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Underwaterworld Trilogy
Image // Unrated // September 3, 2002
List Price: $19.99 [Buy now and save at Amazon]
More than two-thirds of the Earth's surface is covered by water, yet to land-dwelling creatures like humans, at first glance the oceans seem like nothing more than flat, empty expanses of water. Not so, however: under the surface there are countless organisms living out their lives in habitats as richly diverse as any on land. In the Underwaterworld Trilogy, underwater photographer Howard Hall takes us below the surface to explore these realms.
Underwaterworld is composed of three 50-minute programs, each focusing on a different aspect of ocean life: "Deep Encounters," which covers predator-prey relationships, "Ocean Allies," which looks at symbiotic and parasitic relationships, and "Blue Voices," which covers how mammals and other creatures deal with the challenges of aquatic life.
The strength of the production lies in its interesting footage: director/photographer Howard Hall certainly establishes himself as a skilled underwater cameraman, able to capture on film a wide variety of aquatic creatures and their behavior, from eating to being eaten, from making their homes to reproducing. What is lacking, however, is narrative content to weave these images together into something meaningful and informative.
The documentary seems to hop from one sequence to the next without providing much by way of context or content. What is the role that these creatures have in their ecosystem? Why are they behaving as they do? How is their behavior adaptive? Or even, do these creatures live in the same habitat, or are we moving from place to place as the documentary proceeds? We never know, because the program moves from one vignette to the next without stopping to inform us more than minimally about what we're watching. When I watch a documentary, I want to walk away from it feeling that I know or understand something more about the world and the way it works than I did before watching it, but Underwaterworld gave me very little of that satisfaction.
The benchmark of marine-themed documentaries is, at this point, the Blue Planet: Seas of Life series. As Walking with Dinosaurs did for paleontology documentaries, Blue Planet set the bar considerably higher for any program that addresses life in Earth's oceans. The Underwaterworld Trilogy comes up quite short in comparison, doubly so because it covers some of the same topics (such as the "bait ball" phenomenon among small fish like sardines) but provides distinctly less information and insight.
It's surprising that the program is as unsatisfying as it is in this regard, because Howard Hall has received numerous awards and commendations for his underwater camera work, and indeed Underwaterworld showcases it: the three features are full of surprising and fascinating moments, and images that display natural behavior that were undoubtedly very difficult to capture on film. However, his other features have tended to be more focused in topic: for instance, "Seasons of the Sea" focused on the marine kelp forests of California; "Shadows in a Desert Ocean" looked at the marine life in the Gulf of California; and "Jewels of the Caribbean Sea" covered marine life in the Caribbean. In contrast, the three episodes that make up Underwaterworld are much broader in scope and looser in focus; the result is that they play like a "best of" collection of a skilled photographer's footage rather than a true documentary.
Video
The three episodes that make up Underwaterworld are presented on DVD in their original 1.33:1 aspect ratio. The image as a whole is slightly soft, partly due to slight edge enhancement and partly due to image processing. Though it shows a touch of grain, the image is entirely noise-free; I suspect that in cleaning up the print to remove the noise, a certain amount of high-frequency detail was lost as well.
All in all, it looks very good. The colors are excellent, with strong, vivid colors from the entire range of the spectrum. The color of the water ranges from deep blue to steely gray depending on the light level, and the fish and plants range from vivid reds and oranges through greens and blues to equally vivid purple.
Audio
Underwaterworld has one major fault in its audio soundtrack: its sound effects. The underwater sequences are supplied with sound effects, like clicking claws for crabs or swooshing effects for swimming fish, that are completely artificial. Similarly, we might hear a dull roar or crashing sounds from heavy waves overhead, but the background bubbling effects that are supplied in the soundtrack are more reminiscent of the noises my 30-gallon aquarium's filter makes than what you'd actually hear on the ocean floor. So, I'm still waiting for the ocean documentary that goes for accuracy rather than style in the soundtrack, because Underwaterworld misses the boat in this regard.
As far as the actual quality of the audio track goes, it's very good. The Dolby 2.0 track is clear and clean, with no background noise, and with music and narrative carefully balanced. Apart from being extremely clear and not muffled at all, the narrator's voice is pleasant to listen to, which is an important consideration in a documentary.
Extras
There are no special features on the disc at all. The menus are a bit cumbersome; it's easy to select "Play all" but it requires more navigating than usual to select an individual episode to play. However, the chapter selections are quite detailed, with descriptive captions that would make it fairly simple to go back to a particular sequence in the program.
