Guest Post: The Music of Walking with Dinosaurs

Once again, we welcome Rohan Long to the blog for a guest post. Rohan is a zoology teaching guy at University of Melbourne. You can find him on Twitter @zoologyrohan and listen to his new musical project, Bronzewing, at bronzewing.bandcamp.com. You may recall his post last year almost a year ago, reviewing Crichton's The Lost World. This time, Rohan came to us with the idea of discussing the music of 1999's seminal CG documentary Walking with Dinosaurs, and we happily accepted the offer.

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When you start to unpack it, Walking With Dinosaurs is a strange beast; a fictional animated series earnestly presenting itself as a nature documentary. The series’ aesthetic cues are drawn foremost from the BBC school of classic documentaries – and with good reason; if the creators strayed too far from the genre as it’s traditionally presented, the spell would be broken, and the audience may well ask itself why Kenneth Branagh is playing Attenborough over a bunch of puppets and primitive CGI. Unsurprisingly, the first incarnation of the show, released in 1999, was also aesthetically and musically influenced by cultural juggernaut Jurassic Park which was released six years earlier.

Ornitholestes from 1999's Walking With Dinosaurs. Somehow, Benjamin Bartlett avoided the obvious choice of producing a punk theme for this critter.

When it comes to establishing the feel of a real nature documentary, the soundtrack must surely be one of the most crucial elements. The score by Benjamin Bartlett draws from similar stylistic touchstones to the show’s visual aesthetic – a little John Williams here, a touch of Edward William’s 1979 score to Life On Earth there. It must have been an interesting brief for a composer as most importantly, the soundtrack was required to sound like a nature documentary soundtrack. As with the overall look of the show, if the soundtrack didn’t fit the established expectations of what a nature documentary should sound like, the illusion of authenticity would be shattered. So in a sense, this soundtrack can be thought of as a work of pastiche.

I bought the soundtrack CD in the early 2000s but didn’t actually listen to it until much later. Let me set the scene: I was working on a dinosaur dig with which I have a long association and was relaxing at the end of a very hard day. For the second time in as many days I had been working “in the hole” – manually extracting big chunks of rock from the fossil layer with sledge hammers and chisels so the rest of the crew could break them down, looking for fossils. That night, a combination of very strenuous work and a couple of quality Australian lagers had brought about an almost zen-like state of calm stillness in me. The crew was watching the WWD episode that features the dinosaurs from our site (because of course that’s what you’d do after looking for dinosaur fossils all day). I’d seen this episode quite a few times by this point, but this time something clicked. The music cut through to my receptive mind and I appreciated it for the first time.

The music that first captivated me that evening was from the episode Spirits of the Ice Forest about the polar dinosaurs of south-eastern Australia with which I have a warm familiarity. The main motif comprises a sweeping middle-eastern section which then gives way to some icy, atmospheric textures. The follow-on track Antarctic Spring develops this theme and the incorporation of some delay-affected tuned percussion makes it sound a bit modern and cool.

I think Bartlett is using a stereotypically middle-eastern sounding scale on these pieces as musical shorthand to symbolise a generic “other” – you know, because Australia is weird because it’s different to the northern hemisphere! Perhaps it would have made more sense for these themes to have incorporated elements of our actual indigenous music. It’s kind of lazy and very Eurocentric, but I enjoy the music on its own merits so I mostly forgive Bartlett for this.

One thing Bartlett does very well is huge, affecting pieces that make full use of the orchestra. Islands of Green for example, uses slow-building swells of strings interspersed with steady, rhythmic bass notes and a shimmering celesta to illustrate the hardships of marine reptiles in the late Jurassic. Cruel Sea from the same episode is more stripped back but has a similar feel, this time with strings, orchestral harp and brass forming a slow, melancholy waltz. These pieces work very well as standalone songs, as opposed to tracks like say, Torosaurus Locks Horns or Canyon Of Terror which are purely dramatic tension delivery devices.

I think Bartlett does a great job on this unique project, but there are weak spots. On the Time Of The Titans episode he seems to be trying to emulate the feel of William’s themes for Jurassic Park and like Williams, lapses into obvious grandiosity and unnecessary whimsy when scoring the sauropod scenes. Minor complaints aside, the soundtrack works as a very listenable album of music in addition to scoring the series very effectively.

