Winged Migration – Blu Ray Review

The Plot

Winged Migration as the title hints at is a visual story about migrating birds.

The Main Event

Winged Migration or “Le Peuple migrateur” is a 2003 Oscar nominated feature documentary about the migratory habits of birds, although I have to say that the term documentary can only loosely be associated to the production. For me a traditional documentary will give you some fairly detailed commentary over the visuals to explain what you are seeing. Think David Attenborough. Winged Migration doesn’t do this. In fact even when the narrator does speak (about once every 10 minutes) he comments on something quite general rather than anything specific to what we see on screen. What we do get is sequence after sequence of stunning footage that will blow you away and leaving you asking yourself “how did they film that?” However I think it is the lack of any real commentary throughout that will endear this DVD to you or not.

At the very beginning we are told that no special effects were used in filming the birds and whilst that maybe true the making of extra give clues as to how they “cheated” to get the desired effects. This involved taking the eggs of wild birds so they could be hatched in controlled conditions, also they were in close contact with humans from the day they were born so they were used to having human beings around them, this included the noise that aircraft made. This of courses aided the filmmaker’s immensly when the sequences were filmed amongst the birds in flight. Whilst this method has allowed the crews to capture some stunning footage of birds in flight the “no special effects were used” comment seems to indicate that it was all filmed on the back of perseverance and patience and whilst I am sure that those traits were still needed the fact that the birds were at least partially domesticated (that how it seems to me) takes a little of the wow factor away.

I found the intro particually good, the first few minutes of the film plays out more as a intro to a feature film, there are some nice shots of a small body of water with a quaint village in the background, some Geese come to settle in the water and one of the Geese gets trapped in some netting, a small boy cuts the bird free and she is off, into the sky flying with her kind, from this point onwards were are told a story in a visual manner, and 80% of those images look unique and absolutely stunning; very different to what you are used to when watching programs of this ilk, the other 20% of the shot are standard documtary type shots and although good will not stand out from other discs/features that you may of seen.
I have several favourite scenes one is where a small chick loiters precauriously on the edge of a sheer cliff before taking a plunge which seems like hundreds of feet so he can get to the water and another is where a couple of birds land on a military vessel in order to rest, they promply plonk themselves ondeck put their heads under their wings and grab 40 winks. Other scenes that although maybe neccesary to the production but that I felt awkward about was when you saw sucks being shot from the sky by hunters, all I could think about was that they had travelled thousands of miles only to be shot by someone out hunting for the day… humans, they seem to spoil everything.

Image

Wow… The emergence of blu-ray now allows us to appreciate these kinds of documentaries in a new way; the visuals are truly amazing. Right from the beginning when we see the robin in the dilapidated shack by the river through to the penguins diving through rough seas at the end you will be amazed, not only with the superb camera shots but also with the endurance that these birds, some of whom we see in our own parks, truly have.

Sound

The Disc played on my system in Dolby Digital 5.1 (as it is unable to achieve HiDef specific soundtracks) and although the rears are used to a degree I do wish that they were utilised more, the scene with the avalanche for example (about 16 minutes in) certainly rumbled the LFE a little but the main sound was still mainly from the front array, I certainly didn’t feel that I was being overtaken by snow. And the horses at around 22 minutes, the sounds of their hooves galloping are punchy and awesome but I never felt that I was in the middle of a stampede, surrounded by wild horses.
The music was nice, adding some reall drama to some of the scenes, in fact sometimes the music felt like it should be more for a feature film than a documentary, and I felt I hint of “walking in the air” from the Snowman on some scenes whenthe camera was amongst the birds in flight.
Discussion wise as in the narrator talking about what is being shown is very poor I felt, the occasional line every 10 minutes, this was obviously a concious effort to keep talkiong to a minimum so that you can admire the wonderous beauty of the camera work and the birds on screen, and you do admire these things, but as I came to the end of the run time I was losing interest a little as I had watched all the “wow” scenes and thought that a narrator would be nice by that point.

Special Features

There are a total of 6 extras on the disc    the best of which is the making of, it takes place over 52 minutes and it explains how they hatched the eggs, imprinted the birds making them used to human noises and presence as well as giving information on how they filmed the fantastic scenes. Some of the people involved with bringing up the birds spent so much time with them they must of developed some real emotional bonds with them, Other extras are a commentary, which struck me as a bit dull, creating the music, interviews with the film makers, a photo gallery and some previews of open season 2 and surfs up.

Overall

I enjoyed the documentary; the visuals are stunning that much cannot be denied, the music was nice and very apt to the scenes we were being shown, however the soundtrack could have done with some more oomph and towards the end I started getting a little distracted because although the stunning visuals hold everything up at the beginning there comes a time towards the end of the feature where you have seen all the great camera work and there is only an empty space where a narrator should be, after all there is only so many birds taking off, flying and landing that you can take before thinking that someone should be saying something here. However when the French Narrator does comment it seems dull and uninteresting so perhaps it was a good idea to not say much.

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