“Everything starts with the fossil record,” he says. I ask Walker how the team managed to land on what to create for the series. That seems like a tall order, especially when making a show set millions of years ago based on data that is constantly developing. Speaking of authenticity, Prehistoric Planet presents itself with the swaggering confidence of any Natural History Unit project. “It’s a subtle difference, but I think it’s a critical one in terms of authenticity,” he says.Ī family scene from Prehistoric Planet.

When we see a T rex, Gunton explains, it’s depicted as being “pretty much shot on the longest telephoto lens in our armoury”, to stop the camera operator from being eaten. There are T rex sequences, but don’t expect any extreme closeups. This approach – treat the camera as if it had been placed by a flesh-and-blood documentarian – plays out through the series. The CGI can do anything, but we’ve tried to make it feel as if we turned up to shoot one thing, but then: ‘Oh my God! Look at this!’ We’ve tried to shoot and edit as if it were found footage.” “It was very much: ‘Oh my God, we didn’t know that was going to happen!’ We’re definitely copying that feeling here. “The reason that sequence felt so powerful was because it felt uncontrived,” says Gunton. Mike Gunton, a Natural History Unit mainstay and the show’s executive producer, says their approach stems from the horrifying sequence in Planet Earth II where an iguana hatchling runs for its life from dozens of speeding snakes. Part of this is down to the producers’ approach to what they depict. After a while, you stop noticing that it’s not real-life footage. You have all the respect and scientific rigour that you would find in a traditionally shot documentary such as Planet Earth presented with thoroughly convincing CGI. The results of this union are astonishing. The second series marries two irresistibly compelling forces: MPC, the visual effects house that helped Jon Favreau create his photorealistic remakes of The Lion King and The Jungle Book and BBC Studios Natural History Unit. Our mission, if you like, was to show the audience that these are not mindless monsters.” They were really social and they would have been really flamboyant because of the social mindset. “Nothing is primitive about dinosaurs,” says Tim Walker, Prehistoric Planet’s series producer, over a video call. A Hatzegopteryx confronting a T rex, as realised in Prehistoric Planet.

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