You might notice that the first track mentions in parentheses that it is narrated by Kenneth Branagh. Happily (or disappointingly, depending on your view), Branagh only appears on that first track, the rest is unspoiled by narration. Mind you, although I think that track clashes somewhat with the rest of the album, I’ve got to admit that it does make a great opener for mix CDs – *orchestra swell* Imagine you can travel back in time, to a time long before man...

Postscript: If you’re interested in this music or soundtrack composition in general, have a read of this in-depth interview from 2000 with Bartlett on the process of composing and recording the music for WWD.

Forewarned is forearmed

Image courtesy of SimplyWallpaper.net

I was with Marc on that solemn journey to the 'Shiny Multiplex Enormodome' to see the Walking with Dinosaurs film. There is very little that I can add to his review, given that we are pretty much in exact agreement and Marc has already mentioned all the points he and I discussed in the post-movie debriefing. Nor do our opinions differ greatly from the near-universal verdict that it is, in effect, a stunning visual treat marred by inane dialogue.

Having gone to it with this already in mind, however, I didn't find that dialogue quite as intolerable as I had anticipated (though, make no mistake, I would have longed for its absence to begin with), a view shared by some reports, including those of Darren Naish and Gareth Monger. The latter found it easy enough to mentally 'switch off'. Like Marc, I even found Alex's narration surprisingly palatable in some parts, and perhaps that should have been the extent of the script, if it was felt necessary at all. The whole was fairly endurable enough until the fight between Patchi and his brother, Scowler, during which the exchange took an evisceratingly embarrassing turn in resembling a scene from a dreadful high school drama. The sequence, much like so many others, would have been entirely spared this indignity had it been speech-free. Even the arguably sillier visual jokes and slapstick would have worked organically and induced fewer groans if the silent storytelling had been left untouched. The soundtrack complaint extends to a degree to the music. My genuine enjoyment of the orchestral score was abruptly bridled by the sudden introduction of Barry White when Patchi first encounters Juniper amid a cloud of butterflies, for example. Incidentally, later in this sequence -- and quite after the Barry White had been dispensed with -- I was amused to recall David's mention of Cyrano de Bergerac as the pudgy young Patchi trotted back day after day to the waterfall in hopes of meeting the rosy Juniper again, but I digress...

 It might be superfluous of me to say more with regard to the beauty of the animals and the animation, but it is worth emphasizing once more. I refer you once again to Marc's description in lieu of my gushing further on the rendering of skin, scales, and feathers, or the palpably alive movement of flesh and muscle.

If the bathos between the sublime visuals and the ridiculous soundtrack is galling for dino-geeks, then, how much more so is it for the artists behind the creation? If it is true that the executive Pooh-Bahs bowed to the opinion of test screen audiences in the retroactive introduction of the script, then my heart is doubly heavy. My frustrations with the greater public's penchant for turning tea into soda are too great to mention and certainly too close to home in my own profession. Nobody can be at a loss to follow so simple a story, or to identify -- and identify with -- the characters, so well conceived and delineated in their designs. I wonder, were folks always so dense when they watched the numerous dialogue-free Pixar shorts? And what of Wall-E? Or what of Lotte Reiniger's The Adventures of Prince Achmed? The list goes on.

I conclude by reiterating Marc that 'the artistic and scientific talent behind this film do deserve our support'. The plain fact of the matter is that the hope of more such films being made in future does rest upon sales, and perhaps we may hope, however feebly, that the collective intelligent response to this film may bend a few ears of the powers-that-be. Thus forewarned, go and see this film, and hold fast to its merits.

Missing Kenneth Branagh

I never thought I'd miss Kenneth Branagh quite as much as I do now. Nevertheless, having solemnly journeyed to my local Shiny Multiplex Enormodome to see the Walking With Dinosaurs movie, it's the slightly over-earnest tones of thespian Kenny that I long for. For you see - and forgive me if you've heard this already - WWD 3D features dinosaurs that talk. And talk. And talk.

Talk v teeth. Image from here.

The Chase

Image courtesy HDwallpapers.in.

Walking With Dinosaurs 3D has been released. As is probably well-known to anyone reading this post, the production company, in a panic to comfort viewers used to the tropes of modern big-budget children's entertainment, tragically decided to add dialogue, pop music cues, and puerile humor to the film. And I had such high hopes in May.

