Week 1 Assignment

I have never been a math or science kind of person. Give me a math problem or science equation and I’ll just sit there daydreaming looking at it for a good ten minutes before I decide to draw an elephant over the question and write “couldn’t see the problem there’s an elephant blocking the problem.”  But given the opportunity to express myself through writing, art, or film I’ll spend hours zoned out, lost in my head. The past few years I have really liked getting lost behind the lense of a camera and filming what is around me. In the future I hope to be an oceanic videographer and film sharks, in particular, Great Whites. Cameraman, Doug Anderson, has been one of my main influences and is one of the leading cinematographers known for filming for shows such as Life, Planet Earth, and Blue Planet.  

In Planet Earth: Shallow Seas, Doug Anderson’s footage helps display examples of Contrast. From the surface the ocean just looks blue, but beneath is coral reefs and a diverse world that is rarely seen by many. Fish of all colors and shapes living off the reef surrounded by mammals looking for food are all captured on film. Anderson shows how different the animals are, their different hunting tactics, how the interact with other fish. He shows Affinity by showing the audience how all these different species rely on each other, the reef, and the sun for a stable environment. In this episode, the main focus is the shallow seas. Doug Anderson captures footage that helps display such a different world from any other habitat on earth. Yet, it also helps show how similar it is to other habitats, how the existence of one specie is crucial for the survival for others. 

Doug Anderson filmed for Discovery Channel’s series Life, in hope to make people aware of how amazing the world is that they live in and that it needs to be conserved. Throughout the series, the narrator or filmmaker do not tell the viewers that they need to stop polluting and that they need to realize how spectacular life is on earth. They let the viewers figure that out for themselves by using a very active approach. They don’t force any views onto the viewer, in the hopes that the footage that Doug Anderson has shot will do that without words. At times the narrator, Oprah, may hint at human pollution and affect on the environment, but I am not influenced by Oprah. Doug Anderson is able to get a message across the viewers through the use of a High Definition video camera and showing us creatures of the deep that many of us will never see or have never even heard of and how mammals such as Whales and dolphins nurture their young and have innovative ways of hunting. 

In Blue Planet: Open Oceans, Doug Anderson makes it very obvious of his objective. And that is to show viewers how amazing the ocean is and how it is vital to conserve this environment. Anderson doesn’t use any trick photography, effects, or CGI to enhance his footage. A five second shot may have taken hours to set up and find in order to support his Objective. His footage has no underlying or deeper meaning, his objective is very simple and is conveyed through the use of a camera.