While walking in the woods one day

[austin_dern]

Today picked up nicely. While mailing a postcard and not seeing the campus squirrel I thought of a way to rewrite some code so that it would be much more flexible -- and, by 5 p.m., I was convinced I even had it right. It slows my paper down as I want to verify some results with this (I believe) better code, but it's a good sort of slow.

And I came home to discover that Chris and Martin Kratt's Be The Creature is on! I've been waiting for this for a while; I've been a fan of the Kratts since Kratt's Creatures almost entirely independently of the fact they got their start as nature documentarians by focusing on coatis. They avoid the routine, mindless nature documentary templates that make so many nature shows boring. They're a steady rebuking to the extruded documentary product that fills a lot of Animal Planet's schedule. (They also rebuke furry fandom, highlighting how little of real animal behaviors, senses, even appearances actually work in to furries. Ever compare a real red fox's head to even the best-drawn furry artist's red fox?)

Today's episode was brown bears, somewhere in Alaska. One digging for clams looked positively raccoony; I'm surprised they didn't compare bears, raccoons, and coatis digging up the beaches. The Kratts took the chance to mimic the bears (and foxes, and some other creatures) in their general hunt for food, thus the show's title. They also kayaked out to an island where one mother and her cubs the year before discovered man glaucous-winged gulls and other birds laid their eggs, safe -- they thought -- from predators. The bears hadn't come back this year, and the gulls were clearly happier.

My one nagging doubt: there are a lot of shots of both Kratts watching animals doing something neat. The camera moves. Who's taking the pictures? The premise of the show is they plunge in to someplace animals live and try to live as much with them as they can; what does the cameraman do? Doubts about the honesty of a documentary smash the whole project (and animal documentaries I have low confidence in anyway, as I've read reports of considerable footage-faking, particularly of animal fights). I'm surprised the Kratts don't realize that some of their audience looks at that and realizes ``That's not exactly what happened.''

But they're excited, interested hosts with a wealth of information unembarrassed to be taken by surprise and happy to show their delight. I'll be watching the show regularly.

Trivia: The Troy-Schenectady Turnpike was begun in 1802. Source: Troy: A Collar City History, Don Rittner.

Currently Reading: Under the Black Flag: Expoits of the Most Notorious Pirates, Don C. Seitz.

Comments

[blither.livejournal.com]

A-ha! I will expect a full critique on the book, when finished.

Arrrr!

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Told you she'd be interested. I'm only a little way through the book, with cautions. It's a reprint of a 1920s book on piracy, so the writing is still a bit rococo and some of the language is archaic enough to be distracting. But it's a long string of short chapters reviewing each of several dozen pirates, quite interesting people; good bedtime reading, really. It does assume the politics of England, the Colonies, France, the Netherlands, et al of the late 1600s and early 1700s are familiar, too.

[porsupah.livejournal.com]

I've been a fan of the Kratts since Kratt's Creatures almost entirely independently of the fact they got their start as nature documentarians by focusing on coatis.

Hee! How neat. The "format" does sound quite illuminating - the better BBC wildlife documentaries have certainly had that nature in common, such as the renowned Wildlife on One looking at urban raccoons, which included some spiffy footage of momma 'coon climbing down the sheer side of a house, somehow managing to keep enough of a footing throughout, on her way to retrieve food for her kits in the attic. Or the one-off, whose name I shamefully forget, also a BBC co-production, which looked at a few southwestern Chinese species, including a burrowing rat, and of course, the red panda; it followed their lives over some months, showing them as part of the whole local ecosystem, rather than in isolation.

