Great White Encounters Review
Great White Encounters is a 2020 extended nature documentary Produced and Directed by Jason Perryman.
To excuse my silly pun, I must say I was instantly hooked by Great White Encounters which is an enthralling nature documentary that looks at the relationship between Great White Sharks and humans. This film is a little over an hour long but not a single minute is wasted in conveying amazing amounts of information to the viewer.
As a kid I used to love watching the many nature documentaries shown on the likes of PBS, and then as my family got cable on networks like Discovery channel. However, despite the yearly shark week events, I never was too much into stories about sharks, I always preferred killer whales in my youth (thanks Free Willy). I think this lack of first-hand knowledge only helped me to enjoy this documentary even more.
Perryman and his team implement a well thought out, well-paced, and well executed film here. I feel like there wasn’t a moment that passed where I wasn’t learning something new about Great White Sharks. The only real piece of information I had going in was about the horrible act of finning that goes on with sharks for the shark fin soup dishes. I was not aware of so many things, like the fact that shark antibodies could lead to possible cancer cures.
The amount of love for these misunderstood animals is amazingly present throughout this film. However, it never gets to a point of being too heavy handed at all. I can genuinely appreciate a documentary that presents facts and research while also maintaining where some of the numbers could be skewed or not well sourced. It is increasingly rare for a piece like this to let the viewers know that these are what we know but some of it might be off because some things we just don’t know in the vastness of the ocean. For this point alone I must really tip my hat to the filmmakers for that.
On a technical side the shots used are all great, I loved the animatics to go along with some of the interviews as well as moments that need more illustrating, and the audio mix was spot on. There weren’t moments where I was struggling to hear anything or where the score was too much. It was all again executed very well.
I hope you might get the chance to sit down with this documentary. Great White Encounters is a truly eye opening and heartbreaking look into the world of the Great White Sharks. It shows how misunderstood these animals are and how media sensationalism can truly have a devastating impact on the perception of something. I hope that more people can watch this and through seeing a film like this it can help to make a positive impact on the way in which we view Great White Sharks as well as helping to build back up a fast-shrinking population.
My hats off to Jason Perryman on this great accomplishment. I hope he will continue to create great documentary films like this and I hope I have the privilege to sit down to view more of them.
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Cheers!
Daniel Hess
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