Directing 'The Dinosaurs', Netflix, Steven Spielberg

0:00Guest 1You go first, Joe. I'm still thinking of my answer.

0:01Guest 2Oh.

0:01Guest 1That's a hard question. Really hard one, 'cause I love both. I do love wildlife because of the serendipity a… and the fact that you go to the ends of the earth to get the behavior you're looking for s… and then you see something that you never expected, and it really gives you quite an adrenaline rush seeing that. So for me, I think I'm veering towards doing things more sort of in the VFX realm because you've got this story, which everyone sort of knows the story of the dinosaurs to a certain degree, and then you sort of, you can then create the drama with these sort of crazy VFX shots that you, we could never film in real life.

0:34Jawad MirI just hope that you guys don't go in the real world with the habit of doing all this planning and start directing the animals…... Before you know it.

0:40Guest 1Yeah. Yeah. They don't play, they don't play ball. That is the nice thing, they…

0:53Jawad MirWelcome back, everyone, to another episode of Kingdom of Dreams Podcast, the making of stories, making of films. And today, I have another set of guests from Netflix popular hit series, The Dinosaurs. I have Jolyon, who is a producer director of episode two, and I have Joe, who is the co-director and cinematographer, aerial cinematographer for episode one. It was a fantastic conversation. Very fun guys to chat with. We talked about VFX, we talked about production challenges, and so many other cool things. So without further ado, here's my conversation with director and co-directors of Netflix series, The Dinosaurs, episode two and one. Well, thank you so much, guys, for taking the chi… time. I know it's been a while. We were trying to schedule this, so I appreciate it.

1:41Guest 1Yeah. No worries at all. Thanks for having us.

1:44Guest 2Yeah.

1:44Guest 1And we'll be…

1:45Guest 2Glad to be here, Jawad.

1:47Guest 1Yeah.

1:47Jawad MirAwesome. Where are you in UK? In London?

1:52Guest 1I'm in Bristol. And Joe, are you in London now?

1:54Guest 2Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I've recently moved back to London from Bristol. So yeah, back in London.

2:00Guest 1Yeah. Last time I was…

2:01Jawad MirWonderful

2:01Guest 1... Last time I was on camera for anything like this, I think Joe was filming it, weren't you, Joe? And…

2:05Guest 2Yeah. Yeah.

2:07Guest 1Yeah, that was like... I think I remember you told me at the last minute, right at the end of the interview that I had some, fuzzy bit of hair on my ear or something.

2:14Guest 2Yeah.

2:15Guest 1Like, I can really

2:15Guest 2There's always…

2:16Guest 1Yeah.

2:17Guest 2Yeah. It's always the way, isn't it? The things you…

2:19Guest 1Yeah

2:19Guest 2... You notice it right at the end of the interview, that you got some…

2:21Guest 1Yeah

2:21Guest 2... Fuzz in your ear.

2:24Jawad MirFair enough. Fair enough. That's awesome, guys. Thank you so much again. And, I would love to sort of start off by asking how you guys got involved in the series. I know, I know, I think, I think, Jolyon, you are with Silverback, right?

2:41Guest 1Yeah. Yeah. So, I've been working, I worked on Life on Our Planet, at Silverback. So started back in 2019 at Silverback. Before that, I worked for the BBC Natural History Unit for, probably, six or seven years, something like that. So I moved to Silverback 2019 to work on Life on Our Planet, which I did for about four years. And then moved straight on to, The Dinosaurs, which I was doing since, I think, that was 2020 t… 2022, I started doing that.

3:11Jawad MirAwesome. And what about you, Joe?

3:14Guest 2Yeah. So, yeah, so fairly similar. So I joined Silverback w… way back when they were doing Our Planet for Netflix. And then… ... We sort of, continued working on sort of from project to project. So we did, we did the Our Planet, then we did the David Attenborough, Life on Our Planet. And then a few o… few other projects like, Life on Our Planet with Jolyon where that's where I began working with Jolyon. And then, and then after that, yeah, a f… a few other projects with Silverback, and then onto, Dinosaurs. So yeah.

3:46Jawad MirAmazing. Well, I had, the pleasure of having Jamie twice. Once from Life on Our Planet and once from Dinosaurs. And, I know both of you guys worked on, from what I remember in the email, was episode two, correct?

4:02Guest 1Yeah. Well, so I produced and directed episode two. But Joe, I think you worked across the whole series really as, like, cinematographer…

4:09Guest 2Yeah

4:09Guest 1... And a lot of episode one as well, right?

4:11Guest 2Yeah. Yeah. So I sort, I co-directed episode one with Nick, and then, did sort of cinematography across, yeah, e… each of the eps as well. So I did, I did a bit of both directing and filming.

