Walking with Dinosaurs
   HOME

TheInfoList



Click Here for Items Related To - Walking with Dinosaurs
OR:
Walking with Dinosaurs on:   [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Amazon]

''Walking with Dinosaurs'' is a 1999 six-part
nature documentary A nature documentary or wildlife documentary is a genre of documentary film or series about animals, plants, or other non-human living creatures, usually concentrating on video taken in their natural habitat but also often including footage of t ...
television
miniseries A miniseries or mini-series is a television series that tells a story in a predetermined, limited number of episodes. "Limited series" is another more recent US term which is sometimes used interchangeably. , the popularity of miniseries format ...
created by
Tim Haines Tim Haines is a screenwriter, producer and director who is best known for his work on the BBC popular science shows ''Walking with Dinosaurs'', ''Walking with Beasts'', and ''Walking with Monsters''. He is co-creator and executive producer o ...
and produced by the BBC Science Unit the
Discovery Channel Discovery Channel (known as The Discovery Channel from 1985 to 1995, and often referred to as simply Discovery) is an American cable channel owned by Warner Bros. Discovery, a publicly traded company run by CEO David Zaslav. , Discovery Chan ...
and
BBC Worldwide BBC Worldwide Ltd. was the wholly owned commercial subsidiary of the BBC, formed out of a restructuring of its predecessor BBC Enterprises in January 1995. The company monetises BBC brands, selling BBC and other British programming for broadca ...
, in association with
TV Asahi JOEX-DTV (channel 5), branded as (also known as EX and and stylized as TV asahi), is a television station that is owned and operated by the subsidiary of certified broadcasting holding company , itself controlled by The Asahi Shimbun Comp ...
,
ProSieben ProSieben (, ''sieben'' is German for "seven"; often stylized as Pro7) is a German free-to-air television network owned by ProSiebenSat.1 Media. It was launched on 1 January 1989. It is Germany's second-largest privately owned television company ...
and
France 3 France 3 () is a French free-to-air public television channel and part of the France Télévisions group, which also includes France 2, France 4, France 5 and France Info. It is made up of a network of regional television services provi ...
. Envisioned as the first "Natural History of
Dinosaur Dinosaurs are a diverse group of reptiles of the clade Dinosauria. They first appeared during the Triassic period, between 243 and 233.23 million years ago (mya), although the exact origin and timing of the evolution of dinosaurs is t ...
s", ''Walking with Dinosaurs'' depicts
dinosaur Dinosaurs are a diverse group of reptiles of the clade Dinosauria. They first appeared during the Triassic period, between 243 and 233.23 million years ago (mya), although the exact origin and timing of the evolution of dinosaurs is t ...
s and other
Mesozoic The Mesozoic Era ( ), also called the Age of Reptiles, the Age of Conifers, and colloquially as the Age of the Dinosaurs is the second-to-last era of Earth's geological history, lasting from about , comprising the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretace ...
animals as living animals in the style of a traditional nature documentary. The series first aired on the BBC in the United Kingdom in 1999 with narration by
Kenneth Branagh Sir Kenneth Charles Branagh (; born 10 December 1960) is a British actor and filmmaker. Branagh trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London and has served as its president since 2015. He has won an Academy Award, four BAFTAs (plus ...
. The series was subsequently aired in North America on the
Discovery Channel Discovery Channel (known as The Discovery Channel from 1985 to 1995, and often referred to as simply Discovery) is an American cable channel owned by Warner Bros. Discovery, a publicly traded company run by CEO David Zaslav. , Discovery Chan ...
in 2000, with
Avery Brooks Avery Franklin Brooks (born October 2, 1948) is an American actor, director, singer, narrator and educator. He is best known for his television roles as Captain Benjamin Sisko on ''Star Trek: Deep Space Nine'', as Hawk on '' Spenser: For Hire'' ...
replacing Branagh. ''Walking with Dinosaurs'' recreated extinct species through the combined use of
computer-generated imagery Computer-generated imagery (CGI) is the use of computer graphics to create or contribute to images in art, printed media, video games, simulators, and visual effects in films, television programs, shorts, commercials, and videos. The image ...
and
animatronics Animatronics refers to mechatronic puppets. They are a modern variant of the automaton and are often used for the portrayal of characters in films and in theme park attractions. It is a multidisciplinary field integrating puppetry, anatomy ...
that were incorporated with
live action Live action (or live-action) is a form of cinematography or videography that uses photography instead of animation. Some works combine live-action with animation to create a live-action animated film. Live-action is used to define film, video ...
footage shot at various locations, the techniques being inspired by the film ''
Jurassic Park ''Jurassic Park'', later also referred to as ''Jurassic World'', is an American science fiction media franchise created by Michael Crichton and centered on a disastrous attempt to create a theme park of cloned dinosaurs. It began in 1990 when ...
'' (1993). At a cost of £6.1 million ($9.9 million), ''Walking with Dinosaurs'' cost over £37,654 ($61,112) per minute to produce, making it the most expensive documentary series per minute ever made. The visual effects of the series were initially believed to be far too expensive to produce, but innovative techniques by the award-winning graphics company
Framestore Framestore is a British animation, visual effects company and creative studio based on Chancery Lane in London. Formed in 1986, it acquired (and subsequently merged with) the Computer Film Company in 1997. It works on feature films and telev ...
made it possible to bring down costs sufficiently to produce the three-hour series. Sometimes referred to as the biggest science documentary series ever made, ''Walking with Dinosaurs'' was broadcast to record audiences. With 15 million people viewing the first airing of the first episode, the series remains by far the most watched science programme in British television history. ''Walking with Dinosaurs'' was released to critical acclaim and won numerous awards, including among others two
BAFTA Awards The British Academy Film Awards, more commonly known as the BAFTA Film Awards is an annual award show hosted by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) to honour the best British and international contributions to film. The cere ...
, three
Emmy Awards The Emmy Awards, or Emmys, are an extensive range of awards for artistic and technical merit for the American and international television industry. A number of annual Emmy Award ceremonies are held throughout the calendar year, each with the ...
and a
Peabody Award The George Foster Peabody Awards (or simply Peabody Awards or the Peabodys) program, named for the American businessman and philanthropist George Peabody, honor the most powerful, enlightening, and invigorating stories in television, radio, and ...
. Most scientists applauded ''Walking with Dinosaurs'' for its use of scientific research and for its portrayal of dinosaurs as animals and not movie monsters. Some scientific criticism was leveled at the narration not making clear what was speculation and what was not, and a handful of specific scientific errors. The success of ''Walking with Dinosaurs'' spawned an entirely new genre of documentaries that similarly recreated past life with computer graphics and were made in the style of traditional nature documentaries. It also led to the creation of an entire media franchise of similar sequel documentary series, the '' Walking with...'' franchise, which included ''
Walking with Beasts ''Walking with Beasts'', marketed as ''Walking with Prehistoric Beasts'' in North America, is a 2001 six-part nature documentary television miniseries created by Impossible Pictures and produced by the BBC Natural History Unit, the Discovery Chann ...
'' (2001), ''
Walking with Cavemen ''Walking with Cavemen'' is a 2003 four-part nature documentary television miniseries produced by the BBC Natural History Unit, the Discovery Channel and ProSieben. ''Walking with Cavemen'' explores human evolution, showcasing various extinct hom ...
'' (2003), '' Sea Monsters'' (2003) and ''
Walking with Monsters ''Walking with Monsters – Life Before Dinosaurs'', marketed as ''Before the Dinosaurs – Walking with Monsters'' in North America, is a 2005 three-part nature documentary television miniseries created by Impossible Pictures and produced by t ...
'' (2005). The series was accompanied by companion books and an innovative companion website. Additionally, ''Walking with Dinosaurs'' inspired the creation of exhibitions, the live theatrical show ''
Walking with Dinosaurs − The Arena Spectacular ''Walking with Dinosaurs − The Arena Spectacular'' was a live adaptation of the award-winning television series ''Walking with Dinosaurs''. Like the TV series, ''The Arena Spectacular'' has to recreate dinosaurs to the point of the viewers accep ...
'', video games, and a 2013 film adaptation. Along with ''Jurassic Park'', ''Walking with Dinosaurs'' is often cited as among the most influential media depictions of dinosaurs.


