Review of Walking With Dinosaurs

Introduction

Having thoroughly enjoyed ‘The Planets’ and spent much time raving about that DVD, I was keen to review the next similar offering from the BBC, Walking With Dinosaurs. This series contains six 30 minute episodes, narrated by Kenneth Branagh, contrasting with the eight 50 minute programmes of The Planets.

Viewers will remember this series originally being screened late 1999, which promised much. The series strikes several similarities to The Planets: a documentary style factual based educational series, mixed with stunning computer graphics and special effects. This series also made use of many sophisticated animatronic models and puppets during filming, which enables close up shots of the dinosaurs feeding and drinking, among others.

Reviews were excellent: “Technical masterpiece” said The Times, who went on to say “Walking With Dinosaurs will become a television classic that will be watched for years”.

No one can ignore the inevitable comparisons that would be made with Jurassic Park – the original CGI/Dino movie that caused such a stir in 1993. This film captured the imagination of series producer Tim Haines who had made several science programmes previously, and after seeing Jurassic Park had the idea for a ground breaking dinosaur natural history series.

The series takes the viewer through the various ages in dino history, initially the Triassic period about 220 million years ago, through the Jurassic, to the Cretaceous period about 65 million years ago. The series shows the differing creatures of the time along with the differing vegetation of the Earth in these earlier days. The series in the final episode discusses the extinction of the dinosaurs, and the comet that collides with the Earth to put an end to these magnificent creatures, and so ended a major chapter in the history of the Earth.

In true ‘Wildlife On One’ style, we are shown all aspects of the lives of these creatures, from feeding and drinking, hunting and reproduction. Each episode concentrates on a certain time period and group of dinosaurs.

Video

The CGI effects are the most notable feature of this series, and the Computer Animation unit at Framestore was commissioned to produce the wonderful animation that makes this production so memorable.

But how did the team really know what these creatures actually looked like? A PhD palaeontologist worked with the whole WWD team offering advice on just how these creatures would have looked and walked. Where it was not known how a particular dinosaur would have moved for example, some creative license was used by studying creatures of today and adapting it to fit the dinosaur CGIs.

The series is presented in anamorphic widescreen 1.78:1, and is superb throughout. A beautifully bright, colourful picture is seen throughout all episodes, even the sea creatures one, where many scenes are shot underwater. Here the DVD format comes into its own, with deep colour revealing high detail in these scenes. Of course there are no blemishes or dust to worry about, and thus this DVD scores very highly here.

Audio

How did the team know just what the creatures actually sound like? Again some imagination combined with sounds from present day animals were used to create the soundtrack. The eerie cries in the dense undergrowth totally devoid of any signs of man made noise is a joy to behold.

The audio soundtrack has recently Project-ed much entertaining argument and Debate from some of the other UK websites as to exactly whether this DVD is encoded in stereo or surround. It was subsequently confirmed that the box cover was in fact correct, in that a stereo audio track had been used. The stereo imagery is, however, excellent and although no proper surround is available for such a marvellous series, this wont stop you switching into ProLogic to get some action from your rear channels if you wish. I personally preferred listening in standard stereo, as this ‘pseudo surround’ that you can create from a standard stereo source is not really my cup of tea, but each to their own.

The rustling of the undergrowth and distant cries of unheard of creatures come across very well in stereo anyway, and the deep thuds of the tyrannosaur and the distant storms will be all the more enjoyable with a subwoofer set up.

However the lack of a surround sound track is the one flaw in an otherwise great package.

Features

You would not normally expect much in the way of extras on a documentary series such as this, but hang on – this is a 2 disc set isn’t it? Well yes it is, and the second disc contains the excellent 50 minute documentary ‘The Making of Walking With Dinosaurs’ that was shown by the BBC after the final episode of the series was transmitted. This is a revealing insight into the whole project from original concept, to location shooting to the creature effects. But be warned – don’t watch this until you have seen the whole series first – you don’t want to marvel at these magnificent beasts saying to yourself “Oh yes – that head is a puppet” or “that’s a bit of CGI” etc etc.

The menus are beautifully animated and set the atmosphere with the audio for the series that is to come, and must be the best menus yet for a TV series transferred to DVD.

You can choose to watch the series as standard or in a rather funky ‘picture-in-picture’ mode. This allows a little pop up window to appear at certain points throughout the production with Haines commenting on the making of the scene being viewed and also some general background information on the ideas behind the sequence. Almost 30 minutes of these sequences are included throughout the six episodes.

An excellent factual booklet accompanies this DVD, where Haines discusses how his original concept for this series was turned into reality, with the help of technical wizardry and an enthusiastic team.

Conclusion

This series was too short!

It could easily have been six hour long programmes which would have allowed more depth and more subjects covered. Of course costs would have risen considerably to effectively turn a three hour production into a six hour one, but the viewer is left wanting more. However one problem was just what subjects exactly the team should cover in only 3 hours? Well each episode was based around a particular large fossil site, and then the team worked out which characters would be featured in that programme from evidence found on that site.

Although much of this series is speculative, as we simply do not know that much about these creatures (most notably the colour of them) it is mainly based on scientific evidence from fossils and known remains.

The locations used were researched worldwide. The biggest problem that the producers faced was the abundance of grass on this little planet of ours. In many of the time periods being shown, there simply was no grass, and so locations had to be found that could be used for this – a surprisingly difficult task.

The DVD is a stunning overall package, only let down by the non surround soundtrack (which I personally believe must have been a major cock up on some ones part). Extras are informative and entertaining and actually add value to the whole production.

Another winner from the Beeb!