The Role of Modern Media Technology in Producing Wildlife Documentaries

International TV channels have been using cutting-edge technologies to produce documentaries on wildlife and natural history for the past two decades. Nowadays, TV channels across the world are competing with one another to produce documentaries of higher quality. This competition offers one a whole new perspective on the production procedure of wildlife and natural history documentaries. Apart from the subject, that should be attractive enough, production technique and artistic representation are of grave significance when it comes to the appeal of these works. Undoubtedly, high technical knowledge and employment of modern equipment are among the factors that lead to the world’s best productions. Wildlife filmmakers make use of military equipment and new technologies to present a fresh and previously unseen picture of the world around. The production should rely on modern technologies in order to guarantee a creative and appealing representation of the reality. The best works are those which do not simply use technology for the sake of it, but creatively harness technology to achieve artistic effect. A technologically advanced film is worthless if it is not artistically arranged. The cosmos is full of secretes which remain to be uncovered. Mankind has always been fascinated by finding answers to the world’s mysteries. Such strive has yielded wonderful wildlife documentary sets such as “Planet Earth”. This paper explores technical aspects of documentary film-making. It is intended to present and describe the technical basis of international standards for producing such documentaries. Recent advances in documentary production have allowed for novel and newer perspectives on the natural world and the living environment of humans, plants and animals. The present paper outlines high diversity of cinematography methods, new filming equipment, and studies on wildlife documentaries which have revolutionized documentary film-making. Some of the technologies mentioned, like format topics, are the technical foundation of documentary film-making whilst others, such as special camera traps, are based on the authors’ personal experiences during 10 years of documentary film production. Techniques and technologies presented here have been employed in the making of documentary film “Zendegi Dar Kosoof” [Life in Eclipse] produced by the writer, F.Amiri.