From Executive Producer James Cameron, Secrets of the Penguins tells a brand new, world-first story on the charismatic and sentient birds at the end of the Earth.
Three years in the making, this extraordinary blue-chip series reveals penguins as we’ve never seen them before. Using cutting-edge technology, world-class scientific research and unprecedented access, National Geographic unlocks the secrets of the species that make their home in surprising and challenging landscapes around the Southern Hemisphere.
In three stunning episodes, featuring Lead Storyteller Bertie Gregory and narrated by Blake Lively, the series reveals previously untold stories and revelatory behaviours from global penguin societies, held together by unbreakable bonds, strategic behaviours and unwavering tenacity.
Halo provided full Picture and Sound Post Production.
Colourist, Duncan Russell says, “SOTP presented a challenging grade. As with all natural history, the footage is edited according to action and narrative, story is always first. Matching light/weather/media/time of day is a low priority until you get to the grade. As colourists, our job is to make the action feel like one continuous flowing moment, and of course, look spectacular”
This was a Disney backed show so it needed to be hopeful, happy and shiny, which is great fun to grade. It was a blast to see all these amazing locations that you wouldn’t normally associate with penguins, like deserts and tropical beaches.
However, in one scene the penguins are assembling at the Antarctic shoreline at dawn, as you can imagine, it’s dark. The only way to match this scene and to make it look great was to make a virtue of the gloom. The scene was about menace lurking beneath the water so the darkness was appropriate. But it meant making some shots darker than they actually were, which, to a company like Disney, is tantamount to giving Mickey Mouse a machete and a hockey mask: but once they saw it all polished up and glossy, they were very happy with the decision.
It’s an epic show of huge variety, not all snow and ice, but a globe-trotting, exhaustive and groundbreaking depiction of life as a penguin in the 21st century. A tough and rewarding project to be involved in.
Dubbing Mixer, Sam Castleton says, “The general aim for the SOTP sound team was to make it sound magical, charming and easy on the ears. So most of our decision making centered around these themes. For the bait ball scene we sound designed glistening and shimmering flourishes as the mirror like fish whizz past in 5.1.
Occasionally we had to veer away slightly from these themes when the penguins face perilous situations. However, the Tailsmith team didn’t want to scare off young viewers. We adapted to this in the mix by carving out low frequencies and veering away from ominous tones. The sound really helped turn any feelings of impending death into ‘against the odds’ moments and helped us route for our main characters. Good examples of this are the powerful Antarctic blizzards, where we shaped the monstrous gales into crisp winds without losing their speed or ferocity.”
Series Producer, Serena Davies and the team also wanted to hyper focus on the main characters and their stories. So we settled on an approach whereby we melted away the harsh cacophony of the penguin colonies on location and instead honed into singular vocalisations and pin pointed individual movement details. The resulting mix is an interesting take on natural history sound, being more akin to our drama sound work.
As with most Natural History films, the accuracy of the vocalisations was important to us and the Tailsmith team. Thankfully the film crew had captured some incredibly unique mating calls and celebratory songs that are central to some of the stories. For everything else we put to work our own extensive recordings, libraries, experience and third party resources.
Line Producer, Elisabeth Pinto says, “I wanted to say again thank you to you all (and especially Alice in those last stressful weeks!) for everything you did for our series. I’m sure it’s nothing you haven’t seen before but for me it was my first time delivering something that calibre of expensive, blue chip series and I really appreciated your flexibility, your constructive approach to all the issues that cropped up and overall positive engagement with us all, including in the run-up to final post (thank you, Karen and Monika!). It was difficult at times but you definitely made it easier for me, for which I’m very grateful – I really hope to be at Halo again in the near future”.
Exec Producers: James Cameron, Martin Williams, Ruth Roberts
Director: Serena Davies
Editor: Stephen Moore
Colourist: Duncan Russell
Online Editor: Tom Young
Sound Team: Jay Price, Gerrit Swanepoel & Samuel Castleton
Post Producer: Karen Kavenagh, Alice Boreham
Sales Executive for Halo: Will Garbutt
Secrets Of the Penguins streaming on DISNEY + from 20th April