Something very special is happening
in London's world-famous Natural History Museum.
The halls of this national icon are usually deserted at night
and eerily quiet.
But for the next few weeks,
they will be bustling with activity as David Attenborough leads
a team of pioneering 3D film-makers on an exciting new project.
It is just a dream of a set.
It is certainly one of the reasons why I thought up the idea
in the first place.
Pretty amazing feeling to have this whole space to ourselves.
The aim, to see some of the magnificent,
extinct creatures that now rest in the halls of this museum
as they were in life.
The essence of this film is way beyond what a normal
documentary is, it is much more towards a feature.
A dramatic feature at that.
CGI has reached a peak of perfection.
It simply looks real.
These are extinct animals that David is never going to get to see
right here in one of his favourite places,
the Natural History Museum in London.
This project's drive for scientific accuracy
will call on natural history experts from the museum
and across the globe, helping the cutting-edge team
allow David to fulfil a dream, to come
face-to-face with extinct animals that he has always wanted to meet.
It is quite extraordinary, the talent we have got here.
'From cinematographers, special effects team and we're going'
to need this talent to get this film to the level we want to make it.
This project is pushing the boundaries of 3D,
high-resolution film-making to the very edge...
I'm just worried about what the hell is doing it.
..whilst pushing David into the unfamiliar territory
of working with animals that aren't even there.
881.
It's a funny way to earn a living.
It is a different Attenborough, one you actually haven't seen before,
combined with the Attenborough we all know.
With such an ambitious technical production,
the stakes are higher than ever.
Brilliant. Cut there. Thank you very much.
We can't allow these kind of things to happen.
GLASS SMASHES
ANIMAL ROARS
As evening falls, the crew prepares for the first night's
filming of David Attenborough's Natural History Museum Alive.
After months of planning, now is the moment of truth.
Around 15 nights of filming are tightly scheduled in London's
Natural History Museum.
The crew is only able to spring into action
once the visitors have left for the evening.
And as David Attenborough arrives on location,
the team are already hard at work, setting up for the first scene.
For David, it's the sixth 3D film
that he and the team have created together in the last four years.
This latest project promises to be the most ambitious yet.
We wanted to bring animals in the Natural History Museum to life.
The notion is, of course, that there's
only one person in the museum at night.
So, if you're going to interact with anybody, it will have to be with me.
But we will have to see whether it is convincing or not.
The team's first test is to bring to life one of the most famous
extinct animals of all -
the dodo.
Once you have got the idea that you are going to take
advantage of 3D, the CGIs, then you say,
"OK, which are going to be the interesting things to bring to life?"
The ones that have a good story to them are the ones that,
by and large, are where the museum got it wrong.
And so one of the entertaining things to do is to bring these
animals to life in the light of modern knowledge.
To ensure that the dodo is represented as accurately
as possible, David and the team are working in collaboration
with museum expert Julian Hume a specialist in extinct birds.
The key thing to say is that the position of this bone,
this bone and this bone should have been more upright.
I have spent probably the last 15 years trying to get
across the fact that the dodo was not this waddling, dumb animal.
Although it was fearless of humans, and could be killed quite easily.
Its actual nature was one of pure aggression.
In the one from Savery, it kind of drops down.
It's hanging in an unnatural position here.
The museum experts were there to validate what we said.
If they didn't give it the OK, then it didn't go in.
The main hall is down there. David's standing there.
Every scene in the film is mapped out in advance
with storyboards which are then roughly animated.
The good thing about storyboards is that you can nail
as much as you possibly can before you start shooting.
Give me one from the side and one from the back.
We are spending a lot of money on this.
It is 3D and there is a lot of CGI involved
so if we get it all planned out beforehand then we know
exactly what we're doing on the day and we don't need to worry too much.
During production, these animated storyboards
are used as a blueprint for each scene.
In this case, showing how a dodo will come to life
and jump out from a painting in the museum.
Back on set, it is time to shoot these storyboards for real.
Take one.
