When Animals Attack
Aug. 8th, 2009 11:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stephbgThis afternoon I stumbled across a few minutes of an American "When Animals Attack" type program. I usually mark any natural history documentary I see on the TV guide--unless it's actually called "When Animals Attack"--so I see a bit of variety in production quality and design in biotv. For a few minutes at least: I'm a pretty quick judge of these things. But, like Disaster TV, it appears some of the rules of Angry Animal TV have settled in my brain.
At one end of the scale you've got the BBC Wildlife Unit and/or almost anything narrated by David Attenborough. I'm there to the end credits baby.
*swoons*
At the other end of the scale we have the Lion Feeding Frenzy school of television production. A whole series of these things took the video game character profile approach, with a lot of pretty damn stupid computer graphics as tactical overlays, swooping views of 3D models and so on. Minimal biological content. Maximum use of the "vicious killing machine" type of language. "Deadly" or "efficient" are fine, but pour on the emotive "cold-blooded baby-killer" script and I'm the remote control queen.
*spits*
This afternoon's effort was called something alongs the lines of Animal Extraction Squad (or possibly Bear Feeding Frenzy) and went the unsteadycam in-your-face in-the-field route. It was Cops, but with bears. Lots of shots of the back of uniformed officers' heads chasing offenders in darkness by flickering lights and wildly waving torches. Gum-chewing men with mustaches, baseball caps, badges, and shotguns. Vile digital video production standards; lots of shouting; a bit of shooting. Much running, and the occasional pepper-spraying. Lectures to the camera, suddenly interrupted by dramatic exits and cries of "There he goes!" Wailing guitar rock sound track, naturally, because everyone knows that bears don't like Mozart.
Handcuffs, even. And for all I know "RRROARRRORAR" is bear for "I'm gonna gits me a lawyer!"
Information content: nil.
(Incidentally the Space Bikini score was also nil, but that's no longer much of a surprise.)
At one end of the scale you've got the BBC Wildlife Unit and/or almost anything narrated by David Attenborough. I'm there to the end credits baby.
*swoons*
At the other end of the scale we have the Lion Feeding Frenzy school of television production. A whole series of these things took the video game character profile approach, with a lot of pretty damn stupid computer graphics as tactical overlays, swooping views of 3D models and so on. Minimal biological content. Maximum use of the "vicious killing machine" type of language. "Deadly" or "efficient" are fine, but pour on the emotive "cold-blooded baby-killer" script and I'm the remote control queen.
*spits*
This afternoon's effort was called something alongs the lines of Animal Extraction Squad (or possibly Bear Feeding Frenzy) and went the unsteadycam in-your-face in-the-field route. It was Cops, but with bears. Lots of shots of the back of uniformed officers' heads chasing offenders in darkness by flickering lights and wildly waving torches. Gum-chewing men with mustaches, baseball caps, badges, and shotguns. Vile digital video production standards; lots of shouting; a bit of shooting. Much running, and the occasional pepper-spraying. Lectures to the camera, suddenly interrupted by dramatic exits and cries of "There he goes!" Wailing guitar rock sound track, naturally, because everyone knows that bears don't like Mozart.
Handcuffs, even. And for all I know "RRROARRRORAR" is bear for "I'm gonna gits me a lawyer!"
Information content: nil.
(Incidentally the Space Bikini score was also nil, but that's no longer much of a surprise.)