4:25Jawad MirAmazing. So let's, let's start talking about episode two, and then we might just bring in the drone aspect in episode two, or, you know, sort of all over. So I was rewatching episode two yesterday. It's been a couple of weeks since I've seen it, so I just wanna have my memory refreshed.

4:42Jawad MirAnd, you know, at least the opening of the episode, the first seven, eight minutes, like, where you have the plants dying and, you know, the reptiles dying and the dinosaurs sort of coming in and there's volcano and all that stuff, destruction. I was just curious to find out how much, if any of it, my guess is some of the volcano and the plants were practical effects, but I could be dead wrong. So I just wanted to find that out first, just out of curiosity as an audience member.

5:14Guest 1Yeah. That was one of my favorite scenes to film, 'cause there was so many different elements to it. And, you're, you're absolutely right. Loads of it was r… for real, that scene. So in fact, like, I'd say, alm… all of the volcano lava footage is real. So a lot of it we filmed during the l… the eruptions that took place in Iceland a few years ago and a, and an eruption that took place in La Palma as well, in the Canary Islands back in, I think that was 2021. And so yeah, we filmed a lot of, a lot of, volcano eruption stuff, which was perfect for that… That extinction event, because the Triassic-Jurassic extinction was caused by huge volcanic eruptions, so we had loads of real footage to pull from. And then we were able to put, or ILM were amazing at putting the dinosaurs into those shots. So we've got that shot of the lava coming down the hill in the background, and our, one of our r… reptile archosaurs kind of slowly dying, on the hill there.

6:16Guest 1So that was, that was pretty cool. And then, like you say, we had the acid mist scene, which is another one of my favorites, and that was a really cool one to shoot. And that was, a lot of that was, shot in the studio. So we had, like, ferns, lots of ferns, and, we would have, we had, like, a really clever mist machine, which was, like an atomizer. And it atomizes the water, and turns it into this low-lying fog that really creepily drifts over all of the plants. And s… just looked really cool. We tried it with dry ice as well, but this atomizer w… worked really well. Because the aim of that was to kind of make it feel... It was like a real event that really happened, but make it feel a little bit, yeah, make it really creepy and quite cinematic. So…

7:05Guest 1... That was good fun to shoot.

7:07Guest 2Yeah. I really, I really like that as well, Joe. And I think, like, one other thing to add, I think, that across the series we'd always, we always did try and, try and do practical where we could, just mainly because, you know, nothing beats filming it in camera. And whether that's with a blue screen behind it or not

7:27Guest 1Yeah

7:27Guest 2... It was all, you know... So even though it's a big VFX series, we did try and m… you know, try and do practical where we could. You know.

7:35Guest 1Absolutely. Yeah, we did. Yeah, lots of that.

7:39Jawad MirAwesome. So I'm really horrible with the dinosaur pronunciation names, so forgive me.

7:44Guest 2Me too. Me too.

7:45Jawad MirI mean, I know the Jurassic Park ones because I've grown up with it, but all these new dinosaurs, I have no, I have no clue how to pronounce them. So there was a sequence, the, I think it's called a Massopandjos, right? The, do I have it wrong, or do I have it right?

7:59Guest 1Massospondylus.

8:00Guest 2Massospondylus.

8:00Jawad MirThere you go. Right.

8:01Guest 1That was the one with the hard head.

8:01Guest 2That's not where you want, is it?

8:03Jawad MirSo i… it, that dinosaur is getting this, you know, fruit or w… whatever food from a tree.

8:10Guest 2Yeah.

8:11Jawad MirAnd, what I really loved was that you, in a, on a locked shot, you see the shadow of the, predator approaching, just very gently. And then the, then the aerial shot, right, of above the tree.

8:25Guest 1Yeah.

8:27Jawad MirI would love to know, I know, I know it sounds very simple, and, but what was the execution plan behind that, how to sort of tackle that from both of your standpoints?

8:37Guest 1Yeah. So that's, that scene is set, yeah, quite early on in the Jurassic. And it's actually, it's Vulcanodon, that's kind of approaching, and it's, Massospondylus' kind of, rival. So Vulcanodon is, like, almost, like, the new kid on the block in terms of herbivores, with the more, kind of, like, more classic sauropod look that you know of, with the long neck and, or walking on all fours. Whereas Massospondylus is an, is an older type of herbivore, which li… works on, walks on two legs. So we really wanted to kind of, like, juxtapose that moment, that evolutionary moment in kind of one scene. And so, yeah, the shadow was just a cool way to introduce Vulcanodon as bigger and badder. And also we g… we gave Vulcanodon kind of a grumpy character as well, which was quite fun because, not least because herbivores are often just depicted as, like, really friendly and nice, and I feel like they're not always, and they can have kind of grumpy personalities.

