trailer with a group of plesiosaurs hunting fish to sell the idea of Walking with Dinosaurs. There was already considerable interest in the series by the time the pilot was shown owing to the trailer and stills produced by Framestore. Jana Bennett also championed the idea of the series to both Michael Jackson, controller of BBC One, and Mike Quattrone of the Discovery Channel. The pilot was then enough to persuade the BBC, BBC Worldwide, and the Discovery Channel to fund the production of Walking with Dinosaurs. Approximately third of the Walking with Dinosaurs budget came from BBC One, a third from the Discovery Channel, and a third from BBC Worldwide. There were also major investments from TV Asahi in Japan and ProSieben in Germany. Walking with Dinosaurs was considered a high-risk production due to being highly expensive and using "Hollywood technology" to educate rather than just entertain. In total, Walking with Dinosaurs cost £6.1 million ($9.9 million) to make. It cost over £37,654 ($61,112) per minute to produce, making it the most expensive documentary series per minute ever made. It was during production billed as one of the most ambitious series ever produced. Together with Haines, the series was also created by the acclaimed programme maker Susan Spindler, who had previously worked on the BBC series The Human Body. The team grew to encompass producer Jasper James (who also directed the sixth episode; Haines directed the rest), production manager Alison Woolnough and executive producer John Lynch. Pre-production and filming Haines spent two years speaking with scientists and reading both primary and secondary palaeontological sources to create the stories for Walking with Dinosaurs. Though the goal was to make the programme feel as if it was just relaying natural events without intervention, as actual nature documentaries, Walking with Dinosaurs required Haines to plot out narratives and create storyboards. Production of Walking with Dinosaurs took 18 months. It was essential to the vision of Walking with Dinosaurs that the age of the dinosaurs be represented as accurately as possible based on current scientific understanding. In addition to Haines's own research, the production team for the first six months devoted all their time to research and carefully chose particular moments during the Mesozoic that were most well-studied and well-understood by scientists and which would be representative of the era and showcase interesting animals. In addition to the producers doing their own research,