It is always fascinating seeing behind the scenes accounts of nature documentaries, where you get a lot of insight into how scenes are constructed, the crew's roles and what the crew goes through to make the documentary possible. There are quite a few behind the scenes documentaries of the DisneyNature documentaries and all of them fascinate and in a few cases better than the documentary it's capturing the behind the scenes of.
Personally disliked 2020's 'Elephant' and consider it one of my least favourite DisneyNature documentaries, along with 'Born in China'. Despite my love for elephants. It visually looked beautiful, had its moments and a relatable lead character but was too cutesy, over-eager, over-dramatic and contains the worst narration (writing and delivery) of all the DisneyNature documentaries. So hopes were not massive for 'Elephant's' behind the scenes documentary 'In the Footsteps of Elephant'. It turned out though to be a lot better than expected and is a vast improvement over 'Elephant'.
By all means it's not entirely perfect, with some information that could have been delved into more and more subtle and Jeremy Sisto's delivery could have done with a little more enthusiasm in spots.
A lot is great about 'In the Footsteps of Elephant' however. The production values do look great. Beautifully photographed, showing the penguins in all their glory, with scenery that takes the breath away while also being suitably cruel. The music isn't too intrusive and the narration is informative (really did learn a lot here) and honest while never being too jokey or using confused terminology. It also doesn't over-explain or have too much of an over-eager Disney singalong song approach.
While Sisto's delivery is not perfect, it is still better than that of Meghan Markle's and had a nice dignity to it. The journey of the elephants was funny, touching, informative and worth relating to and that of the crew likewise. There was already a lot of admiration before even watching 'In the Footsteps of Elephant' for how the crew captured all the amazing footage, but their honesty behind the scenes was illuminating and heart-warming. The humour used to lighten the mood doesn't jar and the documentary doesn't shy away from showing the adversity the crew has to overcome and how difficult filming things up close can be.
Regarding the footage itself, it looks absolutely beautiful and engages, even if other documentaries do better at being more illuminating about their subjects and are more uncompromising.
Overall, very good and much better than the documentary it's detailing its behind the scenes of. 8/10.