Premise

Envisioned as the first "Natural History of Dinosaurs" and a series that would provide viewers with "a window into a lost world", ''Walking with Dinosaurs'' explores life in the
Mesozoic The Mesozoic Era ( ), also called the Age of Reptiles, the Age of Conifers, and colloquially as the Age of the Dinosaurs is the second-to-last era of Earth's geological history, lasting from about , comprising the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretace ...
era, particularly
dinosaur Dinosaurs are a diverse group of reptiles of the clade Dinosauria. They first appeared during the Triassic period, between 243 and 233.23 million years ago (mya), although the exact origin and timing of the evolution of dinosaurs is t ...
s, in the format of a traditional
nature documentary A nature documentary or wildlife documentary is a genre of documentary film or series about animals, plants, or other non-human living creatures, usually concentrating on video taken in their natural habitat but also often including footage of t ...
.


Production


Background and concept

''Walking with Dinosaurs'' was the brainchild of
Tim Haines Tim Haines is a screenwriter, producer and director who is best known for his work on the BBC popular science shows ''Walking with Dinosaurs'', ''Walking with Beasts'', and ''Walking with Monsters''. He is co-creator and executive producer o ...
, who came with the idea in 1996 while he was working as a science
television producer A television producer is a person who oversees one or more aspects of video production on a television program. Some producers take more of an executive role, in that they conceive new programs and pitch them to the television networks, but upon ...
at the BBC. Then-head of
BBC Science #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...
...
Jana Bennett had at the time started a policy of encouraging producers to pitch possible future landmark series, with the goal of increasing the science output of the BBC and raising the bar of science programming. Bennett had mainly asked for suggestions for series on
geology Geology () is a branch of natural science concerned with Earth and other Astronomical object, astronomical objects, the features or rock (geology), rocks of which it is composed, and the processes by which they change over time. Modern geology ...
,
medicine Medicine is the science and practice of caring for a patient, managing the diagnosis, prognosis, prevention, treatment, palliation of their injury or disease, and promoting their health. Medicine encompasses a variety of health care pr ...
and natural history. The idea for ''Walking with Dinosaurs'' was devised in the aftermath of the release of the film ''
Jurassic Park ''Jurassic Park'', later also referred to as ''Jurassic World'', is an American science fiction media franchise created by Michael Crichton and centered on a disastrous attempt to create a theme park of cloned dinosaurs. It began in 1990 when ...
'' in 1993, which had set a new benchmark for dinosaur entertainment. Initially, Haines idea revolved around a history of
palaeontology Paleontology (), also spelled palaeontology or palæontology, is the scientific study of life that existed prior to, and sometimes including, the start of the Holocene epoch (roughly 11,700 years before present). It includes the study of fossi ...
with some reconstructions but this was deemed to not be ambitious enough, shortly thereafter he devised the idea of a dinosaur series made with the look and feel of a natural history programme. Haines suggested that the same techniques employed in the production of ''Jurassic Park'' could be used to create a series of nature documentary programmes. According to Haines, the aim of ''Walking with Dinosaurs'' was to "create an immersive experience that was both spectacular and informative". Haines investigated the costs that would be involved in the project. He first initially approached
Industrial Light & Magic Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) is an American motion picture visual effects company that was founded on May 26, 1975 by George Lucas. It is a division of the film production company Lucasfilm, which Lucas founded, and was created when he began pr ...
(ILM), the company responsible for creating the visual effects in ''Jurassic Park'', which projected a cost of $10,000 per second of dinosaur footage, far too expensive for a television series. Though ''Jurassic Park'' had only nine minutes of dinosaur footage, the series envisioned by Haines would require three hours. As a result, Haines initially changed his idea to the programme mainly consisting of footage of plants, insects and landscapes with dinosaurs appearing only occasionally. The concept for the series changed back to frequent CGI creatures after Haines spoke with the UK-based graphics company
Framestore Framestore is a British animation, visual effects company and creative studio based on Chancery Lane in London. Formed in 1986, it acquired (and subsequently merged with) the Computer Film Company in 1997. It works on feature films and telev ...
. Framestore had previously won
Emmy Awards The Emmy Awards, or Emmys, are an extensive range of awards for artistic and technical merit for the American and international television industry. A number of annual Emmy Award ceremonies are held throughout the calendar year, each with the ...
for their work on films such as ''
Alice in Wonderland ''Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'' (commonly ''Alice in Wonderland'') is an 1865 English novel by Lewis Carroll. It details the story of a young girl named Alice who falls through a rabbit hole into a fantasy world of anthropomorphic creatur ...
'' (1999) and miniseries such as ''
Gulliver's Travels ''Gulliver's Travels'', or ''Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. In Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of Several Ships'' is a 1726 prose satire by the Anglo-Irish writer and clergyman Jonathan ...
'' (1996). The head of Framestore, Mike Milne, at first turned down the project owing to its projected cost but later accepted since he realised that he would later regret it if another company took it up. Milne understood the concept of the programme and was able to bring down the cost of the animation considerably through flexibility and imagination. With Milne's assurance that making the programme would be possible, Haines pitched the idea to Bennett as a 6-episode series of 30-minute episodes and he called it ''Walking with Dinosaurs'', at this time only intended to be a
working title A working title, which may be abbreviated and styled in trade publications after a putative title as (wt), also called a production title or a tentative title, is the temporary title of a product or project used during its development, usually ...
and deriving from Haines misremembering the title of the 1990 film ''
Dances with Wolves ''Dances with Wolves'' is a 1990 American epic western film starring, directed, and produced by Kevin Costner in his feature directorial debut. It is a film adaptation of the 1988 novel '' Dances with Wolves'' by Michael Blake that tells the ...
''.