9:39Guest 1In terms of executing those, the shadow is full VFX. So we kind of, we shot the plates on location. That was filmed in La Palma as well in, because where those dinosaurs are found is quite a volcanic place, and La Palma is brilliant because it's all covered in, volcanic ash with, these amazing looking p… trees, conifer trees growing out of the ash. So we shot plates there. ILM put in the creatures, and then they put in the shadow, because the shadow moves over the creature, and even on the ground. So they were able to, yeah, simulate a shadow moving across the ground even though the ground is real. So it's pretty impressive what they can do with that, with those, with those back plates.

10:21Jawad MirGot it. From the aerial perspective, Joe… ... Capturing aerial is, i… is an interesting thing because, you know, you have to have a landscape in front of you, and you have to know what you're filming, and objects. I mean, it's similar to s… on, being locked on sticks, but at the same time, aerial is somehow different. I'm just speaking from my own experience, having done both. What were the challenges, at least in that scene or anywhere else over, across the series, where you're basically filming some aspects that are not there? Or if there is a full-fledged CG scene, is there involvement of you if it's on from the aerial perspective?

11:01Guest 2Is that, so this Joe? Me, Joe, I'm assuming.

11:04Jawad MirYes.

11:04Guest 2Yeah. Sorry. So, it's an interesting question. I think, do you know what the biggest, the biggest thing, the biggest challenge when you're doing aerials is actually doing the preamble to actually before you take off. So what you always have to do with any VFX shots is you have to, you probably know this already, but you have to do the ball and the board, and then you get a reference of the light. There's quite a lot to do when you're sort of, we tend to be dealing in the sort of, sort of last or, first and last sort of two hours of good light in the day. So that is the most involved bit, because you wanna get up there and get the shot. But once you're up flying, Do you know what? I mean, depending on the shot, and Jolyon did quite a lot of dy… dynamic shots. I wasn't actually on the episode where he was using FPV drone. I wasn't on that shoot. But I know Jolyon did some really interesting stuff with FPV, was a little bit more involved than... 'Cause the stuff, I did do a few stuff, few shots for episode one where we were, like, flying through, like, just tiny gaps in canyons just to get the real sort of perspective of the dinosaur flying.

12:15Guest 2But I think Jolyon, you used sort of drone really well in your scene with the Anchiornis, I think, I believe.

12:22Guest 1Oh, yeah

12:23Guest 2... And that was like, I think that was a really great example where you just were you in with it. Yeah. So you'll probably talk a bit more about that, I think.

12:31Guest 1Yeah. That was, there was some pretty intense FPV stuff. Yeah, we had to, we hired, like, 'cause those are racer drones, so you, we got a hold of some guys who are, like, the sort of top of their game at that because it's so different, such a... I mean, Joe knows more about exactly how different it is as a drone op, but it's completely different way of flying, isn't it?

12:48Guest 2Yep.

12:48Guest 1And you have the goggles on.

12:50Guest 2Yeah.

12:50Guest 1And you're, I think it'd probably make you feel pretty sick as well, especially…... Sort of. So we had, I had, I had a couple of really crazy shots, one, of the pterosaur doing a loop-the-loop, and then diving through the clouds.

13:03Guest 1And that's a real plate shot of an FPV drone, g… doing the loop-the-loop and going into the clouds, and the only thing that's VFX in that shot is the pterosaur. And that was probably the hardest shot. I, we spent three days just waiting for the perfect weather, where it was safe to see the drone but do the shot. And the drone itself had a RED KOMODO on it with a prime lens, so it's probably, like, £40,000 worth of camera on top of this drone, and the drone only had a four-minute battery life because it's... I don't really know why…

13:36Guest 2Yeah

13:36Guest 1... But, because it's going so fast and carrying such a heavy weight. And so you kind of, you're kind of wetting yourself thinking, "Right, we've gotta get this shot in, like, a minute and then land safely." and then we did a bit more of that in the redwood forest, as Joe was just saying, with Anchiornis, like, diving down with,.. This was a drone with a GoPro for that, which was a bit easier because it wasn't so heavy. So you could do it a bit more safely amongst the redwood trees. But yeah, those were pretty crazy.

14:08Jawad MirAll right, on. When, you know, the difference between documentary and narrative is documentary is pretty much, you know, run and go, and you're capturing things as they're happening, and you have to be in the, in the moment. You know, whether it's a documentary with human beings or whether it's documentary with real animals. And in this particular case, that's not the case, right? There's a lot, it's kinda like a mixture of both. So there's a lot of planning, there's a lot of execution. There's a lot of planning, there's a lot of, you know, trial and error or you c… you have a room of making mistakes. In the real d… you know, with real animals you just have to wait your second chance. Which one do you prefer, if there was one to pick over? And why would that be the case? I mean, I know what I would pick. I'm just kinda curious about both of you guys. Nothing against dinosaurs or anything else, just in general.

15:01Guest 2Oh, you go first, Joe. I'm still thinking of my answer. It's hard question.

