LIFE

NEW YORK, March 11 /PRNewswire/ -- With the Emmy® winning Planet Earth, the BBC and the Discovery Channel brought you the world like never before and set records as the #1 cable television event of 2007 and the #1 best-selling documentary on DVD of all time.  This spring, the BBC takes natural history to a whole new level with the DVD and Blu-ray release of LIFE. More than four years in the making, filmed over 3000 days across every continent and habitat, with narration by Oprah Winfrey, LIFE is an epic BBC/Discovery Channel production that illustrates the extraordinary tactics animals and plants use to stay alive.  LIFE tells 130 incredible stories from the frontiers of the natural world, 54 of which have never been filmed before. LIFE arrives at retail June 1 for the suggested retail price of $59.98 for DVD ($74.98 in Canada) and $69.99 for Blu-ray ($87.48 in Canada).  The BBC is also exclusively bringing to retail the original UK version, narrated by Sir David Attenborough.  The premiere episode of LIFE airs across six of Discovery's networks starting, Sunday March 21, 2010.  Remaining episodes air on the Discovery Channel with the finale on April 18.

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Since Planet Earth, several key advances have been made in wildlife filmmaking techniques which allow the viewer to witness, closer than ever before, how creatures, under extreme pressure, can overcome challenges from adversaries and their environment. Production firsts include the yogi cam, developed specifically for LIFE, which allowed a camera to track smoothly alongside migrating reindeer and elephants, intricate cable rigging which enabled the crew to "fly" a camera through thousands of monarch butterflies in Mexico and high-definition low-light cameras that allowed for time-lapse underwater filming.  

Filmed entirely in high-definition, LIFE is packed with excitement, revelation, entertainment and a myriad of awe-inspiring feats.  The four-disc Blu-ray and DVD sets feature all 11 episodes from Discovery's broadcast, including the spectacular The Making of Life, showcasing the exhaustive, remarkable and record-breaking efforts by the LIFE filmmaking team to bring this remarkable series to the screen.  Exclusive bonus features include deleted scenes, a "music only" viewing option, and Life on Location, a collection of ten astonishing production video diaries further documenting the extraordinary lengths the film crew took to capture the footage in LIFE.  

The BBC is the world's largest producer of natural history programs and for over 50 years has produced such notable titles as The Blue Planet and Planet Earth.  BBC Earth is the global brand for all of this natural history content available on television, digital, DVD and merchandise.

LIFE – TV firsts and highlights

New animal behaviors

• The first filming of a humpback whale mating contest called a heat run - the largest animal battle on Earth
• Three cheetah brothers hunting together to bring down ostriches twice their size
• Stalk-eyed flies 'growing' their eyes out on long stalks
• Dolphins filmed from the air 'mudringing' - creating circles of mud to entrap fish
• Giant starfish devouring a dead giant Pacific octopus, filmed in time lapse
• Komodo dragons bringing down an animal 10 times their size – a real life drama that lasted over two weeks
• A pebble toad rolling down a mountain, bouncing like a rubber ball, to escape a tarantula
• Thousands of pink starfish, urchins and monster nemertean worms feeding on a dead seal under permanent ice in Antarctica, filmed over a month in tracking time lapse photography
• The male Vogelkop bowerbird building an ornate seduction parlor that lures in a willing mate
• A mass spider crab molt where thousands of crabs come to mate and shed their too-tight shells
• Capuchin monkeys cracking open palm nuts with rocks, while the young ones slowly learn the method from the adults
• Probably the largest gathering of polar bears ever filmed, they confront one another around a huge whale carcass
• Tiny goby make an epic journey up Hawaiian waterfalls, 400 feet high, to lay their eggs in safe pools
• Greater bulldog bats hunting fish - filmed at 2000 frames per second
• Shot at night, massive numbers of Humboldt squid cooperatively hunting for sardines

Filming techniques

• The Heli-Gimbal - the HD Heli-gimbal produces rock-steady aerials from a lens with a zoom range from 10-800mm (equivalent to 1100 mm lens with a super 16mm camera). This allowed the LIFE team to film a spectacular range of aerials and dramatic "zoom outs" that take viewers from intimate close-ups of individual animals to massive wide-angle scenics and allows previous unfilmable behavior to be shot from the air
• Extreme High-Speed Photography - There are now extreme high-speed digital cameras that record images at very high resolution at speeds as high as 1,000 frames per second. The main advantage of these cameras compared to high-speed film cameras is they work directly onto a hard disk which is continually recording. Previous high-speed film cameras were really only practical in studios, but these new digital cameras can be taken out into the field, allowing the LIFE team to record animal behavior in a totally fresh way
• Low Light Photography - Extremely sensitive color HD, low light cameras can now provide new images and insights into nocturnal behavior
• Underwater Time-Lapse Sequences - New rigs that allow HD time-lapse underwater filming in natural environments (rather than tanks) have never been possible before and deliver stunning footage of new and natural behavior in the oceans
• Macro Photography - Chip-in-the-tip cameras, remote control "Ant-cam," and super-sensitive video cameras allow new insights into the world of the smaller creatures. With full depth of field and eye-level viewpoints, they give images that no longer look like traditional macro
• Additional Breakthrough Imaging Systems - New types of microscopy, infra-red, and ultrasonic imagery took the LIFE team into unexplored realms, from the deep ocean to the subterranean world

Bonus Features

• Life on Location – A collection of ten production video diaries showing the extraordinary lengths the film crew took to capture the footage in LIFE
• Deleted Scenes
• "Music Only" viewing option

Episode Synopses

The Challenges of Life

Introducing the extraordinary things animals and plants must do in order to survive and thrive. Witness capuchin monkeys smashing open palm nuts with stone 'hammers', hippos launching from the water into the air and chameleons stealing prey from a spider's web. Sprint with cheetahs as they band together to tackle ostriches; watch dolphins form perfect rings of mud to trap fish and swim with a seal as it struggles to escape attacking killer whales in the ice of Antarctica.