Pilot episode and funding

The BBC liked the concept of ''Walking with Dinosaurs'' but were nervous whether a series of its scale was actually achievable. After also pitching the idea to
BBC Worldwide BBC Worldwide Ltd. was the wholly owned commercial subsidiary of the BBC, formed out of a restructuring of its predecessor BBC Enterprises in January 1995. The company monetises BBC brands, selling BBC and other British programming for broadca ...
, Haines was granted £100,000 to produce a short
pilot episode A television pilot (also known as a pilot or a pilot episode and sometimes marketed as a tele-movie), in television in the United States, United States television, is a standalone episode of a television series that is used to sell a show to a te ...
. In the spring of 1997, Haines, accompanied by a single cameraman, travelled to a national park near
Paphos Paphos ( el, Πάφος ; tr, Baf) is a coastal city in southwest Cyprus and the capital of Paphos District. In classical antiquity, two locations were called Paphos: Old Paphos, today known as Kouklia, and New Paphos. The current city of P ...
in Cyprus to shoot footage for the pilot. Milne then gathered a small team to produce models and animations. The resulting proof-of-concept pilot, finished by the summer of 1997, was six minutes long. The only consultant so far brought in for the project was the palaeontologist David Martill, who offered his services on the pilot for free if he could then stay on as a consultant should the pilot succeed and a series be made. The pilot episode was marine-themed, revolving around a beached giant
pliosaur Pliosauroidea is an extinct clade of plesiosaurs, known from the earliest Jurassic to early Late Cretaceous. They are best known for the subclade Thalassophonea, which contained crocodile-like short-necked forms with large heads and massive toot ...
, and based on the fossils of the
Jurassic The Jurassic ( ) is a geologic period and stratigraphic system that spanned from the end of the Triassic Period million years ago (Mya) to the beginning of the Cretaceous Period, approximately Mya. The Jurassic constitutes the middle period of ...
Oxford Clay The Oxford Clay (or Oxford Clay Formation) is a Jurassic marine sedimentary rock formation underlying much of southeast England, from as far west as Dorset Dorset ( ; archaically: Dorsetshire , ) is a county in South West England on the ...
in England (a setting later used for the episode ''Cruel Sea''), a setting suggested by Martill. After concerns that the marine episode might not have enough "superstar" animals, Martill suggested the inclusion of the
theropod Theropoda (; ), whose members are known as theropods, is a dinosaur clade that is characterized by hollow bones and three toes and claws on each limb. Theropods are generally classed as a group of saurischian dinosaurs. They were ancestrally c ...
dinosaur '' Eustreptospondylus''. One of the major differences between the pilot and the later series was that it included partial
x-ray An X-ray, or, much less commonly, X-radiation, is a penetrating form of high-energy electromagnetic radiation. Most X-rays have a wavelength ranging from 10 picometers to 10  nanometers, corresponding to frequencies in the range 30&nb ...
s of the inner workings of the animals so that they could be better explained. In the later series this was abandoned in favour of a more standard "natural history" aesthetic. In addition to the pilot, Framestore also produced stills and a shorter trailer with a group of
plesiosaur The Plesiosauria (; Greek: πλησίος, ''plesios'', meaning "near to" and ''sauros'', meaning "lizard") or plesiosaurs are an order or clade of extinct Mesozoic marine reptiles, belonging to the Sauropterygia. Plesiosaurs first appea ...
s hunting fish to sell the idea of ''Walking with Dinosaurs''. There was already considerable interest in the series by the time the pilot was shown owing to the trailer and stills produced by Framestore. Jana Bennett also championed the idea of the series to both
Michael Jackson Michael Joseph Jackson (August 29, 1958 – June 25, 2009) was an American singer, songwriter, dancer, and philanthropist. Dubbed the " King of Pop", he is regarded as one of the most significant cultural figures of the 20th century. Over ...
, controller of
BBC One BBC One is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network owned and operated by the BBC. It is the corporation's flagship network and is known for broadcasting mainstream programming, which includes BBC News television bulletins, ...
, and Mike Quattrone of the
Discovery Channel Discovery Channel (known as The Discovery Channel from 1985 to 1995, and often referred to as simply Discovery) is an American cable channel owned by Warner Bros. Discovery, a publicly traded company run by CEO David Zaslav. , Discovery Chan ...
. The pilot was then enough to persuade the BBC, BBC Worldwide, and the Discovery Channel to fund the production of ''Walking with Dinosaurs''. Approximately third of the ''Walking with Dinosaurs'' budget came from BBC One, a third from the Discovery Channel, and a third from BBC Worldwide. There were also major investments from
TV Asahi JOEX-DTV (channel 5), branded as (also known as EX and and stylized as TV asahi), is a television station that is owned and operated by the subsidiary of certified broadcasting holding company , itself controlled by The Asahi Shimbun Comp ...
in Japan and
ProSieben ProSieben (, ''sieben'' is German for "seven"; often stylized as Pro7) is a German free-to-air television network owned by ProSiebenSat.1 Media. It was launched on 1 January 1989. It is Germany's second-largest privately owned television company ...
in Germany. ''Walking with Dinosaurs'' was considered a high-risk production due to being highly expensive and using "
Hollywood Hollywood usually refers to: * Hollywood, Los Angeles, a neighborhood in California * Hollywood, a metonym for the cinema of the United States Hollywood may also refer to: Places United States * Hollywood District (disambiguation) * Hollywoo ...
technology" to educate rather than just entertain. In total, ''Walking with Dinosaurs'' cost £6.1 million ($9.9 million) to make. It cost over £37,654 ($61,112) per minute to produce, making it the most expensive documentary series per minute ever made. It was during production billed as one of the most ambitious series ever produced. Together with Haines, the series was also created by the acclaimed programme maker Susan Spindler, who had previously worked on the BBC series '' The Human Body''. The team grew to encompass producer Jasper James (who also directed the sixth episode; Haines directed the rest), production manager Alison Woolnough and executive producer John Lynch.


Pre-production and filming

Haines spent two years speaking with scientists and reading both primary and secondary palaeontological sources to create the stories for ''Walking with Dinosaurs''.Haines, T., 1999, ''"Walking with Dinosaurs": A Natural History'', BBC Books, "Introduction" Though the goal was to make the programme feel as if it was just relaying natural events without intervention, as actual nature documentaries, ''Walking with Dinosaurs'' required Haines to plot out narratives and create storyboards. Production of ''Walking with Dinosaurs'' took 18 months. It was essential to the vision of ''Walking with Dinosaurs'' that the age of the dinosaurs be represented as accurately as possible based on current scientific understanding. In addition to Haines's own research, the production team for the first six months devoted all their time to research and carefully chose particular moments during the Mesozoic that were most well-studied and well-understood by scientists and which would be representative of the era and showcase interesting animals. In addition to the producers doing their own research, over a hundred experts were consulted for every aspect of the series. Slowly, the production team focused in on animals about whom sufficient information was known to create larger narratives. As an example, ''Coelophysis'' was selected for ''New Blood'' (the first episode) because it was a typical early dinosaur which scientists knew a lot about. Since the series also aimed to showcase the environment and other animals around the "star" dinosaurs, ''Coelophysis'' also presented an opportunity since it had been found at
Ghost Ranch Ghost Ranch is a retreat and education center located close to the village of Abiquiú in Rio Arriba County in north central New Mexico, United States. It was the home and studio of Georgia O'Keeffe, as well as the subject of many of her painti ...
,
New Mexico ) , population_demonym = New Mexican ( es, Neomexicano, Neomejicano, Nuevo Mexicano) , seat = Santa Fe, New Mexico, Santa Fe , LargestCity = Albuquerque, New Mexico, Albuquerque , LargestMetro = Albuquerque metropolitan area, Tiguex , Offi ...
, one of the world's richest fossil beds. The behaviour of the animals depicted was primarily based on fossil evidence when possible (such as bite marks and fossil gut contents) and on behaviours in modern animals. Sometimes, behaviour was just reasoned guesses. For instance, the small
pterosaur Pterosaurs (; from Greek ''pteron'' and ''sauros'', meaning "wing lizard") is an extinct clade of flying reptiles in the order, Pterosauria. They existed during most of the Mesozoic: from the Late Triassic to the end of the Cretaceous (228 ...
''
Anurognathus ''Anurognathus'' is a genus of small pterosaur that lived during the Late Jurassic period ( Tithonian stage). ''Anurognathus'' was first named and described by Ludwig Döderlein in 1923.Döderlein, L. (1923). "''Anurognathus Ammoni'', ein neue ...
'' is shown in ''Time of the Titans'' (the second episode) to use the massive
sauropod Sauropoda (), whose members are known as sauropods (; from '' sauro-'' + '' -pod'', ' lizard-footed'), is a clade of saurischian ('lizard-hipped') dinosaurs. Sauropods had very long necks, long tails, small heads (relative to the rest of their ...
''
Diplodocus ''Diplodocus'' (, , or ) was a genus of diplodocid sauropod dinosaurs, whose fossils were first discovered in 1877 by S. W. Williston. The generic name, coined by Othniel Charles Marsh in 1878, is a neo-Latin term derived from Greek δ ...
'' as a feeding platform to hunt insects. This was based on certain modern birds; there is no evidence of such behaviour in pterosaurs and it would be difficult to prove with fossil evidence. In the summer of 1997 and in the winter of 1998, Haines and fellow producer Jasper James took a small crew of eight people to travel around the world to places where ancient plant life reminiscent of plants during the Mesozoic still existed; locations that could be used as backdrops for the series. Of particular importance was an absence of
grass Poaceae () or Gramineae () is a large and nearly ubiquitous family of monocotyledonous flowering plants commonly known as grasses. It includes the cereal grasses, bamboos and the grasses of natural grassland and species cultivated in lawns a ...
, which at the time was believed to not have existed during the Mesozoic. Filming took several weeks and locations included the Labyrinth in
Tasmania ) , nickname = , image_map = Tasmania in Australia.svg , map_caption = Location of Tasmania in AustraliaCoordinates: , subdivision_type = Country , subdi ...
, the beech gap on
South Island The South Island, also officially named , is the larger of the two major islands of New Zealand in surface area, the other being the smaller but more populous North Island. It is bordered to the north by Cook Strait, to the west by the Tasman ...
in New Zealand, the
redwood Sequoioideae, popularly known as redwoods, is a subfamily of coniferous trees within the family Cupressaceae. It includes the largest and tallest trees in the world. Description The three redwood subfamily genera are '' Sequoia'' from coasta ...
forests of California, the
araucaria ''Araucaria'' (; original pronunciation: .ɾawˈka. ɾja is a genus of evergreen coniferous trees in the family Araucariaceae. There are 20 extant species in New Caledonia (where 14 species are endemic, see New Caledonian ''Araucaria ...
forests in
New Caledonia ) , anthem = "" , image_map = New Caledonia on the globe (small islands magnified) (Polynesia centered).svg , map_alt = Location of New Caledonia , map_caption = Location of New Caledonia , mapsize = 290px , subdivision_type = Sovereign st ...
and southern Chile and the Bahamas. Shooting at a single location usually lasted for about four weeks. New Caledonia was particularly difficult to shoot in since the
French Army History Early history The first permanent army, paid with regular wages, instead of feudal levies, was established under Charles VII of France, Charles VII in the 1420 to 1430s. The Kings of France needed reliable troops during and after the ...
were doing exercises there simultaneously and the film crew kept bumping into soldiers and tanks.


