Imagine you’re on location in the Namib Desert in Africa. The sun is melting your skin, and you’ve only got a few hours every day to shoot, with the heat being what it is. Or perhaps you’re somewhere in the Arctic Circle, following polar bears by boat in frigid temperatures. It is impossible, of course, to hand a script to any of your subjects and ask them to follow your directions. Therefore, if you need to film a dramatic fight over territory between two alpha males, or record a father bringing long-sought food home to his hungry family, how can you get the perfect footage for your ideal narrative in time?
The probable answer to that question is you don’t.
The key to making nature documentary storylines coherent and compelling lies in post-production—in particular editing and sound design. To demonstrate the power of editing in creating a meaningful storyline—especially in regards to non-human characters—I will be discussing the well-known nature documentary by BBC, Planet Earth II. By analyzing a scene from its pilot, “Islands,” we can determine how certain shots can be stitched together to create a smooth and intricate storyline.
One of the narratives in “Islands” is that of the marine iguanas’. In this segment, newly-hatched marine iguanas find themselves far away from their adult guardians basking by the coast. In order to join their brethren, they must travel across the inlands they woke up in—and avoid every predator lying in wait for them.
How do elements of traditional editing and frame-crafting impact our feelings and get us to invest in the small, scaly characters on-screen? Even if we completely disregard David Attenborough’s engaging voiceovers, which tell us all we need to know, every story element is in the shots for us to recognize.
Our very first introduction to a newly-hatched marine iguana brings us to an extreme close-up of dark, shifting gravel and large, blinking eyes. This closeness immediately identifies us with the critter. As the camera slowly withdraws and cuts to further close-ups, we hear nothing but shaking gravel as the iguana pulls its body out of the sand. (Yes, every sound effect is probably foley, but that is almost certainly for our benefit.) The iguana takes slow first steps, and no one comes to accompany it in its journey to the shoreline. As shots pull even further back, we get establishing shots of the iguana and its environment. Now we can tell how small the iguana really is. All these moments accumulate to present the total solitude of this iguana… and it is a threatening solitude, as our iguana walks from right of frame past a large corpse of another iguana.
Here is a particularly magical edit: a parallel cut shows the adult iguanas basking in the shoreline, snorting water from their nostrils and looking in the direction of the camera. It is almost as if they are watching the small iguana make its way to them, or as if the small iguana is thinking of getting to its brethren by the shore. This small cut, potentially even a cut made to hide a lack of any other proper transition footage, brings an emotional relationship between our iguana and his community. The cut brings motivation to the iguana.
This new depth to our iguana makes the next cut more alarming, as we see a long shot with the iguana slowly moving to the left of the frame… followed by a trio of racer snakes emerging from the right of the frame. When our iguana realizes he is being hunted, he sprints (on two legs) for his life. Now, the sudden sound of a harsh drumbeat and a high-tempo, high-intensity soundtrack add to the skyrocketing tension.
Establishing shots show snakes pouring from every crack in the black, sharp rocks that line the micro-landscape, and they even capture the small form of our iguana leaping up rocks to escape his slithering predators. In a matter of seconds, the establishing shots continuously characterize both the iguana as small and precious—the “underdog” of our story—and the landscape as menacing and unknowable, with either total silence and deceptive solitude, or distressing music and swarms of snakes emerging out of hiding.
In the end, this particular marine iguana makes it out alive, according to Planet Earth II’s story. We see a victorious close-up of our iguana atop a rock, and a reverse long shot of several snakes slithering on the gravel below. The threat is vanquished for our first marine iguana.
Now that we have seen what editing can do for a short and simple animal narrative, we can look at the more famous chase between one marine iguana and a mass of racer snakes, which takes place shortly after our first iguana scene in “Islands.” This two-minute section is arguably the most tense of all iguana and snake chases in the episode.
The scene begins with some very clever cuts. We see a close-up of a hatchling hiding in the sand, his wide eyes blinking—and then a reverse shot shows a close-up of several racer snakes wrapped around the unmoving body of another iguana hatchling. The cut back to our hatchling has him jerking back, as if in fear. Even if we have no way to know if the iguana was really reacting to seeing other iguanas being captured, the cut serves its purpose magnificently well. We now understand that this hatchling is watching and learning, somehow… and that it feels fear, and a desire to live.
