicero]

“Beneath the rock the caterpillar is out of the wind, but the cold penetrates deep into the ground. “Soon it’s heart stops beating, it ceases to breathe, and it’s body starts to freeze – first it’s gut, then it’s blood.”

The worst thing about this "movie" is that they MURDERED that caterpillar! Not only that, they slowly FROZE it to death!

Murder and torture of a caterpillar! Where is PETA when you really need them. Everyone who was involved in that scene should be jailed!

Furthermore, they can't even spell! They don't know the difference between "it's" and "its." And to think that the BBC used to be a civilized operation!

[Kickass Conservative]

Next thing you know, he will be telling us the Dinosaurs in Jurassic Park were fake.

[Ramius]

I’m not sure I see a big deal here. Some of those sorts of shots simply have to be set-ups or they’d not be possible. How did people ~think~ they got shots of deep inside an ant colony or a beaver lodge, or any of those kinds of things?

Seems to me the important thing is not so much whether the footage was entirely natural, but whether it shows something that is true or not.

[Natufian]

Scandal? Someone needs their sensitivity med dose reviewing.

[Winniesboy]

Furthermore, they can't even spell! They don't know the difference between "it's" and "its." And to think that the BBC used to be a civilized operation!

That orthographic howler was the work of the 'Daily Mirror' report, not the BBC.