Recently, the BBC documentary, known as the "conscience of the industry", was caught in the storm of public opinion, and its 2011 production of "Human Planet" was suspected of being "fake", and then the BBC censored the relevant content, admitting that there was indeed an "inaccurate narrative".
In addition, in "Frozen Planet" and "Blue Planet 2", the BBC also uses compositing, lens stitching and other means.
For a time, netizens expressed "crying out in sadness", as if the temple in their hearts had collapsed.
So, does the documentary have to be completely "authentic" to be worthy of the audience?
The "Treehouse" clip of "Human Planet" has been questioned
There is a scene in the BBC documentary "Planet Of Man": in the primitive tribe of western Papua, the Koroway people are very adapted to jungle life, they use local materials, build a tree house between the tropical rainforest canopy that is 140 feet above the ground, and the 42 tribal members have finally built the tree house after two weeks, the children play inside the house, and the scenery outside is pleasant.
Episode 4 of Planet Man tells the story of the jungle life of the Koroway people, "the only tribe in the world to live in a treehouse" that is protected from flooding, "for the Koroway people, the higher the status of the treehouse".
However, when Will Millard, the host of the BBC's new documentary MyYearWithTheTribe, recently travelled to the same Koroway tribe to shoot, locals told him the tree house was "not our home" but was "commissioned". Millard said: "[The tree house] is not where they live, it's a total deception."
The BBC responded, "We reviewed the relevant footage from Planet Humanity, and the narrative of the tribe moving into a treehouse and living in it is inaccurate. "Following the 2011 Human Planet series, we strengthened mandatory training for staff in editorial principles, standards of behaviour and values. ”
There are also these "counterfeiting" storms
Previously, some documentaries produced by the BBC have also been suspected of being "fake", but they have been denied by the BBC.
Planet Earth 2 features a scene of snakes chasing and besieging a small iguana, which was named "a moment that audiences must watch" at the British Academy Film Awards in 2016. Some people thought the clip was fake, noting that it had been edited and synthesized and that more than one iguana had been filmed.
In response to the incident, the BBC firmly denied all allegations, saying that there was indeed a small iguana besieged by snakes, that other iguanas were filmed only as close-ups, and that the use of two cameras was used to capture the perspective of both the small iguanas and the snakes, which followed the production guidelines for natural history documentaries and also met the BBC's editorial guidelines.
He Suliu, director of the China Documentary Research Center, said that there are many types of documentaries. Commercial documentaries, scientific and educational documentaries and documentary films. In order to make a matter clear, or to say it more vividly, the filmmakers will use some auxiliary means. "There is a type of documentary called a drama documentary, which emphasizes the plot and can even use technological effects to show the plot."
He Suliu said that the highest state of the documentary is of course real, and there is no need to pose and act. However, it is also a very common practice to shoot by a variety of means, such as posing to restore the scene, shooting in the studio, etc., "should not be harsh on this."
In 2001, the BBC documentary Blue Planet featured a scene of lobsters laying eggs in the Atlantic Ocean, which was actually filmed in a marine park in north Wales, England.
The BBC said the move was to protect the marine ecosystem and that there was no other way to show the scene, admitting that 2% of the entire series of documentaries was filmed in indoor tanks.
In addition, the scene of the polar bear cub sleeping in the arms of the mother in the fifth episode of "Frozen Planet" has also been questioned, and the audience thinks that the baby bear was really born in the North Pole, and the picture was filmed in the North Pole, but it was actually filmed in a zoo in the Netherlands.
Zhang Yu, illustration editor and ecological photographer of Naturalist magazine, said on Weibo that not only documentaries, but also many photos in foreign nature publications, textbooks and other books must also rely on "animal models to complete." They have special tutorials on how to pose, how to set, how to light, how to tame animals. "It's too hard to shoot wild, and it's very risky, and the risk to animals and people is great." Zhang Yu said.
He Suliu said that there are indeed some documentaries that are tracked and filmed in the wild, and key shots have been filmed, which is rare and has higher documentary value. But only from an artistic point of view, the shooting method adopted by "Human Planet" is also understandable.
Is documentary filming tantamount to fake?
He Suliu believes that the core of judging whether it is true or false is to judge whether it has existed or not. "Human beings, planets, their history is changing, so it's all too normal that something that existed at some stage may now disappear or change," he said. Now to restore some life scenes in history, if you don't pose for shooting, you can't operate, in this case, you shouldn't put on the hat of counterfeiting. ”
In 1922, Robert Flahadi's Nanuk of the North was recognized as the world's earliest documentary. He Suliu pointed out: "The way of life of the Eskimos in the film was also later restored, including the construction of an igloo and so on. Posing is actually a way that everyone in the history of world documentary cinema has recognized. ”
The most controversial point in "Human Planet" is that the documentary shows the audience the scene where the Koroway people built and lived in the "tree house", but it was later discovered that the Koroway people do not live in the "tree house" today. Netizens said that they were fooled.
Studies have shown that the Koroway people are one of the few people who still maintain a near-primitive living state, and are the world's first recognized treedwellers, who did not end their isolated life until the 1970s.
He Suliu said: "The lifestyle of the Korowe people may be certified by the expert team, and if others question it, I think it is also normal, because everyone has different views and different research results." He believes that history is difficult to restore, and to evaluate whether the documentary is in line with the facts is to judge whether the reasoning logic of the relevant research is correct, because the image is a way of presentation based on the research views and logic, so it is arbitrary to simply determine that the documentary is "fake".
In fact, there is a simpler way to judge, that is, to see if it deliberately deceives the audience. He Suliu told reporters: "If the statement is a real shot, but it is actually a posing shot, or conceals the operation of post-synthesis, this is deception."