Prehistoric Planet: Documentary Review

This series was a fantastic feat of visual effects where the task was to bring animals that have long been dead back to life. Scientists and visual effects artists collaborated in order to create the most realistic and historically accurate creatures possible. The show is called ‘Prehistoric Planet’ and can be watched on Apple TV +. In this series, I’ll go through a bit of the breakdown of the show and an overall review of it.

Because I myself have a strong interest in CG Integration and learning about history, I thought that this show was amazing. The visual effects were stunning in many shots, especially close-up shots of the creatures. Most people would think that those would be the areas where it would look the most CG, but in fact, it did not. The attention to detail that the artists who worked on this show were immaculate. For close-up shots, they could focus on the small details and imperfections of the creatures. As someone watching the show, you can pay attention to the softness of feathers, the subsurface scattering on the skin, the liveliness in the eyes, etc. There are also certain shots where the dinosaurs are covered by some leaves or there is snow in the way. This helps to integrate them even more into their environments, but it also can help to hide any parts of them that may look fake to viewers. 

The overall cinematography of the series was done well in my opinion. That mostly could have been the fact due to the makers having control over where they wanted their creatures. In real-life animal documentaries, filmmakers have no control over the animals they are filming. But in this series they did, because they created the animals themselves. I thought they did a great job of paying homage to typical animal documentaries while still allowing themselves to line up shots beautifully. Some shots would have branches in the way or the camera would go a bit too far while following an animal running to mimic real-life cameramen. 

Because we don’t truly know how dinosaurs behaved all those years ago, scientists had to guess based on the animals of today. There were certain scenes in the series where the behavior of the dinosaurs was very similar to birds or reptiles nowadays. For example, there was a Carnataurus that did a dance in order to woo a female. This is very similar to a bird in real life called a Vogelkop Lophorina. This bird dances for a female and waves around a pop of color hidden in its chest feathers. The Carnataurus also was shown to be cleaning its ‘dance floor’ similarly to another bird in real life called a Flame Bowerbird. Since we don’t truly know how dinosaurs behaved all those hundreds of years ago, scientists have to make speculations and predictions based on the animals of today. Certain ‘storylines’ we followed in the series of the dinosaurs seemed a bit predictable if you have watched other wildlife documentaries before.

The image above is a comparison of the previs to the final shot. This massive toad called a Beelzebufo was created very realistically. You can see the subsurface in the lips and fingers of the creature and the broken specular highlights on the bumpiness of its skin. Like this shot, there are many that look very realistic. Although there are a few that do not. For example, there is a scene where some flying dinosaurs are all on a cliff, and because of the sheer quantity of them, it looks a bit fake. They did a decent job of making some differences in the crowd, but the creatures themselves all look a bit washed out and too similar in colors. Overall, the visual effects were done very well and this series is one I would have loved to have worked on. 

Dinosaurs are ancient creatures that visual effects artists were able to bring back to life with the direction of scientists. ‘Prehistoric Planet’ is a great show if you love wildlife documentaries and dinosaurs. It’s truly amazing how visual effects can meld the boundaries of imagination and reality. 

WIRED has a great video about collaboration with vfx artists and scientists. You can watch it here: https://www.wired.com/video/watch/wired-news-and-science-prehistoric-planet 

FXGuide has a detailed breakdown of certain shots in the series which you can read here:

Sources:

• https://www.mpcepisodic.com/news/fx-guide-prehistoric-planet/ 
• https://www.fxguide.com/quicktakes/prehistoric-planet/ 
• https://beforesandafters.com/2022/06/08/those-close-ups-are-where-it-all-lives-and-breathes/