With 8K an ever-increasing technology, NHK Enterprises – a leader in the development of 8K – collaborated with Delta Electronics Foundation in Taiwan to shoot the world's first 8K environmental documentary. With Takashi Komuro heading up a team of expert photographers, what is shown is not necessary anything new, but serves as a nice advert for the technology and the extra detail it can capture.
Water with Life screened at Asian Pop-Up Cinema
Staring off as an educational piece charting the cycle of water, from evaporation, to clouds, rain, snow and freezing, “Water with Life” depicts the importance of water to the Taiwanese ecosystem. From the forests and mountains to the rivers across Taiwan, we also pop north to Hokkaido in Japan to see how water reacts to freezing temperatures.
Along the way, we meet a number of people to whom water is a vital part of their work and daily life. Narrated throughout and featuring vox pops, this is designed to be more educational than entertaining or cultural. Think more David Attenborough's “Planet Earth” than Ron Fricke's “Baraka”.
The final ten minutes of this short documentary, however, turn more political, focusing on pollution and concerns for the future climate. Artwork demonstrating the pollution of waters is featured, with the current ecosystem only a temporary state.
An NHK co-production, this naturally has more the feel of a television documentary than a feature – though one wouldn't doubt how impressive it would be to watch on the big screen. Designed for the small screen, however, the story you feel could be bigger and allowed more time to breathe. Something the visuals deserve.
Combining 8K camerawork with drones, this creates some superb shots from the air, and indeed underwater. There are some beautifully crisp and clear shots of water that look as if it isn't even there. But the real strength of the technology comes through in the time lapse footage. The cityscape and clouds moving over the horizon are a step up from what you would normally expect, but it is in showing the freezing of water in Hokkaido and the forming of almost crystal flowers that truly show the definition.
More time should be given to these images. Squeezed into 45 minutes, the ‘story' moves things along too quickly, with the constant narration being distracting. The run time could easily be doubled to allow the visuals to be fully absorbed and simply allowed to run for our pleasure. One wants to turn off the narration, remove the subtitles and let the images flow their natural course.