Special effects


Computer graphics

Mike Milne and Framestore, consisting of fifteen designers, began working on animating the dinosaurs at the same time as Haines and James were shooting footage for the series. Production of several hours of high quality photoreal animation had never been done before, not even for feature films. The process of making the computer models began with creating clay
maquette A ''maquette'' (French word for scale model, sometimes referred to by the Italian names ''plastico'' or ''modello'') is a scale model or rough draft of an unfinished sculpture. An equivalent term is ''bozzetto'', from the Italian word for "sketc ...
s, highly detailed small-scale physical models. Several palaeontologists were consulted during the process of making the maquettes. In addition to David Martill, the consultants of ''Walking with Dinosaurs'' included, among others, Kent Stevens,
Thomas R. Holtz Thomas Richard Holtz Jr. (born September 13, 1965) is an American vertebrate palaeontologist, author, and principal lecturer at the University of Maryland's Department of Geology. He has published extensively on the phylogeny, morphology, ecomor ...
, David Norman, David Unwin, Ken Carpenter, Jo Wright and
Michael J. Benton Michael James Benton One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from the royalsociety.org website where: (born 8 April 1956) is a British palaeontologist, and professor of vertebrate palaeontology in the School of Earth Sciences ...
. At times, details changed during production. For instance, the sauropod necks of ''Walking with Dinosaurs'' were at first fully erect before being altered on the advice of the sauropod neck expert Kent Stevens. In September 1998, Milne held a talk at the 46th Symposium on Vertebrate Palaeontology and Comparative Anatomy (SVPCA) at the
University of Bournemouth Bournemouth University is a public university in Bournemouth, England, with its main campus situated in neighbouring Poole. The university was founded in 1992; however, the origins of its predecessor date back to the early 1900s. The universi ...
, showcasing early renderings from the pilot and the series and gathering feedback from the palaeontologists in attendance. After the maquettes were completed, Framestore scanned them into their computers using both a high resolution laser and a set of software tools developed together with Soho-CyberScan specifically for ''Walking with Dinosaurs''. The models were then importaed into
Softimage 3D Softimage, 3D was a high-end 3D graphics application developed by Softimage, Co., which was used predominantly in the film, broadcasting, gaming, and advertising industries for the production of 3D animation. It was superseded by Softimage XSI ...
, where they could be digitally manipulated and animated. The animations were made by hand one frame at a time, an extremely time-consuming process, since it quickly became evident that any other method would have resulted in unconvincing animation. Since no one had ever seen a moving non-avian dinosaur, the animators based their animations on both footage of living animals, particularly elephants, and on information provided by palaeontologists. Palaeontologists provided information on the dynamics of dinosaur muscles, tendons and joints. In numerous cases, the animals in ''Walking with Dinosaurs'' had never before been animated with this level of scientific rigour. Many movements, such as the movement of pterosaurs on the ground, were educated guesses made based on scientific advice. The textures for the models were created through a process of science-based guessing, deriving from the inferred life behaviour of the animals, their diet and their size (larger animals in real life tend to have duller colors). The digital artist Daren Horley was responsible for creating the textures and patterns of the animals and was during production sent actual fossil examples of dinosaur skin impressions. Despite the fossils available, Horley found that there had to in some cases be some informed compromise between strict accuracy and what looked best on screen; the scales of some species were too small to be visible on television screens. The CGI shots were rendered by FrameStore using eight twin-processor NT boxes, at times augmented with the SGI workstations (single R10K processors) of the animators. The computer effects for the first episode took around a year to make, though the process could be significantly sped up afterwards; the five other episodes together took only six months. Initially, Framestore produced 24 different computer-generated animals, but as the concept of the series grew they had made 40 different species by the end of production.
Compositing Compositing is the process or technique of combining visual elements from separate sources into single images, often to create the illusion that all those elements are parts of the same scene. Live action, Live-action shooting for compositing is ...
(adding the CGI together with the live footage) was done using five Quantel Henrys and five Discreet Logic Infernos.


Animatronics

Though most of the animal shots in ''Walking with Dinosaurs'' are CGI, the series also made extensive use of
animatronics Animatronics refers to mechatronic puppets. They are a modern variant of the automaton and are often used for the portrayal of characters in films and in theme park attractions. It is a multidisciplinary field integrating puppetry, anatomy ...
and puppets. Haines explained in behind-the-scenes material that animatronics, despite advances in CGI, still played an important role, particularly in close-up shots; "The computer can fool the eye making a dinosaur run through a puddle and splashing but if you want a close-up of him dipping his nose into water and moving it back and forth, a computer-generated nose wouldn't look right." The animatronics and puppets of ''Walking with Dinosaurs'' were made by the special effects company Crawley Creatures. Over 80 animatronic models were made for the series, mostly for close-ups of heads or other body parts. In some cases full body versions were made, mostly for corpses but also for some animals, such as ''
Ophthalmosaurus ''Ophthalmosaurus'' (meaning "eye lizard" in Greek) is an ichthyosaur of the Jurassic period (165–150 million years ago). Possible remains from the Cretaceous, around 145 million years ago, are also known. It was a relatively medium-sized ich ...
''. The greatest challenge for the artist at Crawley Creatures was working against time, since they only had six weeks between location shoots to put together animatronics and puppets for the next episode. The most challenging animal to model was the large pterosaur ''
Ornithocheirus ''Ornithocheirus'' (from Ancient Greek "ὄρνις", meaning ''bird'', and "χεῖρ", meaning ''hand'') is a pterosaur genus known from fragmentary fossil remains uncovered from sediments in the UK and possibly Morocco. Several species have ...
'', which had to be able to work in different positions for the purposes of the series and had to be extremely light-weight for purposes of transportation. After filming, several of the models used in ''Walking with Dinosaurs'', including those of ''Ophthalmosaurus'', ''Ornithocheirus'' and '' Koolasuchus,'' were given to David Martill and then used by him for educational purposes at the
University of Portsmouth , mottoeng = Let us follow the Light , established = 1870 (Portsmouth and Gosport School of Science and Art) , type = Public , budget = £282.5 million (2020/21) , chancellor ...
. The ''Ophthalmosaurus'' model, having been dragged through water, had to be repaired and repainted and is today displayed for the public; the ''Ornithocheirus'' and ''Koolasuchus'' models were later sold. Numerous models also made their way to the
Oxford University Museum of Natural History The Oxford University Museum of Natural History, sometimes known simply as the Oxford University Museum or OUMNH, is a museum displaying many of the University of Oxford's natural history specimens, located on Parks Road in Oxford, England. It a ...
due to an association between Crawley Creatures and the museum.


Music

Ben Bartlett Ben Bartlett (born in 1965) is a British composer known for his numerous Film and Television scores including '' Walking with Dinosaurs'', ''Vera'', ''The Tunnel'' and ''Lucky Man''. Working and living in London, Ben Bartlett was educated t ...
composed the score for ''Walking with Dinosaurs''. Bartlett was then working with the BBC, having produced some station ident themes for
BBC Radio 3 BBC Radio 3 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC. It replaced the BBC Third Programme in 1967 and broadcasts classical music and opera, with jazz, world music, drama, culture and the arts also featuring. The sta ...
. Bartlett was encouraged to accept the duties of composing the series' music at the behest of Haines and James. Bartlett wrote different
leitmotif A leitmotif or leitmotiv () is a "short, recurring musical phrase" associated with a particular person, place, or idea. It is closely related to the musical concepts of ''idée fixe'' or ''motto-theme''. The spelling ''leitmotif'' is an anglic ...
s in separate styles for each episode, citing the different themes and settings presented in each episode as inspiration, elaborating, "I tried to create a different sound world for each episode of ''Walking With Dinosaurs''. That was easy, as they all had different moods. The first episode is all about heat and bloodlust, parched deserts and so on, while the second one was pastoral, peaceful, and beautiful, about dinosaurs living in symbiosis with the forests. And so on." The process of creating the score was that Bartlett would first watch the unscored episodes together with the directors, discussing with them possible music, and then write the music and produce a sample for approval. At times, this was difficult since the production of the computer graphics fell behind and some scenes were not finished in time for the recording sessions. The recording process took place at
Angel Recording Studios Angel Recording Studios Limited (also referred to as Angel Studios) was a British recording studio based in the eponymous recording and mixing complex in Islington, London. The company was incorporated by James Warren Sylvester de Wolfe on 5 De ...
in
Islington Islington () is a district in the north of Greater London, England, and part of the London Borough of Islington. It is a mainly residential district of Inner London, extending from Islington's High Street to Highbury Fields, encompassing the ...
, with four sessions scattered over the early months of 1999. The score was recorded by the
BBC Concert Orchestra The BBC Concert Orchestra is a British concert orchestra based in London, one of the British Broadcasting Corporation's five radio orchestras. With around fifty players, it is the only one of the five BBC orchestras which is not a full-scale sym ...
. During these sessions, Bartlett admitted to being enriched with experience by the task, stating, "It was the biggest orchestral endeavour I've ever undertaken, and I learnt so much from the first session. Practical things, like handing out the parts to the players ''before'' the session, numbering pages... tiny logistical things that can really screw up a session." The BBC were early on impressed with the soundtrack and requested Bartlett and the orchestra to also produce tracks for a CD of the soundtrack.


Episodes


''Walking with Dinosaurs'' (1999)

BBC One BBC One is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network owned and operated by the BBC. It is the corporation's flagship network and is known for broadcasting mainstream programming, which includes BBC News television bulletins, ...
aired the series weekly on Monday nights, with a regular repeats the following Sunday. In 2010, the series was repeated on
BBC Three BBC Three is a British free-to-air public broadcast television channel owned and operated by the BBC. It was first launched on 9 February 2003 with programmes targeting 16 to 34-year-olds, covering all genres including animation, comedy, cur ...
in omnibus format, as three hour-long episodes.


Specials (2000–2003)

Three special episodes of ''Walking with Dinosaurs'' have been produced since the end of the original series. The first special was ''
The Ballad of Big Al ''The Ballad of Big Al'', marketed as ''Allosaurus'' in North America, is a 2000 special episode of the nature documentary television series '' Walking with Dinosaurs''. ''The Ballad of Big Al'' is set in the Late Jurassic, 145 million years ago, ...
'' (2000), which closely followed the format of the original series but mostly focused on a single individual animal, an ''
Allosaurus ''Allosaurus'' () is a genus of large carnosaurian theropod dinosaur that lived 155 to 145 million years ago during the Late Jurassic epoch ( Kimmeridgian to late Tithonian). The name "''Allosaurus''" means "different lizard" alludin ...
'' specimen nicknamed "Big Al".'''' In response to complaints from scientists that many details in the original series seemed speculative, ''The Ballad of Big Al'' explained virtually every decision in detail and how it was based on fossil evidence. The two succeeding specials, '' The Giant Claw'' (2002) and '' Land of Giants'' (2003), starred wildlife presenter
Nigel Marven Nigel Alan Marven (born 27 November 1960) is a British wildlife TV presenter, naturalist, conservationist, author, and television producer. He is best known as presenter of the BBC miniseries '' Chased by Dinosaurs'', its sequel, '' Sea Monsters ...
as a " time-travelling zoologist", traveling back in time and interacting with various dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals.''


Reception

''Walking with Dinosaurs'' was broadcast to record audiences and is sometimes considered the biggest science documentary series ever created. With 15 million viewers viewing the first episode on 4 October 1999 and another 3.91 million viewing it on its repeat the Sunday afterwards, ''Walking with Dinosaurs'' is by far the most watched science programme in British television history. By late 2000, 200 million people worldwide had seen the ''Walking with Dinosaurs''. By 2005 the number had increased to almost 400 million and by 2009 it was around 700 million; unprecedented numbers for a palaeontology programme. In the
BFI TV 100 The BFI TV 100 is a list of 100 television programmes or series that was compiled in 2000 by the British Film Institute (BFI), as chosen by a poll of industry professionals, with the aim to determine the best British television programmes of any ...
, a list compiled by the
British Film Institute The British Film Institute (BFI) is a film and television charitable organisation which promotes and preserves film-making and television in the United Kingdom. The BFI uses funds provided by the National Lottery to encourage film production, ...
in 2000 of the greatest British TV programmes of all time and of any genre, ''Walking with Dinosaurs'' was placed 72nd.


Reviews

Critical reception to ''Walking with Dinosaurs'' was mixed; there were both wildly enthusiastic and dismissive and contemptuous reviews. Among others, ''Walking with Dinosaurs'' was praised in ''
The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers '' The Observer'' and '' The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the ...
'', ''
The Observer ''The Observer'' is a British newspaper published on Sundays. It is a sister paper to ''The Guardian'' and '' The Guardian Weekly'', whose parent company Guardian Media Group Limited acquired it in 1993. First published in 1791, it is the ...
'', ''
The Independent ''The Independent'' is a British online newspaper. It was established in 1986 as a national morning printed paper. Nicknamed the ''Indy'', it began as a broadsheet and changed to tabloid format in 2003. The last printed edition was publish ...
'' and in ''
The Independent on Sunday ''The Independent'' is a British online newspaper. It was established in 1986 as a national morning printed paper. Nicknamed the ''Indy'', it began as a broadsheet and changed to tabloid format in 2003. The last printed edition was published ...
''. Negative reviews were mostly founded on the series in some cases appearing to present speculation as fact. Nancy Banks-Smith in her review of ''Walking with Dinosaurs'' also worried that the success of the series would lead to the BBC exploiting its appeal to younger viewers and launching merchandise, writing that "I begin to think that the whole thing is geared to selling chocolate dinosaur eggs to five-year-olds". Online reviewers were largely positive.
Common Sense Media Common Sense Media (CSM) is an organization that reviews and provides ratings for media and technology with the goal of providing information on their suitability for children.
praised the program, giving it five stars out of five and saying that, "Somebody had a great idea, which was to make a documentary series about dinosaurs, but with a twist. The ageing ''Ornithocheirus'' on a desperate final flight to his mating grounds, the sauropod hatchlings struggling for survival in the late Jurassic, the migrating herds and the undersea life of 150 million years ago would all seem as real as a nature program about
polar bear The polar bear (''Ursus maritimus'') is a hypercarnivorous bear whose native range lies largely within the Arctic Circle, encompassing the Arctic Ocean, its surrounding seas and surrounding land masses. It is the largest extant bear spec ...
s or
snow monkey The Japanese macaque (''Macaca fuscata''), also known as the snow monkey, is a terrestrial Old World monkey species that is native to Japan. Colloquially, they are referred to as "snow monkeys" because some live in areas where snow covers the gr ...
s." ''Walking with Dinosaurs'' was also praised by IGN, which referred to it as a fascinating documentary with excellent narratives, video quality and audio quality. The score of ''Walking with Dinosaurs'' was praised in the music technology magazine ''
Sound on Sound ''Sound on Sound'' is an independently owned monthly music technology magazine published by SOS Publications Group, based in Cambridge, United Kingdom. The magazine includes product tests of electronic musical performance and recording devices, ...
'' as "extraordinary", "strikingly cinematic" and "head and shoulders above previous efforts in the same genre".


