Disneynature’s Earth

Disneynature Earth is a great look at this planet we all share and a wonderful return to Disney’s history of nature films. I was invited to an early screening of Disneynature’s Earth.

Walt Disney loved nature films. Some of you may remember his nature films. I have loved all the ones I have seen. I think Walt Disney would be so happy to see this making a comeback with Disneynature.

Disneynature’s first film Earth looks to be a great start to this new label. The directors Alastair Fothergill and Mark Linfield were the creative team behind the Emmy Award-winning “Planet Earth.”

Disneynature Earth Interview

I had the honor of joining a conference call with Alastair Fothergill and Mark Linfield. I was able to ask them about what was done to make the film more sustainable.

Mark Linfield answered my question, “I think, clearly, when you’re working in helicopters, it’s difficult to do that. I suppose our answer to your question, which again is a very sensible one, is that we feel that the environmental message and the awareness that we hope this film will create is worth, to some extent, the inevitable carbon that’s burnt up in filming a movie all the way around the world and using helicopters.

As a team, we were very conscious of wastage and, wherever possible, tried to minimize those things. We’re delighted by the fact that Disney, as you may know, has an initiative around the release of this movie that in the first week, every person who buys a ticket, they’re going to plant a tree in the North Atlantic Rainforest in Brazil, which, as I’m sure you know, is a highly threatened rainforest area. And if the movie is as successful as we hope it will be, that it’ll be a very significant planting of trees. ”

Valerie Williams from GreenMuze.com asked, “I wanted to ask if the carbon footprint of the film has been calculated.”

Alastair Fothergill answered “No, we didn’t calculate the carbon footprint of the film. To be very honest, when we started, we started seven years ago. It took five years to make this film and it wasn’t an issue that was as to the forefront as it is now. And certainly the work we are now doing, we do calculate it, and we minimize where we can. But there is no doubt that a film shot all the way around the world and using helicopters to film a lot of the behavior, as I said earlier to a previous question, cannot avoid burning carbon.

What I would say is, and what we hope, is that this movie in raising awareness and celebrating the beauty of the planet justifies, to some extent at least, our slightly heavy carbon footprint in making the movie.”

“When you say that you minimized where you could, what do you mean specifically?”- Valerie William

“Small crews is very important to us. Compared with your average Hollywood crew, we travel very, very light, and simple things such as paper wastage and being very careful that we leave things exactly as we went. We took out those sorts of things that we could actually affect. There is no way, clearly, we could get to all the locations we wanted to without using airplanes, and the aerial photography, which is crucial to the movie, involves helicopters. We couldn’t avoid that. But apart from those two areas, we were as economical as we possibly could be.” -Alastair Fothergill

For so long movies haven’t taken their impact on the environment into account. It’s wonderful that this movie does keep that in mind. It’s a wonderful start for Disney.

You can find more information about Disneynature and Earth at-
http://disney.go.com/disneynature/earth/

Disneynature Earth is now available on Amazon.