{"id":9089,"date":"2016-08-31T10:12:02","date_gmt":"2016-08-31T14:12:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvreal\/tom-hugh-jones-talks-planet-earth-ii\/"},"modified":"2016-09-01T09:32:54","modified_gmt":"2016-09-01T13:32:54","slug":"tom-hugh-jones-talks-planet-earth-ii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvreal\/tom-hugh-jones-talks-planet-earth-ii\/","title":{"rendered":"Tom Hugh-Jones Talks\u00a0Planet Earth II"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tom Hugh-Jones, series producer on Planet Earth II, gives\u00a0<\/em>TV Real\u00a0insight on making high-end natural-history content today.<\/em><\/p>\n

Released in 2006,\u00a0Planet Earth<\/em>\u00a0marked a new high for blue-chip natural-history filmmaking. The big-budget production from the BBC\u2019s Natural History Unit, using innovative filmmaking techniques to capture the wonders of the world, was a commercial and critical success for the British public broadcaster, with BBC Worldwide selling it to more than 200 markets across the globe. Ten years later the BBC is doing it again, making\u00a0Planet Earth II<\/em>\u00a0in 4K UHD. David Attenborough is returning to narrate the ambitious six-part series.<\/p>\n

\"***Image***\"TV REAL:<\/strong>\u00a0What makes\u00a0Planet Earth II\u00a0<\/em>different from the first one?
\nHUGH-JONES:<\/strong>\u00a0I worked on the first\u00a0Planet Earth<\/em>\u00a0and ten years on it\u2019s time to make something totally fresh and new. The way we can film animals has developed with new camera technology and our understanding of the natural world and animal behavior has also developed. That\u2019s what we want to show\u2014a new perspective on the world. So this time, you\u2019re going to feel like you\u2019re actually exploring these worlds for real rather than seeing them from afar. We want to take you deeper in terms of your understanding by actually showing you some surprising things about how the different environments on Earth work.<\/p>\n

TV REAL:<\/strong>\u00a0How much preproduction time does such a series usually take?
\nHUGH-JONES:<\/strong>\u00a0To make a series like\u00a0Planet Earth<\/em>, it probably takes three and a half years, and we spend almost the first year trying to work out what we\u2019re going to use to film, what stories we\u2019re going to film, where we\u2019re going to go, who\u2019s going to make the team. So it\u2019s probably almost a year before we even begin our first filming, and then we spend two years filming out in the wild all over the world and then probably about another half a year editing and putting the programs together.<\/p>\n

TV REAL:<\/strong>\u00a0What is the appeal of these productions for an international audience?
\nHUGH-JONES:<\/strong>\u00a0I think what\u2019s so great about wildlife and natural-history programming is that it\u2019s a universal language. Of course, we normally use David Attenborough or someone like that to voice it in England, but essentially, everybody has an innate fascination with nature and the natural world. And so I think no matter if you\u2019re from South America or Asia, and especially children and families, there\u2019s a real desire for people to stay in contact with nature. As we live more modern, urban lives, I think these programs are really important in reminding people how precious the natural world is.<\/p>\n

TV REAL:<\/strong>\u00a0You produced and directed the first two episodes of Sir David Attenborough\u2019s series\u00a0Life Story<\/em>. How was your experience working with him?
\nHUGH-JONES:<\/strong>\u00a0The first time I met him was literally on the second day of [my]\u00a0work experience at the BBC. That day I was told that I had to go and meet David Attenborough and take him through Kew Gardens to where we were filming. I got to walk with him for about five minutes and as you can imagine, meeting your childhood hero is very exciting. But I had no time to prepare, so I was very nervous. I didn\u2019t know what to say to him, but he was a lovely guy, very kind to me.<\/p>\n

TV REAL:<\/strong>\u00a0You have produced and directed numerous productions for the BBC\u2019s Natural History Unit, including\u00a0Human Planet<\/em>,\u00a0Planet Earth<\/em>,\u00a0Ganges<\/em>,\u00a0The Natural World<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0Wild<\/em>. What were the biggest challenges you faced in making these series?
\nHUGH-JONES:<\/strong>\u00a0I think the biggest challenge making a big landmark like\u00a0Planet Earth<\/em>\u00a0or\u00a0Human Planet<\/em>\u00a0is coming up with exciting new stories. The Natural History Unit has been making amazing wildlife films for 60 years and coming up with new stories that the audience is going to be excited by is very hard. We spent a lot of time trying to speak to scientists and researching to find those little pieces of information that might lead us to an animal you\u2019ve not seen before, or capturing behavior you haven\u2019t seen before. But [with] every new series that gets more difficult, so you have to spend more time in the field or be even more rigorous, and it\u2019s challenging.<\/p>\n

Out in the field, probably the biggest challenge I\u2019ve had was when we were filming in Angola and we stupidly didn\u2019t take enough equipment when we traveled to an island. We got stuck on a boat\u2014the petrol ran out in the middle of the sea\u2014with no way of contacting anyone. It was a tiny little dinghy, and we spent about 12 hours desperately trying to sail back to shore with a piece of tarpaulin that we\u2019d had to keep the camera dry. Probably for a good eight hours I was sure we were just going to drift down the Atlantic Ocean with nobody knowing where we were, and we were going to die of starvation or sunburn. That was quite scary.<\/p>\n

TV REAL:<\/strong>\u00a0After all your travels, do you have a favorite place to film in?
\nHUGH-JONES:<\/strong>\u00a0I have a real passion for the Amazon jungle. I have become known as one of the producers in the Natural History Unit who\u2019s happy to go and film in jungles. There\u2019s something rewarding about getting exciting animal behavior or working with tribes in the jungle. It\u2019s such a challenging environment; it\u2019s so humid and wet, and there are so many diseases. You feel like you\u2019re battling nature the whole time. But now and then you see something beautiful or amazing, and it makes it feel all the more precious.<\/p>\n

TV REAL:<\/strong>\u00a0I understand that you lived in the Colombian Amazon when you were a child.
\nHUGH-JONES:<\/strong>\u00a0That\u2019s right, when I was 4 years old my parents took me to the Amazon in a part of Colombia called the Vaup\u00e9s and we stayed with a tribe called the Barasana. I was young enough that for me, I just thought that was normal. I pretty quickly adopted an Amazon lifestyle. I suppose that was a major influence in me getting interested in making wildlife films and my passion for nature. I got to play with all sorts of animals, and eat them, actually, so I had a very hands-on experience, and I think from then on I had a real thirst for travel and adventure.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The series producer gives insight on making high-end natural-history content today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":283,"featured_media":9099,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[67,69],"tags":[525,1493],"class_list":["post-9089","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","","category-interviews","category-top-stories","tag-planet-earth-ii","tag-tom-hugh-jones","pmpro-has-access"],"yoast_head":"\nTom Hugh-Jones Talks\u00a0Planet Earth II - 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\/tom-hugh-jones-talks-planet-earth-ii\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Tom Hugh-Jones Talks\u00a0Planet Earth II - 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