WASHINGTON, D.C.—Disney+ has announced that subscribers to the streaming service can now experience a new immersive environment from National Geographic with the Disney+ app on Apple Vision Pro. The experience transports users to the breathtaking natural beauty of Iceland’s Thingvellir National Park and is National Geographic’s first-ever immersive project for Apple Vision Pro.

Disney+ is also making four additional 3D films from Marvel Studios available to subscribers today: “Avengers,” “Avengers: Age of Ultron,” “Ant-Man”* and “Ant-Man and the Wasp.”

National Geographic worked with Disney Studio Technology to lead the creative development and production of the immersive environment from high-resolution 3D models captured on-site using photogrammetry and gigapixel panoramas. The teams worked in collaboration with Disney Entertainment and ESPN Technology to bring this new experience to Disney+.

The streaming service reported that the new National Geographic environment will take Disney+ subscribers on Apple Vision Pro to the unique rocky terrain of Thingvellir National Park on a snowy winter day, allowing them to explore their surroundings via interactive elements and sounds that make the space come to life. This UNESCO world heritage site, captured by a team of National Geographic photographers, serves as the backdrop for viewers watching Disney+ content beneath a spectacular nighttime aurora.

“Since its inception, National Geographic has been at the forefront of photography and has led the way in using groundbreaking technology to tell stories that inspire a deeper connection to the natural world,” said David Miller, executive vice president National Geographic. “Creating this immersive environment was a natural next step for us to take to build on that legacy and to continue enabling audiences to experience the beauty of our natural world and see places they may never go to otherwise.”

For more information on Disney+ on Apple Vision Pro, visit disneyplus.com/applevisionpro. 

National Geographic has tapped Karen Greenfield to fill the newly created position of senior VP of content, diversity and inclusion.

In her new role, Greenfield will work with Nat Geo content creative teams to “develop and produce inclusive storytelling for a multicultural and multigenerational audience,” according to the network. Greenfield, who previously served as senior VP of business operations as well as National Geographic content, diversity and inclusion council chair, will also work with leaders across The Walt Disney Co. to ensure Nat Geo talent and programming are integrated into company-wide DEI initiatives.

Greenfield will report to National Geographic content president Courteney Monroe. “For 134 years, National Geographic has used the power of storytelling to change the world. An essential component of that is ensuring that everyone’s voice is included,” Monroe said in a statement. “Karen is an exceptional executive with a proven track record leading diversity and inclusion initiatives and working with the world’s leading content creators. I am thrilled that Karen will be leveraging her extraordinary talents and passion to help guide us in our mission to inspire and elevate diversity and inclusion in every aspect of our work and storytelling, pushing the boundaries of what’s possible.”

Nat Geo also announced that it has renewed for the second year its Nat Geo Media Scholarship program for students who attend historically Black colleges or universities (HBCUs). The initiative, led by Greenfield, last year awarded four recipients a $10,000 scholarship, an opportunity to participate in a two-week immersion program at National Geographic headquarters, and a mentorship with a Nat Geo employee, said the company. 

“I could not be prouder to not only work for National Geographic, an iconic brand whose mission is to ensure all voices are included in storytelling, but also work alongside Courteney and her senior team, who believe in this value,” Greenfield said. “The green-light of the second year of the Nat Geo Media Scholarship is a testament to their commitment.” 

National Geographic has built its reputation on capturing beautiful imagery of wild animals in their natural habitats. Following the recent telecast of “Earth Live,” the network can add “live broadcast specialist” to its list of brand capabilities. Over the course of the two-hour program, cinematographers transmitted live footage of wildlife and ecosystems from dozens of locations around the world. The production teams used cutting-edge technology including thermal imaging systems and ultra-low light cameras from Canon to showcase a number of wildlife firsts.

Produced by Bunim-Murray Productions, Berman Productions and Plimsoll Productions for National Geographic, “Earth Live” was simulcast globally on National Geographic, Nat Geo WILD and Nat Geo MUNDO in 171 countries and 45 languages on July 9.

Phil Keoghan and Jane Lynch in the Earth Live studio. Photo by Scott Fries/National Geographic

“Earth Live” was anchored in a New York City studio by hosts Jane Lynch, Phil Keoghan and zoologist Chris Packham, who kept the action moving. The two-hour event gave viewers an unfiltered, real-time broadcast feed of Earth’s wildlife in various natural habitats with the use of 51 cameras shooting simultaneously in 28 locations across six continents.

The brainchild of executive producer Al Berman, “Earth Live” was designed to bring the kind of excitement and immediacy to a wildlife show that the live TV veteran had done for the “CBS Evening News,” a plethora of sporting events (including the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan), “Survivor” and decades’ worth of other live telecasts.

