Thinking about television audiences: Entertainment and reconstruction in nature documentaries

Abstract

Documentary reconstruction is a creative production decision which involves reconstructing a reality or event rather than filming it as it occurs spontaneously. This article studies the use of the resource in the filming of nature documentaries for the series El Hombre y la Tierra. All of the action scenes in the series were reconstructions, which required rehearsals and involved a large amount of editing work. Without documentary reconstruction and the handling of animals it would have been impossible to film the majority of the hunting sequences, and the series never would have achieved the success that it did. Even today El Hombre y la Tierra is a point of reference in entertainment in nature documentaries and continues to raise debate about how to communicate the lives of wild animals in a respectful and truthful way to ever more demanding audiences, as well as about the need for, and boundaries of, entertainment in scientific television programmes.