Since launching the BBC Earth brand in 2009 we’ve gone through a period of incredible expansion. We’ve already taken natural history into concert halls, movie theatres and shopping malls.Now we’re gearing up for one of our biggest production challenges; taking world-class natural history content to giant screen. We’re working with an established expert in this field, Giant Screen Films, to make our content available to institutions worldwide, including major museums and visitor attractions.
Giant screen offers an incredible opportunity for us to showcase our world class natural history content on screens nearly 10 times the size of a standard cinema screen. Audiences will be able to experience incredible places and creatures, following our cameras to the furthest reaches of the earth and seeing their incredible footage displayed on an epic scale. It’s the first time that BBC Worldwide has entered this space and I’m thrilled to be working with a medium that will allow us fully to portray the wonders of our planet on a scale that will do them justice.
Life is Full of Stories
Many giant screens are based in museums and visitor attractions. It’s our ambition to create enthralling bespoke content for visitors to these institutions that will complement the exhibits, bringing them to life with incredible stories from the natural world. We look forward to close partnerships with the education departments of institutions so we can help the visitor experience in their theatres be the best it can be.
Creating content for this space presents our film-makers with a substantial new challenge. We’ll need to consider how we adapt some of our filming and postproduction techniques so we can bring our tradition of world class content to projectors that are powerful enough to be seen from the moon! Giant strides in digital technology, both in terms of cameras and projection will certainly help here. I’m told that in the “old days” it would take four people just to lift a film based giant screen 3D camera system! I’m confident though, that we will match the spirit of our intrepid film crews who constantly go the extra mile to capture the outstanding footage for which the BBC is famous. BBC film crews have earned their reputation going everywhere from diving into the midst of a humpback whale mating contest known as the heat run, to spending weeks isolated in the wilderness to capture incredible footage of silverback gorillas, birds of paradise and a whole cornucopia of wildlife introduced to our screens by the BBC.
The opportunity to take our world class content to giant screens is incredibly exciting and I’m looking forward to September when we plan to announce our first slate of films at the Giant Screen Cinema Association conference.