To understand how this project came together, we have to back up two years. The idea of producing a live nature documentary spanning the globe had been percolating in Berman’s head for a while but there had always been a significant, even prohibitive challenge: a substantial number of locations would be shrouded in darkness at any given time. To fudge it with lights would undermine the concept, and to rely on the imagery of traditional night vision and thermal cameras would compromise the spectacle.

National Geographic’s Earth Live broadcast live images of wildlife at night, in color, without the use of artificial lighting. The program featured live feeds from nine Canon ME20F-SH cameras positioned in the parts of the world that were in nighttime during the live telecast. Photo by Al Berman

It was Canon’s introduction of the ME20F-SH camera, with a claimed potential ISO of 4 million (with gain pushed to the limit), that changed his thinking. “They said you could shoot at .05 lux or under a quarter moon without any additional illumination,” Berman recalls. “I thought that sounded ridiculous, so I reached out to [Canon senior fellow] Larry Thorpe and asked to test it.”

Thorpe obliged and Berman went out to shoot a pre-arranged test: a toy lion lit only by the moon. “I could barely see anything, but on the monitor, you could just see it! It looked like daylight,” Berman says. He tested the camera further at Wildlife Waystation, an animal sanctuary in Los Angeles County, and decided the camera’s sensor could capture images rich enough show to National Geographic and pitch his idea.

He recounts his meeting with Tim Pastore, National Geographic president of original programming and production. Pastore was also excited by the potential this kind of low-light sensitivity could open up. Berman had suggested a live broadcast from a few select regions, and Pastore upped the ante in his reply: “What if we did the whole world?”

When Pastore asked how long the show should be, Berman says he asked, “How much money do you have?” Berman continues, “He gave me a number and we did a fist bump!”

“My approach was to hire the very best in every field: the best tech keys, the best director, producers, wildlife experts,” Berman says. “Nobody had ever done exactly what we were attempting, so it was very important to have the best, most experienced people figuring out how to do it.”

He teamed with Plimsoll Productions, a UK-based production company that specializes in non-scripted shows, and with Bunim/Murray productions, the company that could be credited with inventing reality television with shows such as “The Real World” and “Road Rules.”

The Canon camera underwent additional testing in the Sabi Sands of South Africa’s Kruger National Park as part of a safari organized by the company Wild Earth, which produces the live streamed YouTube series “Safari Live.” Frequent collaborator, technical expert and producer Gayle DePoli worked with Berman to supervise the testing of the camera, which was mounted with Canon’s Cine-Servo 50-1000mm (T5.0-8.9) lens. In the field, the cameras would use a variety of Canon optics. “The most important thing we wanted to learn was how much to dial up the dB,” says Berman. The magic number seemed to be +48 dB: “That was enough light to make the [images] look almost like daylight. If you cranked it any higher, it was too grainy,” Berman adds.

The ME20F-SH camera, dubbed the “Moon Cam” by cinematographers during the live production, was perfect for night coverage of lions in Kenya or hyenas in Ethiopia. It was also deployed in locations that would pass from dusk through night during the telecast, as in the case of the Bracken Cave in Texas, where more than 20 million bats fill the skies at magic hour.

Earth Live showed footage of macaques in Thailand using tools (rocks) to feed on oysters exposed with the low tide.

Not all the locations required that kind of light sensitivity. Locations that would be shot during the day would be covered with an amalgam of gear, primarily chosen by that location’s DP, including Sony PMW-F55 and PDW-F800 cameras and an assortment of Panasonic VariCams. The producers had great flexibility so long as the cameras could output 720p for the live broadcast. In many cases, the shooters were also capturing additional material in a variety of formats on external recorders. Although “Earth Live” was broadcast live, recording and creating B-roll package for playback started days earlier.

While all the remote setups were complex, there were some that were particularly challenging. Berman points to the lions, which would be shot on the savannahs of Maasai Mara National Reserve in Kenya by Sophie Darlington. “People don’t shoot lions at night,” Berman says. “Sometimes with infrared, but this was really something new with a lot of unknowns. We put additional vehicles out there with the crew because if one got stuck, then they’d be out there in the middle of the grasslands, two hours from base camp, in a stuck vehicle with lions. That was a significant consideration.”

In addition to enacting safety measures on the location shoots, producers had to devise a plan to transmit video signals from these remote locations to the New York control room. AMV (All Mobile Video) was involved in a lot of the transmission solutions, and the live production was all done through an AMV studio facility in Manhattan.

