A scene from National Geographic’s ‘One Strange Rock’.
Doha: National Geographic, unearths the extraordinary story of our planet in ‘One Strange Rock’.
The 10-part cinematic event series, which began on March 24 for every Saturday at 8.50pm, hosted by Academy Award-nominated actor Will Smith (pictured) (“Ali,” “Pursuit of Happyness,” “Men in Black I, II, III”), explores the fragility and wonder of planet Earth, a curiously calibrated speck of a planet in the harsh universe.
The series explores some of the questions many of us take for granted: Why is Earth the only planet (that we know) to support life? How fragile are the perfectly tuned systems that sustain this living planet? What are the greatest threats to the environment and human existence on Earth? Are we alone, and where did we come from? Is there really no place like home?
Smith contemplates these questions and guides viewers on a full-sensory, unprecedented exploration, bolstered by an elite group of eight astronauts who provide their unique perspectives and relate personal memoirs of the planet seen from a distance.
Commenting on the premiere, Sanjay Raina, General Manager, National Geographic Abu Dhabi, MENA and Senior Vice-President, Fox Networks Group, said: “We are delighted to bring the much awaited ‘One Strange Rock’ to Middle East audiences in the same month as its global premiere. At National Geographic, our aim is to get viewers closer to stories that matter. With breathtaking cinematography, ‘One Strange Rock’ will be an incredible visual treat, taking audiences from the microscopic to the cosmic, leaving viewers with a true appreciation of our very own home…Earth.”
“Using the best technologies in filmmaking, we always go further to captivate and entertain regional audiences through National Geographic’s groundbreaking approach to storytelling,” Raina added.
“When you’re in space 400km above our planet, you see the whole world in a totally new way,” says former astronaut Nicole Stott. Adds former astronaut Leland Melvin, “And that new overview perspective of feeling extraordinarily linked to everyone and everything is the message we want to bring down to the planet.”
Integrating the distinctive style of award-winning filmmaker Darren Aronofsky (“The Wrestler” “Black Swan,” “Requiem for a Dream”) and iconic storytelling of award-winning producer Jane Root (“America The Story of Us,” “The 80s: The Decade That Made Us”), ‘One Strange Rock’ is a visual journey that alternates from the microscopic to the cosmic and reveals our planet through an alien lens.
“In ‘One Strange Rock’, we’re creating a visual bible by blending everything — astronomy, anthropology, biology, chemistry and physics — to reveal Earth from space as an incredible myriad of working systems,” says Darren Aronofsky, who personally collaborated with European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Paolo Nespoli to record exclusive footage with Nasa record-setting astronaut Peggy Whitson during her mission on the International Space System. “The series is nothing short of epic with filming across six continents and 45 countries,” says Jane Root, CEO and Founder of Nutopia. “To get the ultimate big picture, both the narrative and our innovative camera technology transport viewers across little-known locations rife with cosmic and macro imagery and astonishing, extreme paradoxes.”
Earth is a teeming bubble of life in the blackness of space made possible by the dynamic forces and twists of fate uncovered throughout the series. Each episode unpacks fascinating facts with themes that make us rethink what we know about the planet; for example, half of the world’s life-supporting oxygen comes from single-celled phytoplankton, a hundred of which could fit on a pin head, and our cameras delve straight to the source. ‘One Strange Rock’s’ title itself derives from the intricate, finely tuned, perfectly adjusting abilities of our planet to sustain life.
In order to tell this definitive story of our planet, ‘One Strange Rock’ has been in production for more than two years in 195 locations with 139 shoots, capturing footage equivalent to a 22-year movie marathon.
