Nature documentaries present their broad audiences with a range of thrilling narratives and fascinating settings, in much the same way as True Detective, Made in Chelsea, or indeed any other media text.
With nature documentaries there is an expectation from the audience that what they are viewing is fact. With the majority of nature documentaries featuring exclusively footage of real animals in their natural habitat, this all but confirms this expectation of the audience, that a documentary is a documentation of reality.
Nature documentaries are intensely time consuming and expensive to produce. The result of the location filming, often fraught with technical and safety issues, is hundreds, if not thousands of hours of footage in some situations. In others, there may be very little footage, if any at all. In both situations, the footage must be edited to form a compelling narrative for the target audience. A soundtrack, which can be dramatic, comedic or heart-wrenching is added. A voice over, emphasising the drama of the situation, as well as choice facts, is recorded.
In short, there are many ways in which narrative and content is fabricated by the producers. However, do the audience really feel they are watching unedited, unembellished footage?
The following articles will be an excellent starting point to your wider reading on the nature documentary and its controversies.
When it was discovered that small portions of the documentary Blue Planet was filmed in an aquarium in Wales, the BBC found themselves having to defend what is a very widespread technique in nature documentaries.
Todd VanDerWerff discusses the pointlessness of nature documentaries having narratives in the first place, and suggests an over reliance on narrative has effectively destroyed the genre
This blog details some of the problematic ways that nature documentaries have been filmed
This Guardian article further details 'dishonest' filmmaking practices used in the construction of nature documentaries
This fascinating academic article by Jane Adcroft argues that the use of anthropomorphisation in nature documentaries is not only a valid narrative technique, but also has the benefits of promoting awareness of conservation. There are some excellent examples of how audiences are manipulated by the 'staging' of certain scenes also.