OK. Action.
With over 60 years of experience in broadcasting,
delivering pieces to camera is a skill which David has honed to a fine art.
Its feathers come from a goose. Its feet were modelled on a turkey.
It's beak, I suspect, is pasta.
Excellent. Cut.
While David has performed alongside a vast range of wild animals,
tonight he faces a fresh challenge.
He must act opposite an animal that is entirely invisible.
The dodo. The dodo's round here so your eyes start there.
Onset, David must react as if the dodo is right in front of him.
Action.
Ow!
Hey.
That's not very good, I'll do it again.
Ow!
In fact, he's staring into thin air.
'Only later will the dodo be added with computer graphics.'
I'm not an actor, it's not my skill.
So you do feel a bit of a nana, really.
When they say, "Look out, it's attacking you! Look, horror."
Argh! Ow!
I just hope it will work.
In fact, it may well have been adapted to crushing stones.
Not very good.
It is incredibly tough.
We are really lucky that David is able to react
to something that is invisible. It is not really there.
So no-one knows how big it was. After tonight, who knows?
Cut, Brilliant.
Once David's performance's in the can,
it is up to the effects team to add the dodo to the scene.
Lead visual effects supervisor, James Prosser,
oversees all five animation studios and ensures
the close collaboration with the scientific experts runs smoothly.
It's anybody's guess what the true colours of the dodo were like.
There are various paintings which are all contradictory.
Some are light, some are dark.
One of the best ones is by an artist called Mansur.
And it has quite a blackish head
and areas of the body were different colours.
This could well be the best image we have of the dodo
showing the mature male, "I'm incredibly aggressive, keep away."
When the final graphics are added to footage of David's performance,
the scene takes on a magical life.
What do you make of that?
DAVID LAUGHS
Ow!
That is a very powerful beak.
In fact, it may well have been adapted for crushing shells
and crustaceans, for the sake of the calcium.
It's now the early hours of the morning deep in the museum.
Making David's job even tougher
is that he and the crew must shoot the entire film at night.
It is like going to Australia.
I mean, your clock is changed
and for the first two or three days you have jet lag.
The nocturnal lifestyle means that the team must adjust
to bizarre new rhythms including sometimes eating lunch at 2AM.
The trouble is you get very, very small helpings.
They only give you a quarter of that.
It is the first night of our shooting.
We're supposed to think of it as our first day of the shooting
because it is a night-time shoot.
We have been at it since eight o'clock at night and it is now
half past two. So we're about to have lunch.
I just spoke to David and said, "Did you sleep well?"
And he said he had written 30 letters today.
He has had all sorts of letters from various people.
He has just been at home writing.
I don't know if he's actually slept. He's full of beans. A legend.
David encounters extraordinary evidence of an extinct giant.
It's a magical thing. It's a great privilege.
Getting a 30 foot crane in through the front door proves a challenge.
And the team battles unpredictable technology.
What the hell is doing it?
A team of film-makers led by David Attenborough,
are shooting a groundbreaking new film in the Natural History Museum.
This evening, the crew is setting up in the museum's grand Central Hall.
For David, this breathtaking location is, itself, one of the stars of the film.
The great thing about this is, in fact, it is modelled on the cathedral.
Owen, its founder, he wanted this to be a cathedral to life and to creation.
It did occur to me standing on the top floor of the museum of the Central Hall,
you've got this enormous, great enclosed space which gives you the sense of distance.
It's an ideal playground for computer-generated images to waltz around the place.
The only thing we've got to get in here is shots of David walking.
To show off the grandeur of this remarkable space,
the team has devised a sequence centring on archaeopteryx -
evidence of a link between the dinosaurs and the birds.
It was an animal which was plainly a reptile,
because it had a long, bony jaw with teeth in it,
and birds don't have teeth, but this thing had feathers,
so it was an intermediate between reptiles and birds.
So as we see that skeleton start to assemble as it flies out of the slab,
what we first notice is how dinosaur-like it really is,
until the very last minute when the feathers appear.