Of course, I must submit the inevitable query: have they looked at my kin yet? I can't say I've heard of them at all, but then, with four billion channels around, I don't really try keeping up with what's on, particularly given the nature of virtually all channels for endless out-of-sequence repeats - have a good show, aired once a week at the same time, and I'll make a point of catching it. Although it's probably fair to say I don't watch much even then - at present, the only show I do watch is Have I Got News For You, a topical news quiz, with some of the sharpest wit on TV, though that may not always be saying much, outside of extraordinary shows like Absolute Power, featuring the inimitable Stephen Fry as head of a PR agency. (If you get a chance to see that, do. Excellent. I dare say it'll never be shown again, nor released on DVD/VHS, but I'd be most pleased to be proven wrong)

Do you happen to have any Kratts' Creatures episodes in digital form, perhaps?

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

I, alas, have no episodes of the Kratt productions in digital format. Actually, most of what I have in digital formats are VCDs/DVDs or the shows you mailed me ... and a couple Bucky O'Hare episodes that orv turned into VCDs for me. I had one of the Kratt's Creatures books, featuring the Tasmanian Devil, but gave that to rcoony to give to Molly_Devil at an Anthrocon.

As for whether they've tracked the red panda ... I don't know about Be The Creature as I've only seen the one episode. Kratt's Creatures I think they may have, but I haven't seen the show in eight years or so; it disappeared when Zoboomafoo went on the air.

Zoboomafoo I believe featured red pandas in the wild, along with giant pandas; I'm not sure they were ever brought in to Animal Junction to hang out. Coatis -- both full-grown and cubs -- made several appearances on that show, and were cut into some other episodes for adorable reaction shots. That runs on PBS Kids and for that matter on Central, here in Singapore. Great if aggressively formulaic in its elements (not in what animals do). Zoboomafoo is the lemur puppet, with his own little insane fantasy claymation world of Zobooland whose inhabitants, I'm told, matched very closely one Silicon Valley company Spaceroo worked at...

[chefmongoose.livejournal.com]

Kratt's Creatures and Be The Creature are both excellent shows (and even their too-kiddie 'Zoobamafoo' show had its charms.) They're both so energetic about what they're doing, always smiling, ready to be goofy for the sake of a fun show. I think the best nature shows and reporters- Steve Irwin, Jacques Cousteau- have that readiness to act and interact that makes things more entertaining.

The 'Be the Creature' mongoose episode was truly charming. Mongooses curling up in an abandoned boat for shelter, running through a village to munch up garbage, then out again to termite mounds. And crawling all over Chriss Kratt and nibbling his shoelaces. -1-D

The cameraman.. well, he's a necessary part of the show. The biggest 'trick' of TV is that there is no Cameramen, there's only you watching.. and this is a leap that most of the time people can make. Still, it's astonishing sometimes to know just how much there is that effect.. on episodes of 'Survivor', I recall, there are 200+ people down in these remote locations along with the 16 contestants. They build fairly permanent buildings, have to clear rights and interact with the native populations. The Cameramen there have to interact with the contestants.. lugging big cameras and mikes, dressed in solid clothing, well-hydrated and fed.. while the contestants scrap over bowls of ant-crawling rice.

Well, that's TV.

--Chiaroscuro

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

I'm sold on Be The Creature, though I was before the show started. As for the cameraman ... I know they have to have them, and they do their best to make the cameraman ``disappear,'' but it grates against the you-are-there attitude they want to project. I think I'd have fewer qualms if they did let a cameraman get caught on the screen, and point out whether he's flown in to the park every morning or not.

[chefmongoose.livejournal.com]

Mmmm... it's not really a bother to me, I'm willing to accept that the cameraman either accompanies them full-time or just for the taped parts. Either way.. not a worry.

If the cameraman becomes more.. let me make up a word here, 'entitatious', he's also harder to replace in the mind of the show. Which is useful if you have to switch cameramen between episodes or in episodes. You also have to pay the Cameramen moreif they appear on screen, and especially if they get lines.

Still, that's one of the things about "Blair Witch Project" which made it such a big 'cinema verite' statement.. even if some bits of the storyline had to be forced to achieve it, the camera was always explained. It was one of the three students holding it, or it was resting on a stump or such. It made the reality very intense.

--Chiaroscuro