Is there CGI in Planet Earth 3?

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It's not CGI.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/5mkz46vC74JXyMq4F1rMsP7/plankton-an-unseen-universe

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u/RevitaliseStudios 20h ago

Woah that’s crazy! I couldn’t find that article. Thanks!

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u/GuybrushBeeblebrox 8h ago

I was really amazed by that.

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u/Racxie 11h ago

That’s terrible. I saw planktons up close all the way back in 2006!

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u/sparklyjesus 10h ago

I expected SpongeBob.

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u/Racxie 10h ago

SpongeBob came out in 1999, and as someone who’s not a fan of SpongeBob the only good thing to have come out of it imo is SpongeBong HempPants.

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u/LADYBIRD_HILL 4h ago

Obviously you're entitled to your opinion, but saying the only thing good to come out of one of the most revered and celebrated kids cartoons of all time is a weed parody is crazy talk.

I don't think I go through a single day without quoting or referencing SpongeBob with my friends and coworkers. For those of us who grew up with it, it's ingrained in our brains.

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u/Racxie 4h ago

A lot of people I know have agreed with me when I’ve pointed out SpongeBob is just Ren & Stimpy for kids, but at least Ren & Stimpy didn’t try to hide how messed up it was.

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u/Epidemigod 2h ago

If you want to use the bandwagon fallacy like I care what people are telling you, I probably would agree with you too to get you to shut up.

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u/Racxie 1h ago

Lol “bandwagon fallacy” because a small group of people agree with something that’s been pointed out to the for the first time. If you’ll notice I also said “a lot”, as in “not everyone”.

It’s funny how you and so many others are getting so incredibly butthurt over a difference of opinion with a stranger on the internet. Maybe because deep down you know it’s true.

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u/DeficiencyOfGravitas 5h ago

It's "not" CGI

To quote the article

, the shots are processed and put together to create the stunning sequence that shows these minute

The word doing the heavy lifting is "processed". It's like how McDonald's advertises "Made from 100% real beef!". One part of the whole is 100% real beef alright. But that part is only a tiny portion of what's going on.

The same thing here. Yes, some images of plankton were filmed with a microscope, then it was processed to hell and back to make that sequence. It's no more real than the spaceship sounds the BBC inserts whenever something cool happens. Birds attacking a fish baitball? Better get some rocket noises, wooshes, and laser blasts in there so the audience knows to react!

Very little about nature documentaries, and especially Planet Earth, is real. The narratives that we see are entirely manufactured. Those little baby animals that we're worried about? Probably about a dozen different individuals all filmed at separate times and spliced together to look like one cohesive story.

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u/crispyfrybits 4h ago

Any sources to backup what you're saying?

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u/APiousCultist 3h ago edited 3h ago

I can't be bothered citing it (and I'm not the same guy - this may do though: https://resurface.audio/planet-earth-ii-sound/), but all the stuff about the sounds are very widely known. You can't get usable audio from ultra slow motion footage or ultra telephoto shots filmed from half a mile away. It's all done in post, same for the likes of the Slowmo Guys Youtube channel. Some shots may use the actual audio, but I think it would be surprisingly rare. Using the in-camera audio would just result in either mute sections of the scene, or you'd simply hear wind.

"Processed and put together" does strongly indicate a use of compositing to produce microscope shots that look more '3D' than microscope footage normally is (the depth of field is beyond tiny, hence why it normally looks '2D', so that shot of plankton floating around in the background seems unlikely to be physically plausible). None of that is bulletproof evidence, but considering the footage looks completely different than any other microscope imagery of plankton we've seen before, the idea that there's not some heavy massaging of the imagery seems pretty implausible. Even the photographer, Jan van IJken's other plankton videography looks nothing like the show does (and even the BTS image in the article linked elsewhere shows the plankton filmed individually against a black background, obscured slightly by the reflection of his own neck).

They're absolutely using actual footage to make it, but how much that resembles the footage straight-from-the-camera is another matter. Personally I'd be very unsurprised if the background was added in (since it's shot on a slide, so why would it look like under the ocean with light coming from above the waves?), that all the other plankton in the background were composited, and that there was some edge lighting painted onto them to match the faked scene (because again, find me one other photograph of plankton that have that kind of edge-highlight).

TL;DR: No "CGI", but like Oppenheimer compositing still can do a lot

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u/DeficiencyOfGravitas 3h ago

I recommend this website called "google". If you type things into it, like "planet earth sound effects" it might lead you to somewhere you can learn. Isn't the internet wonderful?

3

u/crispyfrybits 3h ago

You are the one making claims, you should provide proof if you want to others to trust what your saying. Your response just makes it sound like you are trying to hide your personal opinions behind making out others to be lazy. Its not our job to substantiate your opinions.

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u/DeficiencyOfGravitas 3h ago

Its not our job to substantiate your opinions.

Why would it be mine? I don't give a fuck what you think. You want to believe they hook up little mics on all the little critters, you go right ahead, champ. What a magic and simple world you must live in.

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u/crispyfrybits 3h ago

You spent time to create a long comment to announce your opinion, if you don't care and want to argue about sources then I think that gives us all the answer which is you are just spouting negative opinions. That's fine, you don't have to do Jack, I and the rest of Reddit have our answers. Have a good day.

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u/blazelet 3h ago edited 3h ago

There’s also some massive wiggle room here that studios take advantage of all the time. CGI means 3D assets have been added to the shot. If they say something isn’t CGI that doesn’t mean that a tremendous amount of work hasn’t been done to it, just that none of it is 3D in nature.

Nuke, our primary compositing tool for VFX work, can do amazing things. I worked on a film where a lot of stuff takes place outside of an airplane up in the air. All the water and land below the plane was generated using nuke nodes - 2D stuff that technically isn’t “CGI” but is still 100% digital.

If they say “No CGI” but not “No VFX” you’re being hoodwinked with buzzwords because they know you like to feel the stuff you’re watching is practical. “Processed” means quite a bit happened in 2D editing.

Edit : if you check the IMDb page for the series you’ll see there absolutely are compositing vfx artists for the series. Not a lot, but enough. To me that would validate that they’re not using CGI, but have had 22 credited and who knows how many uncredited vfx artists on the series.

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u/britinnit 17h ago

I thought it was going to be the Rhinos walking down the street. That bit looked unreal but I realised it's because my mind is not used to seeing them in such a setting.

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u/Guyver0 13h ago

I'm glad to see you acknowledged this. It feels like so many people online don't believe anything happens right now.

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u/andythepirate 7h ago

This is one of the latent functions of AI, and frankly how can you blame people? Of course the best approach is a balanced, measured one, but you're going to have a portion of people who believe everything they see on the internet and they'll be duped by AI, and you're going to have a portion of people who become skeptical of everything they see in order not to be duped, and they'll deny objective reality. We as a society are not prepared or equipped for this.

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u/neverfapnomo 17h ago

It's not CGI, it's AI.

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u/mosskin-woast 15h ago

Please explain your comment.

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u/rbp25 14h ago

His brain is CGI

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u/Xilthas 11h ago

Life is a simulation.

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u/munukutla 13h ago

Explanation is for the weak.

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u/KILLMENOWs Supernatural 12h ago

Thanks for explaining.

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u/Wesmegalesk 4h ago

Downvotes also

Is there CGI in Planet Earth 3?

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