15:05Guest 1Really hard one, 'cause I love both. I mean, I kinda came…

15:08Guest 2Yeah

15:08Guest 1... I've kinda done all sorts of, well, both of Joe and I have done all sorts of different types of telly. I mean, Life on Our Planet I was mainly doing the wildlife, not so much the VFX, though I did a bit of both. And I mean, I do love wildlife because of the serendipity of y… a… and the fact that you go to the ends of the earth to get the behavior you're looking for. So you go to some really, amazing or, you know, really unusual places that are really hard to get to, which, you know, you maybe can't even go on holiday, 'cause you wouldn't, 'cause it's so challenging. So w… you only do it if you're really trying to find a particular animal doing something particular. And then you see something that you never expected, and it really gives you quite an adrenaline rush seeing that when it, when it actually happens. You might have read all about it before you go and trying to, and you're like, "I'm pretty sure this is gonna happen," but you're never quite sure until you see it.

16:02Guest 2Yeah.

16:02Guest 1And that's pretty exciting. But on the other hand, what the dinosaur stuff, the VFX stuff gives you is just real creativity. So I promise I'm not trying to dodge the question, but, like, I love both because the dinosaurs and VFX is just so creative. The storyboarding process, you know, obviously you're totally con… constrained in a good way by what the science and the paleontology tells you, but because you don't know everything you can... And the shots as well, very cinematic. So it's kind of like making a drama or a movie, in terms, especially for the dinosaurs where we're going down that route. You can really come up with some really creative stuff, that you could never do with an animal. So I like, I like both.

16:43Guest 2Yeah. It's, it's a really interesting one. I think, like, I think you can't, like having, you know, like Joe, come from doing sort of more typical natural history documentaries and sort of people documentaries as well, I think y… like what we learned from that is that we could kind of do natural history filmmaking to these extinct animals. But then now we could do it at sort of this blockbuster scale with ILM and, with Amblin and obviously exec'd by Steven Spielberg, narrated by Morgan Freeman, and it feels like once we open that door, I think that makes things really exciting. So for me, I think I'm veering towards doing things, you know, more sort of in the VFX realm because you can kind of, you've got this story, which everyone sort of knows the story of the dinosaurs to a certain degree, and then you sort of, you can then create the drama with these sort of crazy VFX, shots that we could never film in real life. So I quite like the... What I do like about doing VFX stuff is it sort of brings more ambition and more sort of, sort of it might...

17:50Guest 2I hope at least this series is gonna sort of…

17:53Guest 1Renew a new interest in dinosaurs, which may be, you know, which we haven't seen for the past 10, 15 years. So I think by u… utilizing VFX, we can do something that's really special. So I think, I think I'm leaning towards the sort of VFX side of filmmaking, just because of the sort of creative options.

18:13Jawad MirAwesome. I just hope that you guys don't go in the real world and s… with the habit of doing all this planning and start directing the animals before you know it.

18:21Guest 1Yeah. Yeah. They don't play, they don't play ball. That would be the nice thing. They, you can tell a dinosaur to do exactly what you want it to do. That is great.

18:30Jawad MirAwesome. Awesome. I thought the sequence of the shallow water reptiles, being, I think it was the, again, horrible with dinosaurs, the bird dinosaur that came in and at, you know, from the waters and it made several attempts and then finally got what it wanted. Those water splashes, obviously we know the dinosaurs were not real. Those splashes and were that also ILM creation?

19:00Guest 1Oh, it's… Yeah. Which scene are you…

19:04Jawad MirIt was e… it was episode two. What are the, what are the bird dinosaurs called?

19:11Guest 1Like, the theropods? The crocs. You know, the crocs that come out.

19:13Jawad MirYeah.

19:14Guest 1Oh, yeah. Sorry, yeah.

19:14Jawad MirYeah. It was the crocs.

19:15Guest 1Oh, the pterosaurs.

19:16Jawad MirIt's the other way around. I'm sorry. I f…

19:18Guest 1Yeah

19:18Jawad Mir... I made a mistake. The crocs, eat the bird dinosaurs, yes.

19:22Guest 1That's right.

19:22Jawad MirYeah.

19:22Guest 1Oh, yeah. Yeah. So that is, that was an unusual scene. So, we, there's a, there's a, there's a natural history sequence, where crocodiles, that was filmed, a few years ago, where crocodiles are hunting bats.

19:42Guest 1And we repl… we used VFX or ILM used their amazing talents to essentially replace the bats and the crocodiles. You know, they replaced the, yeah, the bats with, pterosaurs, which are, you know, reptiles, not dinosaurs. But they, yeah, replaced the bats with those 'cause they're sort of, they were similar in size, the ones that existed at that time. And the crocodiles were placed to kind of look to be more accurate, paleo accurate. And, yeah, the splashes are real. There may be little e… elements of CGI splash as well, I wonder. Often ILM are kind of integrating both at the same time. So there's often little additions of pterosaurs…

20:27Jawad MirSure. Yeah

20:27Guest 1... As well, but mainly they're real.