Thus begins that spectacular chase. Our iguana pulls himself slowly out of the sand, walking backwards to keep his gaze on something. An eyeline match cut shows the snakes continuing to wrap themselves around another iguana, and our iguana moves carefully away. This lets us project onto our iguana a careful awareness of his surroundings, whether it was truly there to begin with or not.
Further cuts change our point of view. We see the iguana from the snakes’ side of things; our foreground is in focus with the bodies of slithering snakes, and behind a rock, the heads of snakes peek out to watch the moving iguana in the background. These shots further establish just how hunted the iguana is—and then, a snake lunges for him.
Here is where the soundtrack really puts in work. There is intense, thrilling string music to accompany our iguana sprinting across sand and rock, with cuts focusing on establishing continuous action as the snake lunges for the iguana. As our iguana leaps over a boulder and lands on sand, losing the snake, silence ensues. Then, one soft step of his foot upon the gravel, and strings blare out once more to a cut of several snakes’ heads perking up at the sound.
A close-up of the iguana shows him looking around. Various eyeline matches show snakes waiting for their chance at him. (Again, this is clever editing; shots of the iguana looking around could have been recorded at any time, but they were noticed and used for this perfect moment of suspense in the chase storyline.) The soundtrack is slow and suspenseful, using an ambient noise to create tension during this downtime. It is akin to what a horror film soundtrack may sound like: David Attenborough tells us in this moment that, if the hatchling can keep its nerve and stay still, it can remain undetected from the circling snake—a classic hiding-from-the-monster scenario.
But as the snake slithers over the iguana, the latter knows it has to run. It sprints off to the sound of fast, heavy-hitting music, and several long takes follow the iguana’s sprint towards the shore, showing off with remarkable horror the myriad of snakes that emerge from the landscape to add themselves to the chase. This island is characterized as a place of trials for our iguana, and the coastline with his community as the light at the end of the tunnel. It is both literally and figuratively true that our iguana hopes to ascend, as safety lies in the top of the rocks by the shore.
As the chase comes to a climactic end, sound continues to put in work—perhaps even more work than the cutting itself. The iguana runs into the jaws of several snakes, and as silence ensues, it seems all is lost. But quietly, the iguana shakes his way out of the constrictions, and continues sprinting to the sound of a full orchestra behind him.
As the camera cuts close to the iguana and views his journey from a low-angle point of view up a wall of black rocks, we see snakes lunging for him and falling against the stone, unsuccessful in their hunt. The slow-mo applied to these cuts ups the ante even further. The soundtrack reaches a tense climax with the visuals, and the two elements work together to create an intense and distressing narrative. The resolution comes with relieving silence once our iguana joins his community by the coast, atop the large seashore rocks.
But what does it mean, really, that I can describe a nature documentary with traditional shooting and framing terms? Why does it matter that a lizard can seem like a human character in a horror movie, running from an innumerable amount of foes, and fighting against nearly impossible odds? I believe that the power of post-production, especially editing and sound design, can make any inanimate object or inhuman character feel human and relatable. With footage that could have been cobbled together from various different locations and times of day, editors of Planet Earth II excelled at creating a coherent, tense narrative with a notable arc of action and resolution using merely framing, shot relationships, and relevant soundtracks. Thanks to human films and their soundtracks, we recognize the cues to feel or project when certain cuts and sounds come to our senses; Planet Earth II was able to take advantage of our inherent reads on these cuts and use them to create a brilliant narrative based on non-human creatures.
The too long; didn’t read of this article may certainly be this: given the correct sound design and cutting, any animal can be personified and humanly relatable; any storyline can be projected upon any creature or object with the right techniques. If there’s a will, there’s a way, thanks to the magic of post-production.
Works cited in this text:
“Islands.” Planet Earth II. BBC Earth. November 6, 2016. Netflix; Television. 20:43 - 26:25.
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