How Did They Do That? Drones Were a Game Changer In the Making of Peacock’s The Americas
Behind the new(ish) technology that makes The Americas look so incredible.
In NBC's remarkable 10-part nature documentary series, The Americas, Academy Award-winner Tom Hanks narrates the stories of an awe-inspiring variety of creatures and species that are native to the continents of North and South America.
What immediately distiinguishes this series from the nature documentary pack is the stunning use of drone camera footage that gives the habitats, behavior and context of so many creatures a whole new perspective. From aerial shots of a rare blue whale migrating in the Pacific Ocean to capturing an entire pack of wolves hunting prey in the frozen north, The Americas tells more through picture of survival than previous productions have been able to achieve.
RELATED: Everything To Know about The Americas on NBC
Executive producer and award-winning nature documentarian Mike Gunton (Life, Planet Earth II) spoke with NBC Insider to explain how they were able to capture the seemingly impossible footage that makes up so many episodes of The Americas.
How The Americas shot some of its best footage
As a veteran British nature documentarian, Gunton explained that The Americas was the first time he and his team had been able to tell a full story about the American continents. The goal of this project was to take the audience on a journey from pole to pole in order to allow Americans to, "celebrate, be inspired, be awed, be engaged and be enamored” by the incredible diversity of nature that lives alongside them.
In approaching what to show and tell about, Gunton said they made a conscious decision to look for new angles to tell their stories.
"In an ideal world, every single sequence in The Americas would have never been seen before, or an animal is seen doing something utterly extraordinary and it would be both heartbreaking and hilarious,” he said. “But obviously, that is impossible and probably would actually be almost unwatchable."
And that’s where technology came into the process, with camera drones allowing them to frame the broader stories, or follow creatures they would never be able to on foot with a traditional cameraperson.
"The technology is able to get you into a perspective, or an insight, or an experience of that animal that you've never had before,” he explained. “The Americas is about feeling and experience."
RELATED: Tom Hanks Reveals He was Awed by The Americas Footage: "How Is That Even Possible?!"
In every episode of the series, Gunton said there’s drone cinematography that he’s never been able to feature quite like this before in any of his previous documentary projects.
"The drones are an absolute game changer,” he said with enthusiasm. "We used them on Planet Earth 2, and we've used them on other projects. But what's happened with the drones is that the technical flying skill of the pilots has now been married to the field craft and the natural history knowledge, so that you have this perfect combination.
"A great pilot will not necessarily make a great wildlife filmmaker, and a wildlife filmmaker may not be able to fly a drone,” he continued. “But bring those two together, and suddenly you get access and proximity, and you get insight that you've never had before. It can literally take a camera to places that no human could ever get. Also, you can run the camera and within two minutes, you can get a close up, a wide shot and a tracking shot, which impossible in any other way. It's an absolute gold mine of content."
New episodes of The Americas will air weekly on Sundays at 8:00 pm ET, and will be streaming on Peacock the following day!