Awards


In other media


Books

A companion book, ''Walking with Dinosaurs: A Natural History'', was written by Tim Haines to accompany the first screening of the series in 1999. The settings of some of the six episodes were changed between the time the book was written and the screening of the television series, and some of their names were changed: ''New Blood'' is set at
Ghost Ranch Ghost Ranch is a retreat and education center located close to the village of Abiquiú in Rio Arriba County in north central New Mexico, United States. It was the home and studio of Georgia O'Keeffe, as well as the subject of many of her painti ...
, and ''Cruel Sea'' is set at or near
Solnhofen Solnhofen is a municipality in the district of Weißenburg-Gunzenhausen in the region of Middle Franconia in the ' of Bavaria in Germany. It is in the Altmühl valley. The local area is famous in geology and palaeontology for Solnhofen limes ...
in Germany near what then were the Vindelicisch Islands. The book elaborated on the background for each story, went further in explaining the science on which much of the program is based, and included descriptions of several animals not identified or featured in the series. ''A Natural History'' received a positive review in the book review magazine ''Publishers Weekly'', where it was called "magnificent" and "marvelously illustrated". A companion volume to the first book, ''Walking with Dinosaurs: The Evidence'', by David Martill and
Darren Naish Darren William Naish is a British vertebrate palaeontologist, author and science communicator. As a researcher, he is best known for his work describing and reevaluating dinosaurs and other Mesozoic reptiles, including '' Eotyrannus'', '' Xenop ...
was published in 2000. It went into more detail about the research and suppositions that went into making the series. Michael J. Benton also wrote an accompanying book on the science of the series, titled ''Walking with Dinosaurs: The Facts''. In addition to these larger volumes, there were also numerous children's books released to accompany ''Walking with Dinosaurs'', including 3D albums, sticker albums, photo journals as well as shorter science books geared towards children.


Exhibition

The success of ''Walking with Dinosaurs'' resulted in the creation of both exhibits and traveling exhibitions. Only a few months after the series had aired, ''Walking with Dinosaurs: The Exhibition'' was put up in the summer of 2000 at the
Yorkshire Museum The Yorkshire Museum is a museum in York, England. It was opened in 1830, and has five permanent collections, covering biology, geology, archaeology, numismatics and astronomy. History The museum was founded by the Yorkshire Philosophical Soc ...
in
York York is a cathedral city with Roman origins, sited at the confluence of the rivers Ouse and Foss in North Yorkshire, England. It is the historic county town of Yorkshire. The city has many historic buildings and other structures, such as a ...
, England. The exhibition featured an assortment of different animal exhibits, each having some connection to the series, including props, maquettes, newly made models and actual fossil material. Among the fossils on display was a skeleton of a ''
Plateosaurus ''Plateosaurus'' (probably meaning "broad lizard", often mistranslated as "flat lizard") is a genus of plateosaurid dinosaur that lived during the Late Triassic period, around 214 to 204 million years ago, in what is now Central and Northern Eur ...
''. Also included in the exhibition were a video and TV monitor playing ''The Making Of Walking with Dinosaurs''. The opening of the exhibition was attended by consultants of the series, such as David Martill. The guest of honour was
Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh (born Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark, later Philip Mountbatten; 10 June 1921 – 9 April 2021) was the husband of Queen Elizabeth II. As such, he served as the consort of the British monarch from E ...
.


Live theatrical show

In 2007, ''Walking with Dinosaurs'' was adapted as the live stage show ''
Walking with Dinosaurs − The Arena Spectacular ''Walking with Dinosaurs − The Arena Spectacular'' was a live adaptation of the award-winning television series ''Walking with Dinosaurs''. Like the TV series, ''The Arena Spectacular'' has to recreate dinosaurs to the point of the viewers accep ...
'' by the Australian-based company The Creature Technology Company. The production cost $20 million to stage and used
puppetry Puppetry is a form of theatre or performance that involves the manipulation of puppets – inanimate objects, often resembling some type of human or animal figure, that are animated or manipulated by a human called a puppeteer. Such a performa ...
, suits, and
animatronics Animatronics refers to mechatronic puppets. They are a modern variant of the automaton and are often used for the portrayal of characters in films and in theme park attractions. It is a multidisciplinary field integrating puppetry, anatomy ...
to create 16
Mesozoic era The Mesozoic Era ( ), also called the Age of Reptiles, the Age of Conifers, and colloquially as the Age of the Dinosaurs is the second-to-last era of Earth's geological history, lasting from about , comprising the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretace ...
creatures representing 10 species. Each large dinosaur weighed several tons, and was operated by two "voodoo puppeteers" and a driver beneath the dinosaur who also monitors the hydraulics and batteries. The smaller dinosaurs were suits operated by the person in it, each weighing from 20–30 kg (44–66 lbs). After debuting in
Sydney Sydney ( ) is the capital city of the state of New South Wales, and the most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Located on Australia's east coast, the metropolis surrounds Sydney Harbour and extends about towards the Blue Mounta ...
in 2007, ''The Arena Spectacular'' toured the world for twelve years; over 250 cities were visited and almost 10 million people in total watched the show live. The final show was held at the
Taipei Arena The Taipei Arena () is a multi-purpose stadium located in Songshan, Taipei, Taiwan, and it is operated by the Taipei Rapid Transit Corporation (TRTC). Built in 2005, the large multi-purpose stadium can accommodate major international sport ...
in
Taiwan Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the no ...
on 22 December 2019.