So it gives us a really nice idea of how we go from an animal that is essentially a small
meat-eating dinosaur to a bird in one very visually nice segment.
Once archaeopteryx has fully formed, viewers will finally see it
jump from the gallery and take flight into the vast hall.
The man charged with lighting these dramatic spaces
is director of photography, Tim Cragg.
Today we're shooting the opening piece to the film.
As you can see behind me it's a remarkably, amazing architecture.
I wanted to create a magical space -
a place that, certainly as a child, you can imagine strange things happening in the shadows.
Tonight's scene will present Tim with the biggest lighting
I will also need another light, we can work in closer.
As you can imagine, lighting a space like this is a huge number,
so to the human eye it looks very light but we need to throw a lot of light
for it to register and pick up.
With so much equipment, including a giant crane arm being transported into the museum
using a specially built ramp, even the smallest setback can spell potential disaster.
This epic scene simply won't work without the crane.
Shall we give ourselves a time limit? We've had a huge problem.
The lift has been broken.
So we are two hours late loading our equipment today.
So I'm hoping in the next hour, suddenly the lights are up
and I can start to make it look beautiful.
Eamon, let's get that 12 powered up down there, please, on the lower stand.
Tip it back, there you go. That's better, mate.
Finally, the team is ready to shoot.
Is everybody happy for a take? Yep. OK. Let's roll camera.
Action, David.
This, some people might say, is the most scientifically important
and certainly the most valuable specimen in the whole of the museum.
But what kind of creature was archaeopteryx when it was alive?
When archaeopteryx is added to the team's sweeping shots of this epic interior,
the result is a stunning celebration of one of the world's most spectacular buildings.
DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYS
It's an amazing building.
In terms of getting three-dimensional pictures, it's just a dream of a set.
And I hope we've exploited it as such.
It was certainly one of the reasons why I thought up the idea in the first place.
While the main crew continue shooting in the Central Hall,
one member of the team finds himself in a more isolated location...
all by himself.
Second unit cameraman Rob Hollingworth
is filming individual shots of the museum's exhibits.
They're specialised time-lapse shots that can take hours.
It's a role that gives him plenty of time to savour the museum's eerie atmosphere.
There are amazing stories of the museum being haunted.
We're in this completely blacked out room, with a little bit of haunted light.
Suddenly out of nowhere you have these amazing sound effects of
DINOSAUR SCREECHES
It's quite something.
Before long, Rob starts to wonder whether the museum's ghosts
might not be interfering with his camera work.
Things can go wrong, and things do go wrong.
I'm just more worried about what the hell's doing it.
The camera's running for, like, an hour and then you play back the shot,
then look at it and you have these ghostly apparitions.
God, it's happened again.
Could it be Rob has fallen foul of the museum's ghostly residents?
The lights change or the camera suddenly has a weird shape appearing in it.
Like last night, I was looking at this for ages and thinking, "What on earth's gone wrong?"
After careful examination of the final time-lapse images,
Rob decides there might just be an all-too-human cause.
You would have thought at three o'clock in the morning,
in a museum that you've got control over,
you wouldn't have people problems, but we've had people problems.
In order to prevent any more crew members from accidentally interfering with his lighting,
Rob decides to take matters into his own hands.
We're instituting a guard outside the room to stop any of these
ghostly apparitions appearing again in the picture.
It's not exactly the most ripping of jobs, really, but, you know, needs must.
While the crew sets up for the next shot,
David takes a chance to explore some f the museum's hidden collection -
specimens that are usually held back from public display.
For David, it is a chance to see another side
to a museum for which he's had a lifelong connection.
I've been coming here since I was a boy of eight
and it's one of the holy of holies.
I mean, it's one of the great places for natural history.
Each time was of astonishment because just looking at cases full of electric blue butterflies
is enough to impress a child, or enough to impress me anyway.
Just as David's tour is coming to a close, he's offered the chance
to handle one of the museum's most treasured possessions of all.
