Sunday Nights

So tonight was the last installment of the mini-series Planet Earth. I managed to catch them all on the Discovery Channel, and just like I fell in love with Blue Planet, I have loved every minute of Planet Earth. The BBC outdid themselves this time. It's fun learning about the different environments, and I got to spend some quality time with my dad watching a couple of the episodes. This last episode tonight was a "behind the scenes" look. I'm amazed at the shots they were able to capture...of course the filmmakers endured some very harsh and interesting conditions to get the shots. Spending a year in Antarctica to film penguins in the most harsh winter on earth; spending 5 weeks in a cave with a 3oo meter high mountain of bat guano, which was crawling with cockroaches; sitting motionless in a hide 12 hours a day for weeks trying to catch the elusive birds of paradise; camping out in the high Himalayas for months at a time over 3 years to film the snow leopards, an endangered species; using new camera technologies mounted to a helicopter to get aerial views of African hunting dog skills and strategies. Some of the most intense and remote locations in the world were featured by these intrepid filmmakers. But it was worth it! Here's a look at what I've picked as the two most outstanding moments of the show.

Shark Attack


Birds of Paradise


During it's run, you could vote on what you thought was the best moment. They revealed tonight that the most popular was the shark attack. I'm not surprised. Discovery Channel does a whole shark week in June every year; the shark itself is such a powerful and agile predator; and the technology used to capture the moment was so cool--it slowed down a one second attack to over 40 seconds, so you can see every bubble and bite! I had seen it early on in the previews and had been saying to my dad (when I was convincing him to watch it with me)that it was incredible and we just had to watch because the whole show was going to be full of images like that. I wasn't disappointed. The show should still be airing off and on during the next few weeks on the Discovery Channel. If you have the time, I would definitely check it out!