Advancements in technology are allowing documentary filmmakers to enhance the quality of their projects and, in certain cases, provide new avenues for promotion.
Under the Great Lakes, Bruce Peninsula, Ont.-based Inspired Planet Productions used advanced underwater technology from Auckland-based Boxfish Robotics to capture how an invasive mussel species was impacting the Lakes’ ecosystem in its TVO original documentary All Too Clear: Beneath the Surface of the Great Lakes. The documentary, co-directed by husband-and-wife duo Zach Melnick and Yvonne Drebert, was filmed over approximately 200 days with about 150 spent filming underwater.
“We brought the first of their Luna series, their most advanced system, to Canada for the first time,” Melnick tells Playback.
Boxfish Robotics began in 2016 with the goal of introducing a product that improved on two major issues the company saw in underwater drone technology: lack of control and poor picture quality. The Luna combines Boxfish’s drone technology, which includes integrated sensors, lighting and either of Sony’s Alpha 1 or A7SIII cameras in an enclosed frame. The Luna has a surface control station for monitoring and recording. The price of the tech begins at US$105,000.
For All Too Clear, the drone was not only able to explore further depths in the Great Lakes, but give enhanced visuals. This allowed for extensive coverage of the Great Lakes’ ecosystem and facilitated the discovery of a shipwreck at the bottom of Lake Huron. The ship, likely the Africa (pictured left), was lost on Lake Huron in 1895 and, 128 years later, was found encased in the same mussels Inspired Planet was utilizing Boxfish’s technology to document.
The story of the discovered shipwreck made its way to publications such as CBC News, Smithsonian Magazine and Canadian Geographic, giving the doc a promotional boost.
Back on land, Bristol’s Humble Bee Films utilized high-speed cameras, drones and cameras suspended on cables to capture rare visuals of mid-air animals for Airborne, co-produced by U.K.-based Sky Nature and Blue Ant Media’s Love Nature.
The 4 x 60-minute series was filmed in multiple locations around the world, including Costa Rica and Thailand. Airborne premiered on Sky Nature in the U.K. Italy and Germany on Dec. 29, 2024. It will release globally on Love Nature later this year.
“We wanted to tell stories of airborne animals by giving the audience the opportunity to see and appreciate the mechanics of flight like never before,” says Alison Barrat, Love Nature’s SVP, head of content.
A high-speed Phantom VEO4K was one of the cameras used during filming. The Phantom has the ability to shoot at up to 1,000 FPS, allowing Humble Bee Films to capture details such as territorial disputes between rival hummingbirds. The Phantom – leased for upwards of $3,000 per day – was also used to capture extremely high frame rate footage of insects such as dragonflies and mayflies.
The crew had a gimbal-mounted RED Gemini 5K S35 on a boat, which was optimized for shooting in a variety of environments, including those with low-light. The use of the Gemini also allowed production to avoid using drones, which could potentially harm mayflies.
For filmmakers, the tech has unlocked new capabilities for storytelling in the documentary space. “The story we were trying to tell would have been virtually impossible without this technology,” say Melnick and Drebert. “This would have been impossible with divers; and older ROVs, designed for science, either have terrible cameras or cost a fortune to operate from a large research vessel.
“We already had our primary broadcaster (TVO) on board before we truly understood the potential for the Boxfish Luna as a filmmaking tool,” they continue. “But everyone has been so impressed with the footage that we are designing several new projects to fully take advantage of the technology in the future.”
Image courtesy of Inspired Planet Productions; left image courtesy of Inspired Planet Productions; right image courtesy of Love Nature
A version of this story originally appeared in Playback’s 2024 Winter issue