Thursday, April 19, 2007
BBC, Geldof to create Human Planet
Major project will cover the history of humankind.
The BBC is teaming with Live Aid founder Bob Geldof to create what they claim will be "the biggest sociological and anthropological project in the history of the world," a combined television and Internet content repository that aims to record the history of every human society on the planet.
The BBC will make an eight-part high-definition series The Human Planet to accompany the Dictionary of Man project that will be coproduced by BBC Worldwide and the BBC's natural history unit, creators of such project as Planet Earth, Life on Earth, and Blue Planet.
In addition, Geldof's Dictionary of Man partnership with filmmaker John Maguire and Geldof's own production company, Ten Alps, will make 900 half-hour, broadcast-quality films for television or broadband viewing on the separate groups and tribes that ethnologists and anthropologists identify as the basic building blocks of human civilization.
The Human Planet is not expected to air until 2010, but the Web site and digital archive are already under construction.
Geldof was candid about the potential cost of such an ambitious and open-ended project.
"The budget is going to be f***ing huge, but getting money is a piece of p*ss compared to building it and making it--that is going to be the real challenge," he said. "We'll have grants coming out of our asses for a project like this," he said, but pointed out that costs for the initial Web architecture would be relatively low.
Promising a "time slice" of a humanity whose cultures are being homogenized, Geldof said he had been inspired to begin the project some 20 years ago on a trip to Northern Niger during the Ethiopian famine.
"I was there with the regional governor looking out at something that looked like the surface of the moon with the regional governor who told how 300 different languages that had once existed in the region and had disappeared forever in just two years during the famine," he said.
"Even though I had never heard those voices or those languages I felt a sense of loss, I already missed them," he said.
The BBC is teaming with Live Aid founder Bob Geldof to create what they claim will be "the biggest sociological and anthropological project in the history of the world," a combined television and Internet content repository that aims to record the history of every human society on the planet.
The BBC will make an eight-part high-definition series The Human Planet to accompany the Dictionary of Man project that will be coproduced by BBC Worldwide and the BBC's natural history unit, creators of such project as Planet Earth, Life on Earth, and Blue Planet.
In addition, Geldof's Dictionary of Man partnership with filmmaker John Maguire and Geldof's own production company, Ten Alps, will make 900 half-hour, broadcast-quality films for television or broadband viewing on the separate groups and tribes that ethnologists and anthropologists identify as the basic building blocks of human civilization.
The Human Planet is not expected to air until 2010, but the Web site and digital archive are already under construction.
Geldof was candid about the potential cost of such an ambitious and open-ended project.
"The budget is going to be f***ing huge, but getting money is a piece of p*ss compared to building it and making it--that is going to be the real challenge," he said. "We'll have grants coming out of our asses for a project like this," he said, but pointed out that costs for the initial Web architecture would be relatively low.
Promising a "time slice" of a humanity whose cultures are being homogenized, Geldof said he had been inspired to begin the project some 20 years ago on a trip to Northern Niger during the Ethiopian famine.
"I was there with the regional governor looking out at something that looked like the surface of the moon with the regional governor who told how 300 different languages that had once existed in the region and had disappeared forever in just two years during the famine," he said.
"Even though I had never heard those voices or those languages I felt a sense of loss, I already missed them," he said.
# posted by ArdRigh : 12:16 PM
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