{"id":21224,"date":"2024-04-09T09:24:35","date_gmt":"2024-04-09T13:24:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvreal\/miptv-panel-spotlights-the-americas\/"},"modified":"2024-04-09T15:58:22","modified_gmt":"2024-04-09T19:58:22","slug":"miptv-panel-spotlights-the-americas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvreal\/miptv-panel-spotlights-the-americas\/","title":{"rendered":"MIPTV Panel Spotlights The Americas"},"content":{"rendered":"

Universal Television Alternative Studio\u2019s Toby Gorman, BBC Studios Natural History Unit\u2019s Mike Gunton and series editor Holly Spearing took MIPTV delegates behind the scenes of the big-budget event series The Americas<\/em> at a session today moderated by World Screen<\/em>\u2019s Anna Carugati.<\/p>\n

The ten-part blue-chip production, narrated by Tom Hanks with a score from Oscar winner Hans Zimmer, is set to air on NBC in prime time in 2025. The MIPTV panel today saw Gorman, president of Universal Television Alternative Studio; Gunton, creative director at BBC Studios\u2019 storied Natural History Unit (NHU); and Spearing, series editor at the BBC, showcase clips from the series while sharing insights into its five-year journey to the screen with Carugati, editor-at-large at World Screen<\/em>.<\/p>\n

NBC commissioned the series, then known as The New World<\/em>, back in 2020. At the time, Gorman said, the team at NBCUniversal was beginning to explore the premium factual space. \u201cAs we were agreeing across the studio and the network that this is a swing we wanted to take, Mike Gunton happened to knock on our door. Kismet is the answer to how this came about!\u201d<\/p>\n

Gunton had long wanted to spotlight the natural wonders of the Americas, and knew he needed a partner of significant size to collaborate on the production. \u201cFor some reason, no one had ever done a full job on the whole of the Americas. The scale was so huge, I thought, there aren\u2019t many places that will be able to take this on.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gorman noted, \u201cWe would have never thought about doing it in our backyard. That\u2019s what was so special about the concept Mike brought to us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gunton added: \u201cThere\u2019s nowhere on Earth that has this range; its head is almost in the Arctic, and its toes almost in the Antarctic. It splits the two greatest oceans on the planet: the Atlantic and the Pacific. And it crosses every latitude. It goes through the tropics, the equator, deserts and icecaps; you can\u2019t imagine anything more diverse. As a wildlife filmmaker, it\u2019s all about superlatives and [The Americas<\/em>] has all the superlatives. It doesn\u2019t have elephants, but that\u2019s about it! The biggest trees and rivers, the deepest canyons, and A-list animals of an extraordinary nature. It was just a dream to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n

To showcase all of that diversity, \u201cwe wanted to show things that people have never seen before,\u201d Gunton said. \u201cIt\u2019s all about firsts. Now that\u2019s tough. The low hanging fruit has all been taken. The difficult things are left. One of the things we\u2019ve been most gratified about is we have been able to do things that people have never seen before, in ways they\u2019ve never seen before.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gunton then introduced a clip from the episode on the Andes showcasing its use of drone filmmaking techniques to capture the journey of a spectacled bear making a treacherous journey down a mountain with her young cubs. \u201cYou can\u2019t get up there with a camera; the only way you could film it was with a drone.\u201d<\/p>\n

Other technological advancements deployed in the series include the use of robot cameras, allowing the producers \u201cto get into the world of animals in a way that I don\u2019t think we\u2019ve done before. That\u2019s super important because the whole ethos of The Americas<\/em> is to get you deep into the secret lives of these animals, to experience what they experience and to see things that your eyes could never see.\u201d<\/p>\n

The next clip showcased the technology, developed over two years, used to film sperm whales in the depths of the Caribbean Sea, with Gunton noting: \u201cWe have revealed, for the first time, what happens when sperm whales go hunting.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gorman added: \u201cWe really wanted to ensure that we were doing something new in every episode. There is an 11th episode of behind the scenes of all the lengths the teams went to to acquire this groundbreaking footage.\u201d<\/p>\n

Carugati then asked the panelists about how each episode was crafted, and the adjustments that needed to be made along the way. \u201cWe planned a really long way in advance,\u201d Spearing said. \u201cFor a project of this scale, it\u2019s pretty much a year of planning to lock down all of our stories and locations. We wanted to get to the key habitats within all of our episodes, finding those animals that were intrinsically linked to them, like the black bears in swamps in Louisiana and sea wolves on the West Coast. Of course we were looking for newness, so we worked hard with our network of scientists all across the Americas, building those relationships. That really paid off. We wanted to tell relatable stories; ones that resonated with people. We prep and write our scripts. Of course, animals don\u2019t read scripts. We had planned for a year to go film bison, got out there and every single bison, hundreds of them, had all left! We had to think on our feet, scramble to a new location, react on the ground. But some of greatest joys have come from the things we didn\u2019t expect,\u201d including never-before-seen footage of a male hummingbirds fighting. \u201cSome of those things that unfold in the field are exactly the things you want.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNature is eternally surprising,\u201d Gunton added. \u201cWe have a sequence in our West Coast episode about blue whales. I had never seen anything like it, and I don\u2019t think any human eye has seen anything like this. When you watch the episode, you\u2019re going to see something that is one of the true wonders of the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