20:30Jawad MirAwesome. I would love to sort of jump back off this series and more into your careers. If, Joe, you can start about talking how you got into this world of, whether it's world of films or whether world of nature and wild…

20:48Jawad Mir... Cinematography. What was the catalyst behind it that…

20:51Guest 1Ha

20:52Jawad Mir... Pushed you?

20:52Guest 1Me? Yeah. So for me, like I, so I went to, I was lucky enough to go to university, and I was doing marine biology, and that was, I was enjoying it, but like I, there was an e… there's always been a big sort of creative side of me that sort of, yeah, wasn't really being satisfied by sort of going down the quite sort of scientific route. I got like an eight-week placement on a job, after I graduated. I, and you know, prior to that, I'd actually started, I started getting into filmmaking at university because, I had my student loan. I was like, "Do you know what? I'm just gonna buy a camera." And so I spent, I spent half my student loan on a camera, and then, I lived on potatoes for six months. Just was like pretty malnourished. But I started making films for people within my, with, within my university 'cause I thought, "Yeah, everyone's got all these amazing research projects and stuff. I'm surrounded by all these amazing sort of stories."

21:54Guest 1But like, within the academic circles, in marine biology at least, like there wasn't really a lot of, lot of sort of outreach, and I felt like that was sort of an area where I could apply, you know, do something a bit more creative. And anyway, I got a lot out of doing those sort of short films. And yeah, when I left, I didn't really, I sort of, I started my own business essentially and started doing, films for businesses and, you know, corporate films essentially. And then…

22:28Jawad MirGreat

22:28Guest 1... Worked my way up from the very bottom. And actually, my first tele job was in Gold Rush, which when, like my first location job was in the Yukon. So that was like…

22:37Jawad MirOh

22:37Guest 1... Quite a big shift to sort of go, you know, do, running around like doing little films in London and then, yeah, going to the Yukon for, you know, months on end. So I spent three years doing that. And then, I, you know, I, eventually I always wanted to do natural history and an opportunity eventually came up for me in Bristol. So yeah, that was the sort of a shoe in. It's just all about persistence really, and if you really want it, you just don't give up, and then…

23:06Guest 1... It sort of eventually happens. And you just remain proactive and keep com… you know, I've al… I've always been proactive with ideas and, you know, part of the reason why I got my shoe in the door at Silverback was I had all these ideas about some of the projects that they had going on there, and I was quite active, you know, with that side of things as well. So I always think, I always try and bring stuff to potential j… work because I just think that makes, you know, I just enjoy it. So it's like, it's fun for me to do, but also it makes you more employable as well.

23:37Jawad MirAwesome. How about you, Julian?

23:39Guest 1Yeah. I, after university, so I did anthropology, biological anthropology at university. And, I, yeah, a bit, a bit like Joe, I s… saved a l… a lot of my student loan as well, which I'm now still paying off. But… Same But by, and then spent it, on a flight to Sumatra…... Where I got a volunteer job, studying orangutans, kind of like as a sort of research assistant. So I spent a year in the jungles in Sumatra, like, collecting orangutan poo, and, for research. I've never seen the results of that research, but,... It's a long time collecting poo. And yeah, while I was out there I met... A BBC film crew came out to film the orangutans from the Natural History Unit, and I kind of helped them. I helped put them in touch with our local guide that we worked with a lot to help us find the orangutans, and kind of, yeah, just sort of hung out with them as much as I could while they were filming, and got their contact details.

24:50Guest 1And I just pretty much harassed them, via email after that, 'cause I've always wanted to, I've always wanted to work in documentaries. Always loved, like, as a kid, David Attenborough documentaries and, like the Walking with Dinosaurs documentary came out when I was a kid, and that was the, like, most exciting moment of my life at the time when that came out. So I've always wanted to do it, but I never thought I'd get the opportunity. So it was really s… just quite serendipitous that the BBC came out and I was there to meet them. I even met my wife out there as well, so it was quite a serendipitous trip. And then yeah, after coming back home, and emailing them often enough, they were very kind and would get back to me with, like, training schemes and things. I did a training scheme, one of the ones they sent, they sent me, and then I worked... Yeah, well, I got into the Natural History Unit and worked on all sorts of shows. Worked on, a lot of Gordon Buchanan's, like, stuff, if you've seen that, where's the, like

25:47Guest 2Yeah

25:47Guest 1... Gorilla following me and, his series about tribes. Worked with all sorts of presenters. Chris Packham, Steve Backshall. Did a kids', CBBC Deadly Dinosaurs series at the BBC as well. Yeah, so that's kind of how it happened.