The claw of a moa, a giant extinct bird from New Zealand,
something David's always wanted to see.
This is an incredible, rare specimen at least 600 years old
and it can be so affected by environmental conditions,
bright lights, daylight, humidity, that it
cannot possibly go out on display, not for any length of time
Most of the extinct animals are bone,
but in various particular circumstances
you can get the actual tissues remain in
a relatively unchanged way except that they are freeze-dried, as it were.
There was the real thing. The actual foot of the animal.
In a cave environment, this thing has dried out very slowly over time.
It's a wonderful case of desiccation that's left the flesh.
David is given the opportunity to hold this extraordinary
object with his own hands.
I've never seen the foot of a moa before. Never had that.
But it's a magical thing. And such great privilege.
Wonderful.
With the claw once more behind lock and key,
David is ready to meet a complete specimen of this extraordinary bird.
And this will involve a major stunt.
The team must make some difficult decisions.
We've got a moment of tension.
And David meets what might just be a modern-day monster.
I'll get out of the way.
In the Natural History Museum, David Attenborough and the crew
are preparing to film a sequence about the moa, a giant extinct bird.
The Maoris had sufficient knowledge to have legends about these
giant birds.
And moa was like an ostrich but it was probably the tallest bird
that ever existed, if it in fact walked upright.
The key point with moas is that the skeletons you see mounted everywhere
want to make them the tallest bird in the world,
so they purposely put them as high as they can, which wasn't the case.
In fact moas...the plane of the body was horizontal with the neck,
dropping down, so it actually walked along on a horizontal plane.
Before restoring the animal to its true posture, however,
the team must first bring the moa to life.
To show the creature escaping from its cabinet,
the team have come up with a dramatic solution.
It will peck its way out.
To create the most realistic effect possible,
glass made with computer graphics
will be combined with real shots of shattering sugar glass.
To film the glass hitting the floor,
the art department have built an ingenious piece of equipment.
This is designed to sort of spring-release the glass.
We're loading it all up now
and what it's signifying is the moa breaking out of its glass cage.
Action.
When the shots are cut together,
the result is one of the film's most electrifying moments.
GLASS SMASHES
MOA CRIES
Getting the moa out of its case is only the first test of the evening.
MOA CRIES
To film David's face-to-face encounter with the bird, the team
must draw on the unique talents of art department member Boz.
I'm about to be a moa interacting with David Attenborough.
It's mainly to give him something to interact with.
Obviously it won't be me on the day, it will be a gigantic bird.
It's to give him a good eye-line to sort of know the movements.
It's quite a surreal part of the job,
waving your hand in David Attenborough's face.
I hope I'm up to the challenge.
Mark that, please. 280, take one.
Yeah, me and David have got to know each other in a professional way
but I don't think I've said much more than hello,
so I think I really should introduce myself at some point!
In the finished cut, Boz is painted out of the film
and replaced with the moa.
Cut. Brilliant.
Nonetheless his work on set is a vital aid to David
in delivering yet another pitch-perfect performance.
So, was the giant moa the biggest bird that has ever existed?
Well, if it craned up its neck it was almost certainly the tallest.
DAVID CHUCKLES, MOA GOBBLES
MOA CRIES
The Natural History Museum contains a huge variety of specimens,
from extraordinary land animals to dazzling airborne species.
But when it comes to bringing to life
an ancient marine animal like the ichthyosaur
the team faces a major problem.
How to show it swimming.
Well, the ichthyosaurs, we very much wanted to get them in, I did,
because they're such dramatic British fossils.
And so important in the history of palaeontology.
But of course they're seagoing animals.
Now, that makes a problem - how do you get the sea in here?
Representing this challenging animal, however,
is crucial for David's desire to explore an astonishing
scientific phenomenon - convergent evolution.
It's a nice fun sequence watching the ichthyosaur and dolphin
racing around the central hall.
You can see, superficially, that they're very similar in terms of
their overall proportions but if we look more closely we'll see
those differences that betray their very different ancestries.