Film adaptation

Released in 2013, ''Walking with Dinosaurs'' is a feature-length film about dinosaurs in the
Late Cretaceous The Late Cretaceous (100.5–66 Ma) is the younger of two epochs into which the Cretaceous Period is divided in the geologic time scale. Rock strata from this epoch form the Upper Cretaceous Series. The Cretaceous is named after ''creta'', ...
period years ago. The production features computer-animated dinosaurs in live-action settings with actors
Justin Long Justin Jacob Long (born June 2, 1978) is an American actor, comedian, director and screenwriter. Long is known for his film roles, notably appearing in '' Jeepers Creepers'' (2001), ''Dodgeball'' (2004), '' Accepted'' (2006), ''Idiocracy'' (2 ...
,
John Leguizamo John Alberto Leguizamo Peláez (; ; born July 22, 196013:04) is an American actor, comedian, and film producer. He has appeared in over 100 films, produced over 20 films and documentaries, made over 30 television appearances, and has produced ...
,
Tiya Sircar Tiya Sircar (born May 16, 1982) is an American actress best known for her role as "Real Eleanor"/Vicky in ''The Good Place'' (2016–2020). She also provided the voice for Sabine Wren in Disney XD's ''Star Wars Rebels'' (2014–2018), played Roon ...
, and Skyler Stone providing voiceovers for the main characters. It was directed by Neil Nightingale and
Barry Cook Barry Cook (born August 12, 1958) is an American film director who has worked in the animated film industry since the 1980s. Cook and Tony Bancroft directed '' Mulan'' (1998), for which they won the 1998 Annie Award for Best Animated Feature. Coo ...
from a screenplay by John Collee. The film was produced by
BBC Earth BBC Earth is a brand used by BBC Studios since 2009 to market and distribute the BBC's natural history content to countries other than the United Kingdom. BBC Studios is the commercial arm of the public service broadcaster. BBC Earth commercia ...
and Evergreen Films and was named after the original BBC miniseries. The film, with a budget of , was one of the largest independent productions to date; it was financed by
Reliance Entertainment Reliance Entertainment Pvt Ltd is an Indian media and entertainment company. It is a division of Reliance Group, handling its media and entertainment business, across content and distribution platforms. The company was founded on 15 February 20 ...
and IM Global, with
20th Century Fox 20th Century Studios, Inc. (previously known as 20th Century Fox) is an American film production company headquartered at the Fox Studio Lot in the Century City area of Los Angeles. As of 2019, it serves as a film production arm of Walt Disn ...
handling distribution. The crew filmed footage on location in the U.S. state of Alaska and in New Zealand, which were chosen for their similarities to the dinosaurs' surroundings millions of years ago, and on locations in
Humboldt County, California Humboldt County () is a county located in the U.S. state of California. As of the 2020 census, the population was 136,463. The county seat is Eureka. Humboldt County comprises the Eureka–Arcata– Fortuna, California Micropolitan Statist ...
. Animal Logic designed computer-animated dinosaurs and added them to the live-action backdrop. Though the film was originally going to have a narrator like in the miniseries, Fox executives wanted to add voiceovers to connect audiences to the characters. ''Walking with Dinosaurs'' premiered on 2013 at the
Dubai International Film Festival The Dubai International Film Festival (DIFF, ar, مهرجان دبي السينمائي الدولي) is the leading film festival in the Arab region. The 12th edition of DIFF took place from December 9 – 16, 2015. In 2018, the DIFF announc ...
. It was released in cinemas in 2D and 3D on 2013. Critical reception was largely negative, with praise towards film's visual effects but criticism for its story and voice acting. The film grossed in the United States and Canada and in other territories for a worldwide total of . ''
The Hollywood Reporter ''The Hollywood Reporter'' (''THR'') is an American digital and print magazine which focuses on the Hollywood film, television, and entertainment industries. It was founded in 1930 as a daily trade paper, and in 2010 switched to a weekly large ...
'' said the film's global box office performance was disappointing in context of the production budget and marketing spend. In 2014, the film was rereleased in theatres and museums under the title ''Walking with Dinosaurs: Prehistoric Planet 3D''. This version shortens the running time to 45 minutes and replaces the voiceovers with narration provided by
Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Timothy Carlton Cumberbatch (born 19 July 1976) is an English actor. Known for his work on screen and stage, he has received various accolades, including a British Academy Television Award, a Primetime Emmy Award and a Laurence Oli ...
. Compared to its predecessor, this version received mixed-to-positive reviews from critics.


Video games

''Dinosaur World'' is a
freeware Freeware is software, most often proprietary, that is distributed at no monetary cost to the end user. There is no agreed-upon set of rights, license, or EULA that defines ''freeware'' unambiguously; every publisher defines its own rules for the ...
video game Video games, also known as computer games, are electronic games that involves interaction with a user interface or input device such as a joystick, controller, keyboard, or motion sensing device to generate visual feedback. This feedba ...
developed by Asylum Entertainment and published by the BBC Imagineering in June 2001. It is a spin-off of Episode 2 of ''Walking with Dinosaurs'' ("Time of the Titans") and the special ''
The Ballad of Big Al ''The Ballad of Big Al'', marketed as ''Allosaurus'' in North America, is a 2000 special episode of the nature documentary television series '' Walking with Dinosaurs''. ''The Ballad of Big Al'' is set in the Late Jurassic, 145 million years ago, ...
''. The main point of the game is to find all the
animal Animals are multicellular, eukaryotic organisms in the biological kingdom Animalia. With few exceptions, animals consume organic material, breathe oxygen, are able to move, can reproduce sexually, and go through an ontogenetic stage ...
s and
plant Plants are predominantly photosynthetic eukaryotes of the kingdom Plantae. Historically, the plant kingdom encompassed all living things that were not animals, and included algae and fungi; however, all current definitions of Plantae excl ...
s, including several location features, that are distributed in five different zones. The game was available on the BBC website as an
alpha Alpha (uppercase , lowercase ; grc, ἄλφα, ''álpha'', or ell, άλφα, álfa) is the first letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals, it has a value of one. Alpha is derived from the Phoenician letter aleph , whi ...
, as it was never fully developed. In 2013, an
augmented reality Augmented reality (AR) is an interactive experience that combines the real world and computer-generated content. The content can span multiple sensory modalities, including visual, auditory, haptic, somatosensory and olfactory. AR can be de ...
video game, titled simply ''
Walking with Dinosaurs ''Walking with Dinosaurs'' is a 1999 six-part nature documentary television miniseries created by Tim Haines and produced by the BBC Science Unit the Discovery Channel and BBC Worldwide, in association with TV Asahi, ProSieben and France 3. Envi ...
'', was developed by Supermassive Games in collaboration with the BBC, as part of the resurgence of ''Walking with Dinosaurs'', accompanying the release of the 2013 film adaptation. It was released in Europe on 13 November 2013, and in North America on 12 November 2013, alongside ''
Diggs Nightcrawler ''Diggs Nightcrawler'' (or ''Wonderbook: Diggs Nightcrawler'') is an augmented reality video game for the PlayStation 3. Developed by London Studio in collaboration with Moonbot Studios, it is the second game to make use of the Wonderbook periph ...
'' and ''
Book of Potions ''Book of Potions'' (or ''Wonderbook: Book of Potions'') is an augmented reality video game developed by London Studio in conjunction with J. K. Rowling and Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment as a companion to the '' Harry Potter'' series and ...
''.


Website

To accompany ''Walking with Dinosaurs'', the BBC launched a website filled with both palaeontological information, behind-the-scenes information on the series, games and puzzles, glossaries, and a section where visitors could ask questions and make comments. The creation of a companion website, which went online in September 1999, was considered innovative for the time. Before the release of the series, the website included a trailer, still a new concept for a website in 1999. The website was updated weekly as new episodes were released, eventually becoming a large resource with educational material.


Legacy and influence


Scientific response

Scientists largely applauded ''Walking with Dinosaurs'', some going so far as heralding it as the "most credibly accurate depiction of dinosaur life ever produced." Despite some complaints of scientific inaccuracies, the series was seen, and continues to be remembered, as mostly a "force for good", showing both the possibility of producing documentaries of its scale and for portraying dinosaurs and other Mesozoic animals as animals and not movie monsters. Michael J. Benton, who worked as a consultant on the series, praised ''Walking with Dinosaurs'' as a progression in both reconstructions of prehistoric life and in the promotion of the public understanding of science; Benton in a 2001 article referred to the series as not just a documentary but also a "powerful piece of palaeobiological research", showing to the public what the "best minds in palaeobiology have been able to achieve." Numerous scientific journal articles have been written on ''Walking with Dinosaurs'' and the phenomenon it created.