All told, the series encompasses 180 different expeditions, Gunton said, \u201ceach of which has to be self-contained.\u201d<\/p>\n

When mulling who to enlist as narrator, the team at NBCUniversal wanted to find \u201cthe American version of [David] Attenborough,\u201d Gorman said. \u201cWe wanted to go as big as possible.\u201d Tom Hanks was the team\u2019s first choice. \u201cWe got a very fast yes,\u201d Gorman said. \u201cThe scale and what we were trying to achieve resonated with him. Proudly, it\u2019s the first unscripted thing he\u2019s ever narrated.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gunton said he too thought of Hanks when plotting his initial pitch. \u201cHis talent is so immense that he can turn his voice and delivery to every single nuance in these stories. It\u2019s very hard to pull off the gravitas of telling important, serious stories; some are dramatic, some poignant and some really funny. It also has a warmth that connects with how you feel what the animals are feeling. It\u2019s a great skill.\u201d<\/p>\n

Following a clip about a male owl searching for a mate, Gorman noted: \u201cThis is such a good example of what the key differentiator is with this series. In order for this project to work on NBC prime-time broadcast, we knew it had to be entertainment-first. It had to have comedy and emotion. It had to feel like a mini-movie.\u201d<\/p>\n

Legendary composer Hans Zimmer was enlisted to score the production. \u201cHe thinks it\u2019s one of the best things he\u2019s ever written,\u201d Gunton said. \u201cThe music is intrinsic to getting the tone, emotion and enjoyment.\u201d<\/p>\n

As to the level of NBCUniversal\u2019s investment in the series, Gorman responded: \u201cIt was expensive! There was so much risk, we wanted to many firsts, we knew it would take so much time. This is, as far as I understand, the most expensive unscripted project in NBCUniversal\u2019s history. It\u2019s a big swing for us. We\u2019re confident it\u2019s been worth it.\u201d<\/p>\n

As the session came to a close, Gunton noted: \u201cWhen you watch The Americas<\/em>, I think you will laugh, cry, be amazed, be wowed, but I think you\u2019ll also want to care about this extraordinary place that we have that runs from right up in the north all the way down to the south. It\u2019s one of the greatest places on planet Earth.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Universal Television Alternative Studio\u2019s Toby Gorman, BBC Studios Natural History Unit\u2019s Mike Gunton and series editor Holly Spearing took MIPTV delegates behind the scenes of the big-budget event series The Americas at a session today moderated by World Screen\u2019s Anna Carugati.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":290,"featured_media":21225,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[69],"tags":[3900,9321,9204,9205,1111,9207,9208,2002,6130],"class_list":["post-21224","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","","category-top-stories","tag-bbc-studios-natural-history-unit","tag-hans-zimmer","tag-holly-spearing","tag-mike-gunton","tag-nbc","tag-the-americas","tag-toby-gorman","tag-tom-hanks","tag-universal-television-alternative-studio","pmpro-has-access"],"yoast_head":"\nMIPTV Panel Spotlights The Americas - TVREAL<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvreal\/miptv-panel-spotlights-the-americas\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"MIPTV Panel Spotlights The Americas - TVREAL\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Universal Television Alternative Studio\u2019s Toby Gorman, BBC Studios Natural History Unit\u2019s Mike Gunton and series editor Holly Spearing took MIPTV delegates behind the scenes of the big-budget event series The Americas at a session today moderated by World Screen\u2019s Anna Carugati.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvreal\/miptv-panel-spotlights-the-americas\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"TVREAL\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2024-04-09T13:24:35+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2024-04-09T19:58:22+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvreal\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/12\/2024\/04\/TheAmericas-424.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"640\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"394\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Mansha Daswani\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Mansha Daswani\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"6 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvreal\/miptv-panel-spotlights-the-americas\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvreal\/miptv-panel-spotlights-the-americas\/\",\"name\":\"MIPTV Panel Spotlights The Americas - TVREAL\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvreal\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2024-04-09T13:24:35+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2024-04-09T19:58:22+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvreal\/#\/schema\/person\/83da304c8bad8bfdb3edd7eb47cfe5ad\"},\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvreal\/miptv-panel-spotlights-the-americas\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvreal\/miptv-panel-spotlights-the-americas\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvreal\/miptv-panel-spotlights-the-americas\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvreal\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"MIPTV Panel Spotlights The Americas\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvreal\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvreal\/\",\"name\":\"TVREAL\",\"description\":\"\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvreal\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvreal\/#\/schema\/person\/83da304c8bad8bfdb3edd7eb47cfe5ad\",\"name\":\"Mansha Daswani\",\"description\":\"Mansha Daswani is the editor-in-chief and associate publisher of World Screen. 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