26:05Jawad MirThat's awesome. You know, one word you used about harassing them, the producers and whatnot…

26:12Guest 2Yeah

26:12Jawad Mir... I was just at a conference, this past weekend, and somebody asked... I was talking about the film that I'm working on and I'm raising money for it, and they're like, "So how do you do it?" I'm like, "You gotta be completely shameless." Like, you've gotta be completely shameless, and just put them against so much stuff that they finally give up and they say, "Okay, whatever. We'll do it," right? So it's a good attitude that you have. That's, that's, that pays off in long term for sure.

26:35Guest 2Yeah. Jawad, what can I ask? What film are you working on at the moment?

26:39Jawad MirI'm working on quite a few. I have a short called Whispers in Time we're trying to raise money, about Palestine and Israel.

26:48Guest 2Ooh.

26:48Jawad MirIt's a narrative that I wrote, and I just finished writing a feature about gun violence with lots of twists and turns. So that is…

26:55Guest 2All right

26:55Jawad Mir... Something in the early stages. Yeah.

26:57Guest 2Oh.

26:58Guest 1Oh, cool. That sounds exciting.

26:59Jawad MirYeah. But I love nature. I have been all over Canada, and it's so funny, I've filmed so much stuff, like, you know, the eagles coming in and grabbing the fish, the, you know…

27:10Guest 1Yeah

27:10Jawad Mir... The scenic views. And just the, last week somebody told me, "Why don't you put together something like a reel?" Because I've never actually put together a reel of all the films.

27:19Guest 1Yeah.

27:19Jawad MirLike, the nature stuff is just because I did it. And I decided to and, because it's, it's, it's such a amazing thing to be filming wildlife and nature. You just feel like you're part of something bigger and divine. I don't know if you ever got that feeling, but I always do when I'm, when I'm doing that.

27:35Guest 2Yeah. Well, do you know what it is? It's sort of the early mornings. You get up with the sun. You get up just before sunrise and then you're there. You know, it is a different, it's a very different feeling to the sort of middle of the day when you're up with the animals, sort of waking up with the animals and yeah, it's definitely very, like, calming, isn't it? Yeah.

27:53Jawad MirYeah.

27:53Guest 2There's definitely something to it. Getting up when, with sunrise, there's always something quite special about that.

27:58Guest 1Yeah. It's a very privileged sort of moment it feels like, doesn't it, in a way?

28:02Guest 2Yeah.

28:02Guest 1Like, when you get that opportunity to be that close to animals and see them and…

28:05Guest 2Yeah

28:05Guest 1... It's cool.

28:06Guest 2And you've got, you've got great wildlife in Canada as well, Jawad. Where, whereabouts are you? Did you say Toron… are you Toronto?

28:11Jawad MirI'm in Toronto. We…

28:13Guest 2Right. Yeah

28:13Jawad Mir... I mean, other than going a little bit up north, the moose…

28:16Guest 2Yeah

28:16Jawad Mir... You don't really see much, but you know, I've been to the West Coast all over.

28:20Guest 2Yeah.

28:20Jawad MirI've been to the East Coast all over. I, my first feature documentary was in the East Coast.

28:24Guest 2Oh, cool.

28:25Jawad MirSo I have... You know, one thing I always find that nature really inspires me, there is a... I don't know if you've been to Canada.

28:31Guest 2Yeah.

28:32Jawad MirThere is... So there is a border of British Columbia and Alberta. Have you been to British Columbia or Alberta?

28:38Guest 1I've been to British Columbia.

28:40Guest 2Yeah.

28:40Jawad MirOkay.

28:40Guest 2I've been to that side.

28:42Jawad MirSo there is a lake called Lake, Emerald Lake, and it's at the border of British Columbia and Alberta, and there's a village called The Field with a population of 200, 300 people. So I went in, this was 2011, I went in to, off the highway there was a little bridge that goes into the village, and underneath the brid… bridge was a stream of water, and it was all surrounded by mountains and low clouds. So I decided to go down, even though you're not supposed to, and I just sat on the rocks and that became a thing for me for six years. Every year I would go there and all these ideas would pop into my head.

29:14Guest 2Nice.

29:14Jawad MirLike stor… films and stories, and that's, that's, that's what it does to me at least, right? So it's good to be around all that stuff because it just calms you down.

29:21Guest 2Yeah.

29:21Jawad MirAnd especially nowada… nowadays with everything is like boom.

29:24Guest 2Yeah.

29:24Jawad MirYou need to slow down.

29:26Guest 2Yeah, big time.

29:27Guest 1Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, it's so important. I think it's so important for everyone to, especially like you say, with so many screens around us, like, trying to grab our attention all the time, it's, you know, stepping outside and finding somewhere like that where you can go to just detach is so important I think, and that's why also, like, wildlife documentaries as well can kind of help people with that. Just detach a little bit, you know?