Final thoughts
If you find nature documentaries interesting to watch, the Underwaterworld Trilogy is passable. It has a lot of excellent footage of the behavior of marine animals in their natural habitats, but if you're looking for something more in depth, you'll need to look elsewhere.
Underwaterworld is composed of three 50-minute programs, each focusing on a different aspect of ocean life: "Deep Encounters," which covers predator-prey relationships, "Ocean Allies," which looks at symbiotic and parasitic relationships, and "Blue Voices," which covers how mammals and other creatures deal with the challenges of aquatic life.
The strength of the production lies in its interesting footage: director/photographer Howard Hall certainly establishes himself as a skilled underwater cameraman, able to capture on film a wide variety of aquatic creatures and their behavior, from eating to being eaten, from making their homes to reproducing. What is lacking, however, is narrative content to weave these images together into something meaningful and informative.
The documentary seems to hop from one sequence to the next without providing much by way of context or content. What is the role that these creatures have in their ecosystem? Why are they behaving as they do? How is their behavior adaptive? Or even, do these creatures live in the same habitat, or are we moving from place to place as the documentary proceeds? We never know, because the program moves from one vignette to the next without stopping to inform us more than minimally about what we're watching. When I watch a documentary, I want to walk away from it feeling that I know or understand something more about the world and the way it works than I did before watching it, but Underwaterworld gave me very little of that satisfaction.
The benchmark of marine-themed documentaries is, at this point, the Blue Planet: Seas of Life series. As Walking with Dinosaurs did for paleontology documentaries, Blue Planet set the bar considerably higher for any program that addresses life in Earth's oceans. The Underwaterworld Trilogy comes up quite short in comparison, doubly so because it covers some of the same topics (such as the "bait ball" phenomenon among small fish like sardines) but provides distinctly less information and insight.
It's surprising that the program is as unsatisfying as it is in this regard, because Howard Hall has received numerous awards and commendations for his underwater camera work, and indeed Underwaterworld showcases it: the three features are full of surprising and fascinating moments, and images that display natural behavior that were undoubtedly very difficult to capture on film. However, his other features have tended to be more focused in topic: for instance, "Seasons of the Sea" focused on the marine kelp forests of California; "Shadows in a Desert Ocean" looked at the marine life in the Gulf of California; and "Jewels of the Caribbean Sea" covered marine life in the Caribbean. In contrast, the three episodes that make up Underwaterworld are much broader in scope and looser in focus; the result is that they play like a "best of" collection of a skilled photographer's footage rather than a true documentary.
Video
The three episodes that make up Underwaterworld are presented on DVD in their original 1.33:1 aspect ratio. The image as a whole is slightly soft, partly due to slight edge enhancement and partly due to image processing. Though it shows a touch of grain, the image is entirely noise-free; I suspect that in cleaning up the print to remove the noise, a certain amount of high-frequency detail was lost as well.
All in all, it looks very good. The colors are excellent, with strong, vivid colors from the entire range of the spectrum. The color of the water ranges from deep blue to steely gray depending on the light level, and the fish and plants range from vivid reds and oranges through greens and blues to equally vivid purple.
Audio
Underwaterworld has one major fault in its audio soundtrack: its sound effects. The underwater sequences are supplied with sound effects, like clicking claws for crabs or swooshing effects for swimming fish, that are completely artificial. Similarly, we might hear a dull roar or crashing sounds from heavy waves overhead, but the background bubbling effects that are supplied in the soundtrack are more reminiscent of the noises my 30-gallon aquarium's filter makes than what you'd actually hear on the ocean floor. So, I'm still waiting for the ocean documentary that goes for accuracy rather than style in the soundtrack, because Underwaterworld misses the boat in this regard.
As far as the actual quality of the audio track goes, it's very good. The Dolby 2.0 track is clear and clean, with no background noise, and with music and narrative carefully balanced. Apart from being extremely clear and not muffled at all, the narrator's voice is pleasant to listen to, which is an important consideration in a documentary.
Extras
There are no special features on the disc at all. The menus are a bit cumbersome; it's easy to select "Play all" but it requires more navigating than usual to select an individual episode to play. However, the chapter selections are quite detailed, with descriptive captions that would make it fairly simple to go back to a particular sequence in the program.
Final thoughts
If you find nature documentaries interesting to watch, the Underwaterworld Trilogy is passable. It has a lot of excellent footage of the behavior of marine animals in their natural habitats, but if you're looking for something more in depth, you'll need to look elsewhere.
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