For decades, wildlife filmmakers have been cutting and pasting multiple attacks into a single stalk-and-pounce. In fact, any particular scene might be made up of shots of three or four different predators taken on different days. Until now, the false advertising has been a regrettable necessity: If filmmakers try to follow a high-speed chase by air, the blare of the helicopter blades scares off the action.

But in March, when the BBC series Planet Earth premieres on the Discovery Channel, viewers will see a single wolf hunt from start to finish. There's also a bioluminescent light show of a vampire squid deep in the Pacific, a blue bird of paradise dancing in the New Guinea rain forest, and lions attacking elephants at a watering hole in the Botswana desert all brought to you by the humble hi-def digital camera.

Jaded couch potatoes may think they've seen everything HD has to offer, but Planet Earth will show its full potential. HD cams capture footage of creatures from thousands of feet away, without subjecting them to intrusive floodlights and loud vehicles. For situations too dark, too slow, or too fast for HD, the BBC crew turned to gadgets that reveal what the naked eye can't see. For instance, they used a high-speed cam typically found in automotive crash-test labs to film a split-second shark attack and an infrared security cam favored by banks to track desert animals in the black of night.

Contributing editor Sonia Zjawinski

(sonia@otodisc.com)

wrote about green tech in issue 15.01.### Here's a look at what went into making three killer scenes:



Shot in the Dark

Eye in the Sky

Stable at Sea### Watch clips from Planet Earth

Courtesy of Discovery Channel/BBC

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WRtu0f4aGA