In Alaska, camera operators and scientists attempted to capture humpback whale DNA with a custom drone called the “snotbot.” Footage of the operation was captured with another drone camera.

To capture footage of humpback whales off the Alaskan coast, AVS brought in an aircraft with a Cineflex gyro-stabilized camera mount as well as a boat and two drones. Wireless feeds from all the cameras were picked up on the boat and switched out to an uplink on the nearby shore. “It was very complicated,” Berman recalls.

Global media services company MX1 provided satellite transmission and production support—frequently in conjunction with local partners—in ten of the show’s locations, including Fiji, Australia, Ethiopia, Alaska, Brazil, Finland and Thailand.

The Fiji location was one of the most complex, as cinematographer Andy Casagrande would be following bull sharks live underwater. During this segment, MX1 would receive the feed on a boat and transmit it back to the studio via microwave to flyaway using multiple satellites. Over the course of “Earth Live,” seven feeds (two from Africa and Europe and three from North America) were statmuxed at MX1 facilities and transmitted to the AMV studios in New York City for live studio integration with the broadcast.

“Even the comms were extremely challenging,” Berman adds. Many of the remote setups were far from cell range. The team approached each setup differently, using cell service where possible or direct satellite bandwidth to communicate from the studio to the camera crews and various combinations, as well as Wi-Fi, for crew to communicate with one another within a location.

On the night of the telecast, AMV’s main transmission room brought in the feeds from around the world. Director Glenn Weiss, director of the Academy Awards, Tony Awards and the most recent Democratic National Convention—essentially some of the most high-pressure, complex gigs a live director can get—called the shots in the control room. Berman was stationed in the main control room with Weiss.

The show was scripted, but the idea of being able to cut to “breaking news” was part of the excitement. “Say an ocelot shows up,” Berman explains, noting the animal’s propensity for shyness. “We’d put the feed of the ocelot into the router and maybe we’d have the wolverine on another. We would organize them with the ones we expected to be up next, but we always had other possible locations on standby.”

Chris Packham, Phil Keoghan and Jane Lynch in the studio. Photo by Scott Fries/National Geographic

The hosts brought their best improvisational skills to the telecast as they would need to be flexible to accommodate the vagaries of live production. Occasionally they would cut to clip packages assembled from prerecorded B-roll—Berman explains that these pre-built clip packages weren’t there for the typical reasons live broadcasts use them, however. “We could always go to another location, so we didn’t need them to fill time. But if we’re going to be showing the Maasai Mara National Preserve in Kenya at night, the audience won’t see it in its glory. They’re not going to see a lion bringing down a wildebeest. So we had these short packages—nothing more than 45 or 50 seconds—to give viewers a sense of the place and some context.”

While Berman, DePoli and a few others had seen Canon’s ME20F-SH in action, many of the shooters had literally just gotten the cameras before the project began. They shared their reactions to its low-light capabilities as they were working. “Sophie Darlington was in Kenya with the lions,” DePoli recalls. “She could hardly see anything in front of her it was so dark, but on her monitor she saw a mother lioness nursing her cubs. Bob Poole was in Ethiopia with the hyenas. All he could make out was the reflection in their eyes. On the feed, it almost looked like daylight!”

Berman went into the production knowing that uncertainty was the only certainty. The planned shoot of the flamingos of the Yucatan had to be scrapped when the birds unwisely chose to migrate to an area infested by crocodiles. Even where they had a potentially excellent setup, there was never a guarantee the animals would behave as expected.

National Geographic photographer Steve Winter was tasked with delivering footage of the rare and elusive ocelot from Brazil for “Earth Live.” “We kept waiting for an ocelot to show up,” Berman says. “We could have easily had a broadcast with no ocelot after investing a considerable amount of money in having one. It was a calculated risk. One column of our spreadsheet was for risk factor.”

When the broadcast finally ended and the credits rolled, Berman says, “You had to pull everybody off the ceiling! There was so much shouting and screaming and hugging. People were crying in the control room. Everybody was just so proud.”

GERMANY—Viewers of National Geographic’s “Earth Live” broadcast on July 9 got to go globe-trotting across the planet with the help of media services company MX1. The company did so by providing live satellite transmission and production support in 10 of the broadcast’s 28 locations around the world.

MX1 was set up at locations in Fiji, Australia, Ethiopia, Alaska, Brazil, Finland, Thailand and India. In addition, MX1 was also used by All Mobile Video/Chelsea Television Studios/AMV Gateway Teleport to transmit feeds from the remote locations to AMV’s studios in New York City for live studio integration with the broadcast.

