Lumina was in attendance for the RTS and Wildscreen collaborated screening of Netflix’s Our Planet and Q&A with the production team involved. A fascinating insight into the effort and determination to showcase the human impact on the furthest reaches of our planet, the poles.
Hosted in the impressive auditorium at 30 Euston Square, guests were treated to a full screening of the Frozen Worlds episode (second from the series of eight) from Our Planet – Netflix’s major new nature documentary series, fronted by Sir David Attenborough across English-speaking territories. Our Planet marked Netflix’s first major original nature documentary on its platform, released at the beginning of April 2019.
In production for a total of four years, the Netflix documentary has teamed up with WWF to present the impact of human climate change. The production team reveals that the WWF’s biennial Living Planet Index extensively provided insight and initial research to identify the stories they want to reveal in the film.
The series has been well-received on Netflix, who reported in a recent investors call that the series had been seen by over 25 million households in the first month, with a potential audience of up to 100 million. These are certainly impressive figures for the show, produced in Bristol by Silverback Films, continuing Bristol’s long-running history with the BBC Studios’ Natural History Unit background in the city.
Given both the production team and city’s background with nature documentaries, its clear to see that recent installments into the canon have inspired Our Planet. The recent hits of Planet Earth II and Blue Planet II clearly inspired the production of Netflix’s own nature documentary and we shall have to see whether Our Planet can truly inspire a new generation to combat climate change.
We have already seen the seeds sewn for the Netflix documentary to have a great impact, with several shocking, yet landmark stories going viral across social media. It’s clear that the series is developing a powerful response, but as the production team discussed in the Q&A, it was an extremely difficult decision to include heartbreaking content.
It was an interesting evening of shock, awe, and wonder of the natural world. We would like to quickly thank the RTS and Wildscreen for organising this wonderful event and we hope to see the collaboration develop further.