The Vilar hosts Netflix’s ‘Our Planet’ Executive Producer Dan Tapster on Friday

Spectacular footage, behind-the-scenes glimpses and storytelling all come together when Netflix’s The Making of ‘Our Planet’: Life on Our Planet comes to the Vilar Friday.

Executive Producer Dan Tapster blends cinematography with his own stories of how the team captures the amazing footage, deals with challenges and creates visual effects (VFX) related to the new series featuring dinosaurs.

For instance, what happens when you’ve hiked into the jungle of Papua New Guinea through swamps leached with poison ivy (which you, of course, break out from) and want to capture the splendid bird of paradise displaying its elaborate courtship? Then, you wait for nine days, only to watch it ruffle its feathers like it’s about to showcase its dance, but instead, it looks directly at the camera, squeezes out a poop and flies away, never to be seen again.

“From a natural history point of view, one of the things I will talk about a bit is just the sheer unpredictability of working with animals. There is a saying, ‘Never work with animals,’ and I’ve made a living out of it, so I have many stories about animals just not ever reading the script, never doing what they’re supposed to do,” Tapster said. “There’s a lot of stories like that.”

Other times, animals are overenthusiastic. They went on what he terms a Mission Impossible search for a kakapo, an unbelievably rare bird in New Zealand and found one — only to discover all it wanted to do is mate with the cameraman.

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“It jumped onto his head, and, well, things got nasty, let’s say,” he said.

There are other hilarious moments that literally caused narrator Morgan Freeman to get the giggles, which audiences will hear. Another humorous trip involved traveling to Dominica to film the Spinosaurus segment: Their rental van, filled with camera equipment, just happened to look exactly like the local taxis, so whenever they stopped, even at lights, pedestrians would try to get in.

“There are different challenges along the way, but it’s all fun and games,” he said with obvious enthusiasm about his projects.

Tapster also talks about the challenges from a VFX perspective, in which the team films scenery to put dinosaurs into later.

This particular tour has been running since 2024. It began due to fan demand.

“‘Our Planet’ was a massive hit for Netflix. It was their No. 1 most viewed natural history series until ‘Life on Our Planet’ came along, and then until recently when ‘The Dinosaurs’ came along, which is my latest show that dropped on Netflix last month,” he said, adding, “I think people have this real intrigue about how we do it — what is the process? Some people have gone whale watching or maybe they’ve been lucky enough to go on safari or see the salmon run, and they’re often thinking, given their experience, how do we do it, which I’ll talk about a lot on Friday.”

His presentation includes the story of “Life on Our Planet” and some of the amazing things he learned creating it, as well as the challenges of actually producing such a stunning nature series, along with big VFX and non-VFX (nature only) scenes and insider and work-in-progress clips.

He talks about the evolution of life itself and its incredible journey, as well as some of the challenges our planet faces now. Having filmed over at least the past 25 years, he has a direct comparison of then and now.

“That is really interesting because you learn that Earth has been through really traumatic events in the past, these mass extinctions, where life was brought to its knees,” he said. “In some ways, I think there is a message of hope within that, that, as Jeff Goldblum (in ‘Jurassic Park’) would say, ‘Life finds a way.’ Earth has been through way worse than it’s going through now, and life has always managed to get through. But there’s an interesting commonality. If you look at all of the mass extinction events in the past … the dominant group always goes extinct. A good example being the dinosaurs 66 million years ago. Right now, as we are entering what I suppose is the sixth mass extinction, the dominant group is us. So one of the things I sort of encourage the audience to think about is, regardless of your views of what is causing climate change — in a way, that’s not really relevant, whether it’s human or environmental changes that would happen naturally — the fact is, it is changing. And unless we do something about it, life will always find a way, but will we?”

Though the question is a weighty one, he assures audiences that his talk is not at all morose, but rather, overall, quite funny. Nevertheless, it is designed to nudge people to think about the entire story of life, how we got here and where we’re going.

“It is almost a series of sliding doors moments, like these times in Earth’s history where our ancestors got unbelievably lucky and happened to survive when others didn’t. It’s almost like we’ve got another sliding-door moment now, and which door we choose will determine our future — those doors being do nothing or try and resolve some of the challenges that the world environmentally, at least, is facing,” he said. 

Of course, climate change often feels overwhelming, so it’s difficult to know what to do as an individual.

“We will talk a little bit about how no one can ever be perfect, but if everyone does one thing, that would make a massive change. It’s little things like maybe go vegetarian two days a week that will make a massive change,” he said.

He typically waits until the 15-minute or so Q&A at the end to address any inquiries of how we can make a difference — or about any other topic he has covered. He also adds that if you have any interest in “The Dinosaurs,” which is now the No. 1 show worldwide, he’ll definitely be talking about that and showing sneak peaks.

And, of course, if you love “Our Planet,” the eight-part series from 2019-2023 that highlighted wilderness and its inhabitants, as well as “Our Planet II,” which features animal migration in the modern age through its four-part series released in June 2023 and narrated by David Attenborough, there will be plenty of sensory detail.

“This has been a true labor of love for hundreds of filmmakers, cinematographers, conservationists, editors, musicians and production teams, all of whom have brought their best work to the most important story that there is — a story that could not be more universal or more timely,” Attenborough said.