by senior contributor Brendan Kownacki
It
was a walk on the wild side on Tuesday evening when The National Geographic Channel filled DC's historic Uptown Theater for the premiere
of their newest miniseries --- "Untamed Americas" -- a four part film that
explores the landscape and natural inhabitants of the Americas region,
stretching from Canada down through Patagonia.
The film is a high-definition masterpiece, exploring
the highest mountains and deepest reaches of the jungle to get a true
and stunning picture of what the Americas have hiding in every one of
their natural crevices. Academy Award-nominated actor Josh Brolin
narrates the epic and serves as an intrepid guide to everything the
audience will see.
In part one, "Mountains" - the audience is treated
to the stories of a variety of animals including wolves, bears,
flamingos and a rare new species of bat. The one character that ties it
all together throughout is the landscape...the peaks, the valleys, the
sky and the plants.... all set a stunning scene that seems to interact with
everything that comes into contact with it.
"You're looking for new stories and things the
audience hasn't seen before" said Karen Bass, director and producer of
the film when describing how she decided on the locales to explore in
the film. Production stretched over dozens of countries and took more
than two years to complete. "Freshness, revelation...variety" were all
the commodities she hoped to discover as she plotted a trip that almost
literally stretched pole to pole when you consider the northern-most
parts of Canada and the southern reaches of Patagonia at the base of
South America.
Bass explored items of all size and scope, filming both massive volcanic craters as well as delicate interactions of humming birds and tiny flowers. She explained that "it helps to go from scale to scale; that's what nature is." She knew that the massive land scape around her would help her to paint a portrait of something epic, but when she began to witness the interactions of the animals in the individual ecosystems, she realized that "the dramas are very intimate." This is when she relied on an array of technological advances, lighting and cameras of all sizes, to capture a truly natural look at each habitat she entered.
The four-part series will cover Mountains, Coasts,
Deserts, and Forests when it premieres June 10th and 11th on
simultaneously on all of the National Geographic Channels.
The trailer:
