The making of Life on Our Planet

18th December 2023

Discover how our world-class filmmakers, working with the VFX legends at Industrial Light & Magic, created the spectacular sequences from Life on Our Planet with these special behind-the-scenes films

Our 8-part series is a wildlife documentary with a difference – augmenting footage of the natural world with hyperrealistic renderings of long-extinct creatures, brought (back) to life by cutting-edge technology. Through visual effects we conjure up lifelike prehistoric creatures, including woolly mammoths, a four-winged dinosaur called the Anchiornis, and of course the Tyrannosaurus Rex. But, visual effects only make up 30 to 40 percent of each episode – the remainder consists of footage shot in 45 countries including Ecuador, Ivory Coast, Morocco and the United Kingdom.

But where to start? First, our filmmakers undertook a huge research task and consulted experts and scientists. We worked with Dr Tom Fletcher, our resident palaeontologist, on what the ‘assets’ looked like and how they interacted. Every single creature (of which there are around 65) had to be thoroughly researched to provide ILM with every possible detail. On the inside that meant an accurate skeleton, musculature, ligaments, tongue, teeth and mouth as a whole. On the outside it was skin, fur, feathers, hair, texture, body-mass, eyes, feet, toenails – the list goes on! Each asset had a fact file created which usually ran to around 60 pages.

Our goal was for every scene to feel like one from a wildlife series – choosing to film real locations, instead of CGI backdrops, and shooting these backdrops in the same way as if the creatures were actually in front of the lens. Key to this was Jamie McPherson, one of the best wildlife cinematographers in the world. Jamie helped the team design the animated shots both in terms of drama but also camera work – what lens, what camera move, what frame rate, what depth of field. The team would use a process they call ‘preschool pre-vis’, or ‘plastic pre-vis’, where they used plastic dinosaur toys to play it out and film it on their phones (no really!). They would create the whole scene then use these to make storyboards to visualise the animated shots.

Finding locations to film that were scientifically accurate as backdrops for CGI proved a challenge, as well as getting the details right. For example, grass was a common problem, given that it only evolved a relatively recent 55 million years ago! Jonathan Privett, VFX Supervisor at ILM, came on every VFX shoot to bring his expertise and help the team adopt some of the approaches used in animated features.

Then, over 4 years, Silverback and ILM worked hand in hand on a daily basis on how to make every asset look as realistic as possible. It was this amazing attention to detail that has helped make the show look so remarkable. Across the series there are 867 shots but there were 60,000 versions of them in total – with a massive group of people pushing for things to be better and better every time.

You can see the final result in Life on Our Planet on Netflix, and watch the films below for a deeper-dive into the passion, collaboration and science that went into this truly ambitious series!

Filming dinosaurs in the real world

Featuring interviews with: Barny Revill (Director and Producer, Silverback Films) Jamie McPherson (VFX Director of Photography) Dr. Tom Fletcher (Paleontologist and Senior Researcher, Silverback Films) Jonathan Privett (VFX Supervisor, ILM) Emily Turner (Production Supervisor, Silverback Films) Corinne Cowgill (Senior Layout Artist, ILM) Sawan Thakrar (Senior Animator, ILM) Phil Gifford (Effects Technical Director, ILM) Andreas Feix, (Compositor, ILM)

Blending science and VFX

Featuring interviews with: Dan Tapster (Series Producer, Silverback Films) Jonathan Privett (VFX Supervisor, ILM) Dr. Tom Fletcher (Palaeontologist and Senior Researcher, Silverback Films) Jamie McPherson (VFX Director of Photography) Barny Revill (Director and Producer, Silverback Films) Sophie Lanfear (Producer and Director, Silverback Films) Nick Shoolingin-Jordan (Producer and Director, Silverback Films) Ben Lambert (Asset Supervisor, ILM) Sian Warren (Creature Technical Director, ILM) Phil Gifford (Effects Technical Director, ILM) Louise Hussey (Executive Producer, ILM) Hannah Smith (Texture Artist, ILM)

Designing the CGI T-Rex

Toy Story (a glimpse at the pre-vis stage)

Featuring interviews with: Jamie McPherson (VFX Director of Photography) and Sophie Lanfear (Producer and Director, Silverback Films