29:49Jawad MirYeah. So speaking of that, you know, films like a series like Dinosaurs or the one with real wildlife, these take time, right? I always like to give an example to people who don't understand... How long it takes. There, the Life on Our Planet, I think it was s… season two. No, Planet Earth, the one with Hans Zimmer's score. Was it Planet Earth…

30:10Jawad Mir... It was called?

30:11Guest 1Planet Earth II, was it? Yeah.

30:13Jawad MirYeah, Planet Earth II.

30:14Guest 1Earth II.

30:14Jawad MirThere's a sequence about the snakes and the lizard, right?

30:19Guest 1Oh.

30:19Jawad MirAnd I saw the, I saw the behind-the-scenes, so they t… it took them couple of trips to film that whole thing.

30:24Guest 1Yeah.

30:24Jawad MirSo it's a combination of different times of the year… ... Where this regularly happens. When you're doing stuff like this, it takes a lot of time. It takes a lot of time of your life, like pre-production, post-production. Is there anything else that you have time to even turn around to, whether it's in a different stage of production or that you wanna do on the side, or is it taking all over your life in those ti… in that time period?

30:50Guest 1Yeah, it's a good point. I mean, I've just, I've recently... Well, me and Joe's had a baby recently as well, so why don't you… We've both got kids, so that sort of takes up most of my spare time, but I did manage to, during the filming of, oh God, in 20… 2023, I did manage to get a short film done, in amongst the sort of doing L… Life on Our Planet, I think. Was it Life on Our Planet? Yeah. So, yeah, I have managed to do one of my own sort of projects, but, yeah, it, the, I'm, I'm really interested in making shorts, more sort of which merge natural history and drama and sort of what we did with the dinosaurs. Like, I feel like that's an interesting space, that is worth exploring more, so I'm still, I'm still doing sort of little shorts sort of in that realm as well. So yeah, I... But it's hard, shall I... It's in a constant…

31:46Guest 1... Battle, sort of trying to find time…

31:48Jawad MirBecause…

31:49Guest 1... To do anything other than your job or your family.

31:51Jawad MirYeah. Because what happens in my view is that, you know, you get onto this project, you're excited because it's something that excites you. Obviously, there's pay attached to it, which is necessary.

32:02Guest 1Yeah.

32:02Jawad MirBut until it's con… you know, comes onto the screen, that whole process sometimes can become too much. Like, okay, when are we going to be done with this? Not because you don't, you know, you don't wanna be part of it, just because you wanna see the end result, and it requires…

32:16Guest 1Yeah

32:16Jawad Mir... A lot of patience.

32:17Guest 1Yeah.

32:17Jawad MirRight?

32:18Guest 1Yeah. It does sometimes feel like, yeah, like it's, you know, sometimes it's such a long project, and they have to be long projects, 'cause like you said, you need to be able to go back if you didn't get it right first time, with wildlife in particular. They just take a long time. And dinosaurs, though, like, the, we were on that for three years, I think, weren't we, Joe? So like…

32:35Jawad MirYeah

32:35Guest 1... That takes a long time. Yeah. You sometimes find... I mean, the good thing about them is there's so many different scenes. I mean, especially, like Life on Our Planet had so many different things to film. Like I worked…

32:48Jawad MirYeah

32:49Guest 1... On episode three and five, and episode three had like, we filmed lichens and moss, you know, 'cause they're like…

32:57Jawad MirYeah

32:58Guest 1... Early stages of life, and ferns. So, like, that was actually sort of scratched a bit of an itch for me in a funny sort of way, 'cause I weirdly like lichens. So I was able to go and hunt around Bristol and find lichens and film them in my room during COVID, 'cause we were filming during COVID. And like, just film them with like a macro set up in my spare bedroom. But and then you, all the way to, you know, hunt… cheetahs hunting and the VFX and like, you know, going to Africa and filming, you know, army ants and like all sorts of... There's so, it's so varied that it, I didn't get bored, in that sense. But then sometimes you do wanna do things on the side. I mean, I used to, like Joe said, I've got, I've had a, had a baby a year ago, so now I have no time for anything. But I did used to, I think I built, I used to build, do little hobby projects. Like I made a drone 'cause I wanted to see if I could make a drone from scratch. And then I made an electric skateboard at one point, which

33:55Jawad MirNice.

33:57Guest 1People know the story of that exploding, and I won't, I'm not allowed to do that again. My wife says I can't. So I used to do all sorts of funny little side projects. I quite like tinkering with like, you know, gadgets and things like that in that way. But no, I haven't had any time for that recently.

34:13Jawad MirYou ki… you remind me of, Doc Brown. You know, all those experiments and not going right, and then some…

34:19Guest 1Right

34:19Jawad Mir... Finally something does work, right?

34:22Guest 1Yeah. Yeah.

34:25Jawad MirAwesome.