Dolphins from mammals,
who tend to flex their back up and down when they run,
ichthyosaurs from reptiles, that tend to wiggle from side to side.
Determined to bring David's vision to life,
the team experiments with some outlandish concept art.
We thought about the business of actually filling the hall with water.
But that seemed sort of slightly dotty, really.
Now, should we leave the museum
and find a device which would take us out into the sea?
But the general feeling of the team was that there was
a kind of unity to all these things happening in this one space.
After months of discussion, the team finally pushes for a bold solution.
What we're about to film here is a sequence that actually
we've gone back and forwards on.
We've now got rather a nice way of doing it, which is
to take the idea of, there is a sort of concept of the water there
without real water being there.
I think it is going to work, the CGI team think it's going to work.
David's certainly looking over the shoulder, saying, well, I'm not sure it's going to work.
We've got a moment of tension.
Showing the animals swimming through pure air
is a potentially risky decision.
At this stage not even David can be certain
whether this ambitious visual concept will work.
For example, I was asking about the surface of the water.
What are we going to do about the surface?
The texture, yeah. If it's going to leap, how is it going to splash?
If you haven't got the surface, how will you splash?
This is one of those scenes which is suck it and see.
We're going to see when we do it whether we think it's going to work
and if we don't we'll find another way of doing it.
But those things you've got to go for because if you get them right
that's where the magic really happens.
410, take one.
Action, David.
In the finished scene it's the use of subtle effects
and sound that provide an ingenious solution to David's concerns.
They put a splash in here and there and then they put the sound, too,
of the water, so I think it's going to work.
When it comes to the final competition, the bold simplicity
of this technique lends the scene a magical air of pure enchantment.
All the animals that David meets on his journey are extinct.
There's one, however, where matters might not be so black and white.
Tonight we're doing gigantopithecus, which is a giant ape.
Some people even think it could have been the Abominable Snowman.
And I think... David's always been interested in the whole myth
and so it's one that he really did want to do.
When it comes to working out what this animal might have
looked like, the team doesn't have much to go on.
Let's do the introduction to the molar tooth.
'There's a molar tooth,'
but it is clearly a very human-like molar tooth,
and if you scale up from that molar tooth to what the animal
was like, it was a huge, apelike, probably even hominid-like, creature
that probably stood about eight or nine feet tall.
332, take one.
Action, David.
If this animal had a skull in the same proportion size
as a gorilla's, it would have been this big.
This was a true monster.
Intriguingly, research indicates that this monster
may have stood on two legs.
Animators on this project
draw much of their inspiration from modern animals
and when gigantopithecus animator Dave Bennett
learns about the behaviour of one particular gorilla
he sets off on a vital research trip.
We've come to the Port Lympne Animal Park today to research the gorillas.
Mainly Ambam, who is a gorilla that can stand upright.
Ambam emerges from his den,
but for now remains firmly on all fours.
Well, Ambam is one of a few gorillas that can walk very upright.
Unfortunately he doesn't do it all the time,
because he is a normal gorilla.
It's something he does as and when he wants
and if he doesn't feel like doing it he won't.
All Dave can do is wait.
It's a bit of a waiting game,
because I'm not sure whether Ambam is actually going to come out
and perform for us, but... yeah, we'll see.
It seems the animator's trip may be in vain.
Finally, however, Dave's patience is rewarded.
Oh, wow, that's amazing.
It almost looks like a man in a suit.
Brilliant.
That's exactly what we need.
He obviously feels quite comfortable in that position.
So, yeah, brilliant. A good experience, for sure.
Back at the studio,
Dave animates his model to include features of Ambam's movements.
I think you'll probably see a little bit of Ambam
in the gigantopithecus,
just in the way he transfers the weight from one leg to another.
He's got a lot of body mass that he has to carry around on those legs,
so it's inevitable that he's going to sway onto each leg
more so than a lightweight animal.