Reptiles and Amphibians

From icy wastes to arid deserts, reptiles and amphibians have used their ancient, cold-blooded body plan along with sophisticated behavioral innovations to master the harshest environments on the planet. See Komodo dragons hunting buffalo, sea snakes with one of the most toxic venoms in the world that breed in caves, the seemingly suicidal leaps of a waterfall toad, the tender giant African bull frog that digs water channels to save not only its own young, but that of others too; and lizards that can walk on water.

Mammals

New filming techniques reveal behavior that was previously impossible to capture in extreme locations. Fly among one of the largest migrations on Earth, as more than ten million fruit bats leave the Congo basin and converge in a few special trees in Zambia to feed, sprint with the tiny, extraordinary-looking sengi as it escapes a predatory lizard, see 30 polar bears gather to feed on a bowhead whale carcass and witness the biggest fight on Earth - male humpback whales battling for a female.

Fish

Fish can fly, sense electricity, swim at over 100mph and even walk on land. From the open ocean to coral reef and storm-ravaged surf to the freshwater springs of Kenya, swim with sharks, mudskippers and convict fish.  See the hilariously named "sarcastic fringe-head" fighting for its home territory; hunt with sailfish; glide with flying fish; enter the secret world of courting sea-dragons; and even join the epic journey of the tiny, cliff-climbing goby.

Birds

Birds are supremely adaptable, capable not only of flying at phenomenal speeds and covering great distances, but of displaying a murderous nature, running on water in pursuit of love and even of building intricate structures. Using aerial camera techniques, Life flies with the birds and explores their incredible diversity and behavior: dodging the piratical frigate birds; soaring with the lammergeyers; dancing with a thousand flamingos in the lakes of Africa; and witnessing the extraordinary displays of spatula-tailed hummingbirds, western grebes and bowerbirds as they all attempt to attract a mate.

Insects

Insects are the most diverse animal group on the planet. The key to their success is their unique ability to reshape themselves. They possess fearsome weapons, yet can display surprising tenderness and sophisticated behavior. Take to the skies with millions of monarch butterflies in Mexico, see a beetle spray boiling chemicals at its enemies, witness giant bees fight to the death over females, join the marching columns of grass cutter ants and spend a jeopardy-filled day with damsel flies.

Hunters and Hunted

Every day, in the jungles, grasslands, deserts and frozen wastelands, battles are won, fought and lost between carnivores and their prey. See cheetahs join forces to bring down an ostrich, a tiny stoat take on a rabbit ten times its size, elephant seal pups snatched from their nursery pool by a killer whale, the antics of a squirrel as it outwits a rattlesnake and at an amazing 2,000 frames per second, the strike of a bulldog bat flying at 60 mph.

Creatures of the Deep

Using specially developed underwater tracking time-lapse techniques, LIFE takes a journey to the unchartered corners of the ocean. It's here the newest discoveries are being made and the strangest creatures live, from huge spider crabs which gather in their thousands, seeking safety in numbers as they shed their protective shell, to cross-dressing giant squid. Join a 250-strong pack of Humboldt squid on a hunting expedition, see the ultimate self-sacrifice of a Pacific giant octopus mother who starves to death tending her young and dive under the permanent ice of Antarctica to see a seething carpet of starfish as they devour a seal pup carcass.

Plants

The drama of the plant world is impossible to view with the naked eye. But using the latest time-lapse technology, all is revealed: how a Venus flytrap snaps shut and imprisons its prey and how the animal-like grasping hooks of the cat's claw creeper and the sticky pads of the Boston ivy help in their fight for light.  Fly with the seed that inspired the design of gliders, watch the fastest growing plant on Earth rocket up two feet a day and discover the water-trapping abilities of the bizarre dragon's blood tree, which oozes red sap from its branches.

Primates

Primates are uniquely intelligent - engaging in problem solving, communication, tool use and intimate social interplay. In the Congo, meet a tightly bound group of western lowland gorillas led by an ancient silverback, whose chest-beating sends shockwaves more than a mile through the undergrowth.  See grey Phayre's leaf-monkey mothers in Thailand battling for the privilege to babysit bright orange newborns, encounter the violent disputes of a thousand hamadryas baboons and join chacma baboons shark egg hunting on the coast of South Africa.

The Making of LIFE

This special behind-the-scenes episode showcases the exhaustive, remarkable and record-breaking efforts by the LIFE filmmaking team to bring the breathtaking images of intimate animal and plant behavior to the screen.

NOTE TO EDITORS

BBC Worldwide is the main commercial arm and a wholly-owned subsidiary of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). BBC Worldwide America, with headquarters in New York and Los Angeles, brings together all of BBC Worldwide's businesses in the U.S.  The company exists to maximize the value of the BBC's assets for the benefit of the UK license payer, and invests in public service programming in return for rights. The U.S. company has six core businesses: Channels, Sales and Distribution, Content and Production, Home Entertainment, Digital Media and Magazines. Under these businesses fall two key brands in the U.S. – digital cable channel BBC America and a bi-coastal production arm responsible for the smash hit Dancing with the Stars for ABC.

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ABOUT BBC EARTH

BBC Earth is the global brand for all the BBC's natural history content spanning the last 50 years. The BBC is the largest producer of natural history programming in the world and the brand highlights the vast scale of incredible content which is produced in this genre. Visible across all platforms - TV, digital and merchandising as well as expanding across TV stings, DVDs and digital products, BBC Earth encourages engagement with current as well as classic programs such as Planet Earth and The Blue Planet in addition to future commissions.  

SOURCE BBC