Reviews are uniformly unkind. "If you could turn off the soundtrack you’d have a fascinating silent film featuring photo-realistic prehistoric beasts. But just you try ignoring what sounds like Smurfs 2 meets Alvin and the Chipmunks," writes Chris Knight for the National Post (though he also refers to Edmontosaurus as a carnivore, LOLWUT). As of this writing, the film has a 25% fresh rating at Rotten Tomatoes, though 61% of ~5,200 users on the site like it, so who knows. Maybe the gamble will pay off and in six years we'll be seeing the third movie in the series rolling out. Here's my idea: in a Triassic twist on Roxanne, a dim-witted Plateosaurus tries to win the heart of his crush with the help of a wacky Liliensternus. Take that one, 20th Century Fox. The next one costs you.

We may or may not review the movie here (there has been mention of Marc and Niroot possibly seeing it together), but seeing yet another big animated dinosaur project get muddled by terrible studio decisions has pretty well convinced me that big studios will never make the dinosaur movie I want to see. Which, for the record, would be something that feels like a feature-length version of the first lagoon shot from Jurassic Park. A narrative arc would be fine. It's been done before, and well - think The Bear. What I want is an immersive, I-just-time-travelled-to-the-Mesozoic feel, with a great score and as little anthropomorphism as possible. There's no way that film gets made anytime soon.

There's hope, though. Who knows what will be possible as the technology gets cheaper and dinosaur fanatics get more motivated to make something on their own? Or perhaps expecting a feature film is the wrong way to look at it. Maybe the dream of an immersive exploration of prehistory is better left to game designers, like the folks behind Saurian (also, like it at FB and follow on Twitter). They'll reportedly be crowdfunding the project as it develops, and I think that the work-in-progress pieces of the process they've shown give some hope that it will be a worthy project to back.







We can spit and curse at huge studios all we want, but they'll never really care about what a small group of passionate paleontology fanatics think. There's no incentive. I'm tired of chasing the wrong dream.

Walking With Dinosaurs: The 3D Movie

Ceratopsia triumphant! The international trailer for Walking with Dinosaurs: The 3D Movie is here, giving us our first good look of what to expect. Pachyrhinosaurus takes center stage here, and among the supporting cast are mighty Edmontosaurs, feathered Troodons, and a few big nasty theropods. No Wittonesque shaggy coats or bristly bits on the Pachyrhinosaurs, but it's going to look mighty pretty. Guess I'll have to get over my aversion to 3D.



I'm feeling pretty stoked. This is exactly the kind of dinosaur story I want to see on the big screen. More to come, I'm sure.

A Tiny Morsel of Reign of the Dinosaurs

As noted by paleoartist Angie Rodrigues on her blog Art By Angie, the production company Creative Differences, who is working on the upcoming Discovery series Reign of the Dinosaurs, has included a bit of footage in their latest demo reel. Go to their site, and click the "Our Stuff" link. The snippet comes about a third of the way through, after the Time Warp bit.

It looks killer. I do mean killer. As expected of a demo reel, which is meant to be an eye-grabbing showcase of the company's work, the dinosaur action is pretty gory. It doesn't start that way, as an allosaur thundere down a game trail, charismatically groaning and waving its head to and fro.

Then, presumably the same allosaur showcases lightning-quick reflexes by catching a diplodocid's tail in its jaws and ripping off the end of it.



Next, two tyrannosaurs display a bit of intra-specific rivalry, as one rips either a strip of flesh, a tendon, or a vein out of its opponent's neck. Hopefully, this indicates that we'll see the gregarious behavior hinted at by the evidence of tyrannosaur face-biting in the fossil record.



Finally, showing that a bit of slapstick humor will indeed be present, the allosaur from earlier is slapped in the face by the sauropod tail it is snacking on. The slapstick component, which I wrote about in November, is the source of all of my worries concerning Reign.



As a small follow-up to yesterday's Vintage Dinosaur Art post, you can see that the allosaur's hands are correctly oriented, though it's clearer in the video than in the above screencap.