Scientific errors

Although the academic response to ''Walking with Dinosaurs'' was largely positive, the series was criticised by some palaeontologists for its speculative storylines and the boldness of some of its claims, noting that some aspects presented as fact were very much speculative and possible to be challenged in the future. In the companion book of the series, Haines admitted that speculating about dinosaur behaviour in of itself is unscientific since the theories cannot be tested, but maintained that it "seems well worth trying to find out more about how he dinosaursmay have lived", using both science and reasoned speculation. A handful of decisions and sequences in the series came under particular palaeontological criticism. Several supposed errors identified in the first weeks after the series aired fizzled out after a while, as critics found points about which they disagreed with one another and were unable to definitively prove their views. Most of the errors or otherwise questionable decisions of ''Walking with Dinosaurs'' were not the fault of the production team since they worked based on the advice of their consultants. ''New Blood'' shows a male '' Postosuchus'' urinating to mark a female's territory as his own after she is driven away from it. A number of critics pointed out that birds and crocodiles, the closest living relatives of the dinosaurs, do not urinate; they shed waste chemicals as more solid
uric acid Uric acid is a heterocyclic compound of carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and hydrogen with the formula C5H4N4O3. It forms ions and salts known as urates and acid urates, such as ammonium acid urate. Uric acid is a product of the metabolic breakdown ...
. However, Michael J. Benton, a consultant of the series, noted that nobody could prove that this was a real mistake: copious urination is the primitive state for tetrapods (seen in fish, amphibians, turtles, and mammals), and perhaps basal
archosaur Archosauria () is a clade of diapsids, with birds and crocodilians as the only living representatives. Archosaurs are broadly classified as reptiles, in the cladistic sense of the term which includes birds. Extinct archosaurs include non-avia ...
s did the same. ''
Diplodocus ''Diplodocus'' (, , or ) was a genus of diplodocid sauropod dinosaurs, whose fossils were first discovered in 1877 by S. W. Williston. The generic name, coined by Othniel Charles Marsh in 1878, is a neo-Latin term derived from Greek δ ...
'' was reconstructed with mostly horizontal necks in ''Walking with Dinosaurs'', an idea consistent with what was thought of their biology at the time, and thus pushed by the palaeontological consultants of the series, but challenged by new research in 2009. The pterosaur identified as ''Ornithocheirus'' in ''Giant of the Skies'' was actually based on fossils of the pterosaur ''
Tropeognathus ''Tropeognathus'' (meaning "keel jaw") is a genus of large pterosaurs from the late Early Cretaceous of South America. This genus is considered to be a member of the family Anhangueridae, however, several studies have also recovered it within a ...
'', the two having been considered synonyms by David Unwin, one of the consulting palaeontologists. Additionally, it is depicted as far larger than it actually was. In the companion book, it was claimed that several large bone fragments from the
Romualdo Formation The Romualdo Formation is a geologic Konservat-Lagerstätte in northeastern Brazil's Araripe Basin where the states of Pernambuco, Piauí and Ceará come together. The geological formation, previously designated as the Romualdo Member of the ...
of Brazil possibly indicate that ''Ornithocheirus'' may have had a wingspan reaching almost 12 metres and a weight of a hundred kilograms, making it one of the largest known pterosaurs. However, the largest definite ''Tropeognathus'' specimens described at the time measured , in terms of wingspan.Wellnhofer, P. (1991). ''The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Pterosaurs''. New York: Barnes and Noble Books. pp. 124. . The specimens which the producers of the program used to justify such a large size estimate were described in 2012 (with the designation MN 6594-V) and were under study by Dave Martill and David Unwin at the time of the production of the series. The final description of the remains found a maximum estimated wingspan of for this large specimen. Unwin stated that he did not believe the higher estimate used by the BBC was likely, and that the producers likely chose the highest possible estimate because it was more "spectacular."Bredow, H.P. (2000).
Re: WWD non-dino questions
" Message to the Dinosaur Mailing List, April 18, 2000. Accessed online January 20, 2011: http://dml.cmnh.org/2000Apr/msg00446.html Another famously "super-sized" animal in ''Walking with Dinosaurs'' is the pliosaur ''
Liopleurodon ''Liopleurodon'' (; meaning 'smooth-sided teeth') is an extinct genus of large, carnivorous marine reptile belonging to the Thalassophonea, a clade of short-necked pliosaurid plesiosaurs. ''Liopleurodon'' lived from the Callovian Stage of the M ...
'', described as reaching lengths of 25 metres in the series (but in reality probably only reaching 6.4 metres); the extreme size was based on fragmentary specimens such as the Monster of Aramberri which was undescribed until 2003, and the estimate was at the time justifiable extrapolation provided by some of the consultants, who pushed it as scientifically supported.


Television and popular culture

''Walking with Dinosaurs'' was recognised by several commentators as marking a watershed in television imagery and a scientifically and technologically significant benchmark in television history. ''Walking with Dinosaurs'' is often credited for inspiring modern interest in the distant geological past. Scientific papers have credited ''Jurassic Park'' and ''Walking with Dinosaurs'' as the two major productions inspiring increasing public interest in dinosaurs and other Mesozoic life in the 1990s and 2000s. The success of ''Walking with Dinosaurs'' led to the inception of an entirely new genre of documentaries that like ''Walking with Dinosaurs'' also recreated past life with computer graphics and were envisioned in the style of nature documentaries.


Sequel series

The success of ''Walking with Dinosaurs'' led to the creation of an entire nature documentary media franchise on prehistoric life, commonly referred to as the '' Walking with...'' series. The first sequel series to ''Walking with Dinosaurs'' was ''
Walking with Beasts ''Walking with Beasts'', marketed as ''Walking with Prehistoric Beasts'' in North America, is a 2001 six-part nature documentary television miniseries created by Impossible Pictures and produced by the BBC Natural History Unit, the Discovery Chann ...
'' (2001), made by largely the same production team (now organised as the production company Impossible Pictures) and focusing on life in the
Cenozoic The Cenozoic ( ; ) is Earth's current geological era, representing the last 66million years of Earth's history. It is characterised by the dominance of mammals, birds and flowering plants, a cooling and drying climate, and the current configu ...
, after the extinction of the non-avian dinosaurs. Next was ''
Walking with Cavemen ''Walking with Cavemen'' is a 2003 four-part nature documentary television miniseries produced by the BBC Natural History Unit, the Discovery Channel and ProSieben. ''Walking with Cavemen'' explores human evolution, showcasing various extinct hom ...
'' (2003), which was created without Haines and Impossible Pictures and focused on
human evolution Human evolution is the evolutionary process within the history of primates that led to the emergence of '' Homo sapiens'' as a distinct species of the hominid family, which includes the great apes. This process involved the gradual developmen ...
. The last series to be made was ''
Walking with Monsters ''Walking with Monsters – Life Before Dinosaurs'', marketed as ''Before the Dinosaurs – Walking with Monsters'' in North America, is a 2005 three-part nature documentary television miniseries created by Impossible Pictures and produced by t ...
'' (2005), once again involving much of the original team and focused on life in the
Paleozoic The Paleozoic (or Palaeozoic) Era is the earliest of three geologic eras of the Phanerozoic Eon. The name ''Paleozoic'' ( ;) was coined by the British geologist Adam Sedgwick in 1838 by combining the Greek words ''palaiós'' (, "old") and ...
, before the time of the dinosaurs. During the production of ''Walking with Monsters'', the production team considered the series to complete the "''Trilogy of Life''", previously began with ''Dinosaurs'' and continued with ''Beasts''.''Walking with Monsters'' DVD - ''Trilogy of Life'' featurette The success of the two special episodes ''The Giant Claw'' and ''Land of Giants'' led to the creation of the three-part miniseries '' Sea Monsters'' (2003), once again starring Marven traveling back to prehistoric times, this time exploring the "seven deadliest seas of all time".


Notes


References


External links

* *
Walking with Dinosaurs
' at
BBC Earth BBC Earth is a brand used by BBC Studios since 2009 to market and distribute the BBC's natural history content to countries other than the United Kingdom. BBC Studios is the commercial arm of the public service broadcaster. BBC Earth commercia ...
* *
ABC's ''Walking With Dinosaurs'' site

BBC Science & Nature – Prehistoric Life

Walking with Dinosaurs – The Arena Spectacular official website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Walking With Dinosaurs 1999 British television series debuts 1999 British television series endings 1990s British documentary television series Television series by BBC Studios BBC television documentaries Documentary television series about dinosaurs Discovery Channel original programming Peabody Award-winning television programs Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Animated Program winners BAFTA winners (television series) Articles containing video clips Primetime Emmy Award winners Walking with...