With the help of partners like Telstra Broadcast Services, Mobilelinks, CAT Telecom, DSC, Planetcast, Videe, and JA Satellite, MX1 was able to streamline the real-time broadcast operations.

The 10 locations featured uplinks and flyaways to support National Geographic’s transmission requirements. Over the course of the event, more than 15 hours of test and live feeds were transmitted and seven feeds were statmuxed at MX1 facilities and delivered to AMV.

“Earth Live” aired on July 9.

DENVER—Content creators, filmmakers and documentarians now have 4K content transcoding and delivery capabilities via National Geographic Creative’s Wazee Digital-powered licensing portal.

National Geographic has employed a Wazee Digital Core portal since 2006, but this recent update to the cloud media asset management system allows users to order, transcode and download 4K content directly from the portal. Previously, automatic fulfillment was limited to HD and SD content.

National Geographic Creative is an in-house agency that brings together National Geographic’s photography and video stock collection, providing content to commercial and editorial clients.

WASHINGTON—Daniel McDonald, the former executive director of Programming and Consumer Research at National Geographic Channels, has been named vice president of Research for the National Association of Broadcasters. McDonald started this week as head of NAB Research, a division of the NAB Communications Department, in a position held previously by Tanya Van Pool.

McDonald will report to Ann Marie Cumming, senior vice president, Communications.

At National Geographic Channels, McDonald oversaw audience research for National Geographic, Nat Geo Wild, and Nat Geo Mundo. He also managed primary research projects and public opinion polling, among other responsibilities. McDonald served previously as director of Programming and Research at CBS’s WBBM-TV, Chicago, IL and later joined Comcast Spotlight where he rose to divisional director of Research, Southern Division. McDonald also worked in various research roles for Paramount Stations Group; WPSG-TV, Philadelphia, PA; and KTXA-TV, Dallas, TX.

NAB Research provides accurate data and analysis to support NAB advocacy initiatives and public policy objectives, monitors developments in media measurement practices and methodologies, conducts surveys, and compiles pertinent data that serve as a resource for NAB members. 

McDonald is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania. 

CLEVELAND—Many people joke that what they do isn’t brain surgery. That statement may no longer apply for a National Geographic production team. Nat Geo is preparing “Brain Surgery Live with Mental Floss,” the first-ever live brain surgery on television from University Hospitals Case Medical Center in Cleveland for Sunday, Oct. 25 at 9 p.m. EST/6 p.m. PST.

Photo credit: National Geographic

“One of the things I love about doing television is the chance to take people closer to places they otherwise would never be able to go,” said Bob Wheelock, executive producer of the broadcast, “and certainly inside the human brain is somewhere most of us would never ever been able to get to.”

THE TOOLS

To bring viewers inside the operating room, Nat Geo is fitting as much as it safely can in the tight spaces of the operating room without impeding the surgery. As a result, they are relying on two Sony P1 robotic cameras and two Sony HDC 1500 handheld cameras to minimize intrusion in the operating room.

However, the production also will have direct feeds to a number of the tools being used by the doctors to see what they see. There also will be a graphical representation of the brain for reference, thanks to the hospital’s 3D imaging device, the Surgical Feeler.

Because of the tight space in the primary operating room, the production team has its home base in another operating room across the hall, where it will have threeadditional Sony HDC 1500 cameras—including Steadicam and handheld—prompters and cables necessary to broadcast live. There will also be a doctor present in this operating room to describe the details of the procedure for audiences.

The production will have a third location with the family of the person being operated on. Their thoughts and reactions will be recorded with an HDC 1500 handheld.

CHALLENGES

Besides the tight spaces, the production takes place in primarily sterile areas. This requires each piece of equipment that will be present in either operating room to be completely sterilized, a 10-hour process that began on Thursday, Oct. 22, so it could be set-up on Friday, Oct. 23. Even the crew needs to be sterilized and outfitted in scrubs.

“There’s very little margin for error, because we are not going to have the ability to say, ‘oops, wrong cable; wrong light,’” Wheelock said. “It’s got to be a very thorough, very thoughtful process… It takes a lot of work, preparation and cooperation.”

Wheelock and the doctors taking part in this program understand what this opportunity can do. Wheelock mentioned how Dr. Jonathan Miller, UH Case Medical Center’s director of the Center for Functional and Restorative Neurosurgery, emphasized to him that this DBS surgery helps people who suffer from ailments like Parkinson’s disease get their lives back, and that he wants this broadcast to help spread the message.

“This is not a life-threatening surgery, this is life altering, which is why we film it,” Wheelock said. “This is a celebration of the brain and the technology and medicine that has come along to help people who otherwise thought they had no hope.”