This is the smallest glimpse into the final product, but of the three big dinosaur products due in the next year or so, I'm still most excited about Reign of the Dinosaurs - until I see something of Walking with Dinosaurs 3D, I won't know what to think. There may be more slapstick humor than I'd like, but the artistic talent behind it has a solid reputation in paleoart and the designs above, while not particularly colorful, are bold and seem pretty accurate. I can't wait to see what they do with color and plumage in smaller theropods, and what other paleoenvironments are explored. There has been a lot of cool research in the decade since Walking with Dinosaurs, and it's reasonable to expect to see it presented well here.

Terra Nova, Walking with Dinosaurs update

For dinosaur enthusiasts, a constant item of conjecture is what the next big dinosaurian pop culture event is going to be. There's been a bit of news lately concerning some high profile dinosaur projects in the media.

First, Steven Spielberg's Terra Nova project has been the subject of some speculation. The Hollywood Reporter writes that most of the writing staff has been sacked in an effort to reduce its enormous budget. But in a report in the New York Post, Fox maintains that the show is still on schedule, and will receive a two-hour preview in May. About the preview, the Post says:

The two-hour episode gives viewers a first look at the series, which revolves around a family living on Earth in the year 2149. With the planet on the brink of destruction, thanks to years of aggressive scientific experimentation and an exploding population, the family agrees to go back to prehistoric times in hopes of finding a way to save the Earth by attempting to correct mistakes made in the past.

A crazy premise, but I'll be able to forgive some of that if the dinosaurs are done well.

Though its stage show winds down, the Walking With Dinosaurs brand isn't giving up quite yet. Deadline reports that Fox is rumored to be doubling its dinosaur pleasure, inking a distribution deal for a forthcoming WWD 3D documentary. This is quite a show of faith, and the production probably has March of the Penguins to thank for it. Hat tip to Michael May for alerting me to this on twitter.

The other big upcoming project, Discovery's Reign of the Dinosaurs, has been pretty quiet since Comic-Con, which is probably a good sign. For a brief post on the event and a few pictures, check out the Discovery blog. All in all, there is good reason to be stoked about dinosaurs in the media. While Terra Nova will surely be more devoted to story and spectacle than accuracy, I have high hopes for Reign of the Dinosaurs and the WWD 3D project to widen peoples' appreciation for the science of dinosaurs.

Inside Walking With Dinosaurs

Continuing with yesterday's theme of the internal anatomy of giant dinosaur models, here's an infographic from Singapore's The New Paper that dissects the giant puppets of Walking With Dinosaurs: The Arena Spectacular (Beware: the WWD site blasts music upon loading. Dear websites: THAT SUCKS AND IS UNNECESSARY).



For more, check out Flickr user ideasandrew's set devoted to media coverage of the upcoming December run of WWD in Singapore. The show is now making its way across Asia before returning to its home country of Australia next spring.

I didn't get to see the show when it was in the U.S. It was, as most things dubbed "arena spectaculars" are, prohibitively expensive. I took a look at the educational materials provided on the website as a PDF for teachers, and while it's not exactly a crash course in dinosaur paleontology or paleoecology, it does offer quite a bit of insight into how an arena spectacular is built. Which is, in the long run, far more important.

WTF, WWD

More pterosaurs!

I don't hold Walking With Dinosaurs as a sacred piece of mesozoica. I enjoy it, and I do occasionally turn to it on a sleepless night as I wait for the stubborn sandman. But if I did hold it in such a regard, that faith would have take a serious hit this morning.

I'll refer you to a post at the Pterosaur Database on the ornithocheirids: a family of pterosaurs which Paul Pursglove describes as a taxonomic lost and found, of sorts. Most of what we know of this group is fragmentary, and Pursglove describes an additional source of confusion:

This problem arose from specimens collected from the Cambridge Greensand. The specimens were deposited within the Greensand from elsewhere, perhaps from moving sediments or as fossils eroded from other rocks and re-deposited. In many cases, the age and location of the original deposition is unknown.

So, we've got a group of pterosaurs which are known from bits and pieces, a number of which were redeposited from their original resting places.

So why the heck did the WWD team decide to cast an ornithocheirid as the noble hero of their "Giants of the Skies" episode? Why not a better known pterosaur, one that is established as being a true species? If a giant was what they wanted, why not Quetzalcoatlus? If a visually arresting pterosaur is what you're looking for in a lead actor, there are plenty of fine candidates.

Though I'm no pterosaur expert, I've not found anything online that disputes Pursglove's post. Seems like the WWD gang drank some silly juice when they were writing that episode.