BBC admits faking volcano footage

WELL this is awkward. The BBC has been forced to admit an incredible video it promoted online was not so much a natural wonder as a studio-made creation.

Supplied Editorial bbc volcano

OOPS! The BBC has been forced into an embarrassing admission that footage from a recent documentary was not the natural miracle it appeared to be, but was created by splicing together images from two separate events.

The footage of a “dirty thunderstorm” at Chile’s Calbuco volcano aired in an episode of Patagonia: Earth’s Secret Paradise on September 25 in the UK. It purported to show a rare event whereby electrically charged ash clouds from the volcano create lightning strikes and was actively promoted on social media and viewed hundreds of thousands of times online. However while the audience was wowed by the incredible image, a request from The Observerto “please explain” led to the admission it had actually been created from two separate eruptions — one in 2011 and one in 2015. The corporation admitted the technique should have been made clear to audiences at the time of screening and producer Tuppence Stone explained why it was done in a blog post called “How to capture a volcano”. “We took timelapse images from the Calbuco volcano filmed in early 2015 and the lightning shots were superimposed onto the erupting cloud. The lightning shots were taken by an award-winning Chilean photographer, of a nearby Patagonian volcano, Cordón Caulle four years earlier during its eruption, using long exposure techniques. The Cordón Caulle volcano eruption was a very similar event to the Calbuco volcano this year,” she wrote. “These elements had to be combined to create a series of composite images, showing both the size and scale of a Patagonian volcanic eruption, its ash cloud and the repeated strikes of lightning that can occur within it, over many hours.” The move is understood to have been raised with BBC director general Tony Hall and one staff member told The Observer they fear it could undermine the integrity of the famed natural history unit. It’s not the first time the organisation has been forced to backtrack on footage. In 2011 Sir David Attenborough was forced to defend footage of polar bear cubs being born that was filmed in a German zoo and included in the hit documentary Frozen Planet. “If you had tried to put a camera in the wild in a polar bear den, she would either have killed the cub or she would have killed the cameraman, one or the other,” he told UK television at the time. “It’s not falsehood and we don’t keep it secret either.”