Human Footprint

I have been wanting to see this for quite a while. The subject is fascinating and also so very important. I was hoping for a very informative series with amazing photography.

Sadly, this is not what I got. Warning: my husband and I lasted under 10 excruciating minutes of a visual and sound assault.

The voiceover was fine. But we could not focus o what it was saying. Images flashed from scene to scene in a fraction of a second. And the background music was well, inappropriatively pushy. Staccato. Everything stuttered.senses reeled.

Perhaps they calmed down later. Sadly, we were both beset with head clutching headaches. So we stopped watching.

What a pity.

They ask the question, are humans an invasive species in Hawaii? The answer is, of course. But it turns out that most of the species that exist in Hawaii all came from other places over the last thousand years or so. And they define invasive as an introduced species that people don't like. Not just that they displace the native plants and animals, but that they may have other unattractive attributes, or they may actually be destroying the environment. The host of the show does a good job of interviewing people in different parts of the country, including the bureau of land management folks out west, who are trying to manage the feral horses to the tune of $1 billion of our tax money. I look forward to seeing more in the series.

Why does this show have to make everything flashy and loud? The answer is that they are missing a clear message. Each interview, each scene, even when it's an impressive nature shot, is over edited into oblivion. The editorializing makes it honestly hard to watch, which is sad because I was originally excited by this new show. There's a sense that the show doesn't know who its audience is, and that lack of clarity makes it hard to get into throughout. While there are some good moments (like the filming in the fishing scene) I was distracted by the lack of grounding and by the flashy jump-cuts every second. The journalism itself also seems to be lacking real depth. I am not wildlife expert, and I found myself feeling like I also hadn't learned anything after the first two episodes.