So, yeah, that's definitely reflected on the gigantopithecus
and the design of it.
So the likelihood is that his arms were quite short
and he walked upright, he was bipedal.
I'm going to get out of the way.
GIGANTOPITHECUS GRUNTS
As the nights roll on, they begin to take their toll on the crew.
I'm feeling tired, confused, broken...
And the team faces its biggest challenge yet,
with a last-minute change to the film's epic finale.
The problem is we're running out of time.
David is filming in the Natural History Museum,
where extinct animals are coming to life.
Not all the animals he meets on his journey are friendly.
One of the most sinister creatures he encounters is gigantophis,
a giant prehistoric snake.
While planning the scene, David's clear that there's one particular
element of the animal's behaviour that he wants to highlight.
How it killed its prey.
One of the key things
is whether they think it's a constrictor or whether it's a poi...
And I think it's a constrictor. It's a constrictor, yeah.
So we should be saying python or something.
I mean, those of us watching, kids or anybody else, will think,
are we supposed to be worrying about it suddenly going to wallop us
with a lethal injection of poison or if it's going to strangle us.
That's the sort of thing we want to know.
Gigantophis is going to be slowly slithering over this balcony up here.
To bring alive this creature's predatory powers,
the team devises a sequence in which the snake will attack
the model of an animal that's in the museum.
Camera, set and...action.
To create the impression of a snake winding round its victim,
the art department must slowly rotate the model.
'There were a couple of things in that sequence that were challenging.
'The museum were a little bit unsure about us doing anything.'
You know, it was a tricky one to get right.
They were practising for sort of 45 minutes beforehand
to get that rotation sort of believable.
The finished scene brings alive the formidable power of an animal
that in its time would have been a true monster.
I wonder if he realises that his dinner tonight is a fibreglass model.
Until now, David has been performing alone with the crew,
reacting to creatures that aren't really there.
But tonight is the busiest night of the shoot.
In the film he gains access to the museum by hiding from the guard
while visitors make their way out at closing time.
As this is the opening of the film, and sets up the whole premise
of David's magical night, it's important to get it right.
We're filming the scenes where members of the public
are first leaving the museum at the end of the day as David comes in,
and we're also shooting the scenes where the members of the public
are coming back in in the morning and David's sneaking away.
So it's both ends of the film.
Working with extras is always difficult in terms of coordination.
We have a first and second AD and lots of runners to try and wrangle
everybody to make the museum feel as full and as natural as possible.
My wife and four-year-old daughter
and baby son have come along tonight to help fill out the scenes.
And really nice also for them to appear in the film
and to see what I do during the night.
It's been an exhausting evening working with a full museum.
After weeks of filming nights, the crew are finally feeling the strain.
There is a worry that there are difficult scenes ahead.
Can they keep the energy up for the final push?
Getting used to these nights is taking its toll.
The hours are fine, you just work your daylight hours but at night,
but it means you're sleeping during the day,
which means you never see the sun, so you just don't see daylight.
I'm feeling tired, confused, broken...er...optimistic.
Erm...confused...
Don't know what time it is, don't know what day of the week it is,
don't know what shoot day it is.
I think we need a whip, someone just to...wake people up.
We sometimes forget, I think, as we're all
trying to do these very complicated sequences with everybody,
how tiring it is for David.
I'll be off to home in about another couple of hours, I dare say.
I mean, I just have to sort of plod on.
Work all night and sleep all day, at least some of it.
But everyone, especially David, must be fully rested for tomorrow,
as they will be tackling the most complicated sequence of the whole film.
It's the final night of the shoot.
Tonight the team must bring to life the largest of all
the animals in the film - Dippy.
The cast of a diplodocus,
a giant dinosaur skeleton in the Central Hall.
When I came down here as a kid, I wanted to see a dinosaur.
There it was, and then I read on the label that it was actually plaster,
it wasn't a real dinosaur at all.
But it's still the biggest dinosaur that's ever been dug up
and it's very famous, so it makes it fair enough for a climax, really.
At the climax of the scene, David wants to feed Dippy plant leaves.
Not just that, he wants to show off one of Dippy's
most remarkable talents.
The ability to reach the highest branches by not just
stretching up her neck but standing up on her hind legs.
Any time we have any interaction with a CG animal, it's difficult,
because you've got to imagine the animal, you've got to get the pulling of the fern.
We haven't done it yet, but that's going to be difficult. It's always time-consuming.
What we're doing here as much as possible is cheating to see
if we can get the tug of a dinosaur's jaw.
Once again it falls to art department's Boz to play
the role of the star animal.
So, Harry, can you hold that out and tight, please?
I'm being a makeshift diplodocus.
All I'm doing is just creating a little tug
so that then CGI can add some extra fern leaves
and it will simulate the diplodocus eating from his hand.
After hours of setup, the team is finally ready to shoot.
Action, David!
It seems quite possible that Dippy was able to rear up on her hind legs.
Come on, Dippy. Breakfast. Cut.
That was brilliant.
If we could get a little bit more looking all around the place. Thanks.
227, take one.
Action, David.
To rear up on her hind legs and...
Sorry, I'm going to do this again.
Keep your eyes down this sort of area, because Dippy will be here.
Yes.
224, take two.
By rearing on her hind legs. Let's see if I can tempt her.
Come on, Dippy.
Cut. If you look at that, that should be about right.
Well, I'm just listening, or... She trumpets, and it's a..."Huuhh!"
Having seen some big animals in time, I mean, rhinoceroses and giraffes
and one thing and another, I can imagine, I hope, what they were like.
Action, David!
Come on, Dippy. Breakfast.
Enough?
That's it.
Cut. Brilliant.
The scene is in the bag.
But with only a few hours of filming to go
David suddenly sees the opportunity for a more spectacular ending.
Dippy being fed by David from the very top of the museum.
All the dimensions worked out and we saw that actually,
just close to the bridge, which is at the far end,
if I stood there, Dippy would just reach up and...
Just rear up on its hind legs and just be able to get it.
It seems that Dippy could reach that high if pushed to the limit.
The CGI team finds the best way to make it work.
Reshooting this feeding scene from this high point
will certainly make for an impressive climax for the film.
The problem, however, is that the sun is already beginning to rise,
which will flood the museum with light.
The diplodocus sequence is probably the most important
sequence of the film. I know David's very keen on redoing it.
Our problem is we're running out of time, really, in our schedule.
But we'll do it, and I think it will be fantastic,
but we are very tight on time.
Action, David.
As daylight eventually creeps in,
the team finally get the shots they need to create what will be
a truly magical sequence and fitting end to the film.
Come on, Dippy.
Breakfast. Come on.
Cut. Brilliant. Excellent.
The team has done it.
Thanks very much, that's the day's wrap on David Attenborough!
Thank you, gentlemen, thanks, one and all.
After weeks of gruelling nights they finally have the shots
they need to complete the film.
It's been a successful shoot.
For the team, however,
there's still a sense of anticipation as to what comes next.
Right now it feels like a huge sense of achievement
but it is just the tip of the iceberg, as it were.
This is just the beginning,
in the sense that we have a lot of CGI creatures to build,
a lot of plates to composite them into.
There's a lot of work to do in the remaining few months.
Painstaking attention to detail is required
to recreate such photorealism.
And three months later David visits the studios to get his first
glimpse of these computer graphics.
For him and the team, it's an anxious moment.
It's time to discover
whether they've finally succeeded in bringing David's vision to life.
DAVID LAUGHS
I know exactly how he feels. Oh, that's terrific.
Oh, I like that, the movement of the hand.
It is so immaculate and so completely believable.
God, I just... I mean, it's amazing.
Oh, that's great.
CGI has reached a peak of perfection.
And some of the people responsible for reaching that peak,
they are involved in this project.
It doesn't look Disney-ish, I mean, it doesn't look like a cartoon.
It simply looks real.