34:26Guest 1But…

34:26Jawad MirWhat's,.. Sorry, go on, please.

34:28Guest 1I was just gonna say, you know, that, all that being said, like I do have to say, like making films in whatever capacity it does f… it is to me, it's like, it is, I don't find it too much like work 'cause I enjoy it so much. So it's sort of, it, yeah. And like Joe was saying, it's interesting, especially the, with the nature docs, like they're quite adventurous and you're going off to these places and, you know, funny enough, you sort of miss, like what you, towards the end of one of these big productions, you sort of miss being home and just the ho… the normal, the normalcy of home comforts 'cause you're, you know, sleeping in a hammock or, you know, surrounded by mosquitoes or, you know. And which is really adventurous, but then so you, it's weird, you sort of want what you don't have, and you sort of wanna go back to just sitting on the sofa and watching a, watching a movie. Like, you know.

35:19Jawad MirYeah.

35:19Guest 1So, but yeah, it's, it's amazing to be able to make films in sort of any capacity, I think, especially at the moment. It's

35:25Jawad MirYeah.

35:25Guest 1It doesn't feel like a job. You're right, Joe. It feels like we're having, we're doing the thing we would do. If we didn't have this job, if we had a different job, we'd be doing this for fun.

35:35Jawad MirYeah.

35:35Guest 1But for not getting paid, so it's just amazing…... We get paid to do it.

35:40Jawad MirYeah. No, I would agree to that. I think from my own personal experience, one of the things that I have sort of learned in the last four or five years is how to raise money, even though I'm not good at it still. And at, when there's like constant, like it's been a year and a half been trying to raise a few hundred thousand dollars. And when you get those rejections again and again, which is 99.9% of the time, it does sometimes get to you, but the only thing that moves you forward, okay, you know what? You would, you've got this vision about how it would look on the celluloid, and that's why I have to keep doing it. So yeah, it's just the love of what we do, right? It com…

36:12Jawad Mir... Completely motivates us. Yeah.

36:14Guest 1Absolutely.

36:16Jawad MirAmazing.

36:17Guest 1Yeah.

36:17Jawad MirWhat's planning up next for you guys that you're willing to talk, that you're able to talk about? I know a lot of stuff is, like, around secrecy and everything.

36:25Guest 1Yeah.

36:25Jawad MirSo I'm not gonna push you on that. If there's anything that you can talk about, whether it's for Silverback or anything else personal or whatnot. It could be anything personal life, too. You don't have to talk about professional.

36:36Guest 1I mean, I can, I can say I'm still, I'm, I'm still at Silverback. But I c… I'm not allowed to say al… pretty much anything about what I'm doing. That's, that's probably the same for Joe, but

36:46Guest 2Yeah

36:47Guest 1... Yeah.

36:49Jawad MirWell, let me ask you this. When can we expect that, whatever you're working on, two, three years?

36:55Guest 1I'm s… I don't think I'm even allowed to say that.

36:59Guest 2Well…

37:00Jawad MirThat's okay. That's okay

37:00Guest 2... I, Jo, I'll, I'll help you out there. So basically I'm, I'm now working on sort of... I'm doing a bit of a mix. I'm quite enjoying it. I've, I've going back to freelancing full-time, and I'm working on... I've worked on, like, some quite big features. There's, 'cause we… we're sort of blessed in the UK, 'cause you got Bristol, which is the heart of, you know, natural history filmmaking, and then you got West London and, well, London generally, and where you've got all the massive filming studios where, like, a huge amount of sort of... We're very lucky. Like, a lot of…

37:29Jawad MirYeah

37:29Guest 2... Big movies are made there. So I've been tapping into that and getting some work on some big, some sort of more sort of, sort of just, yeah, some movies and some m… and some drama series, which has been great to sort of move more into that world and, obviously I can't say the names of them, 'cause they're not out yet, but…

37:48Jawad MirYeah.

37:48Guest 2Yeah. And then, yeah. And sort of still, chugging along, making, I've got another short that we're, I'm planning to make with my wife, which would be fun. And yeah. Got a few other projects in the pipeline which have got funding. Got funding for a feature doc, which is really exciting. And then, which I can't talk about, obviously. But, there's, yeah. So, but all, you know... So what I've, what I've found, what I've t… found from working The Dinosaurs is that I wanna do more sort of drama based things, and that's what I'm trying to move more into, I think. At least for the, for the short term, 'cause I find it really fun.

38:28Jawad MirAwesome. Wonderful, guys. Anything else that you wanna add on at the end about The Dinosaurs or just in general about filmmaking? Whatever you wanna say.

38:40Guest 1Yeah. I wonder what we're... Well, I suppose there's the... Yeah. Well, we didn't, we never got on to, like, shooting in Yellowstone as well, I suppose. That was pretty cool, wasn't it, Joe? We did that together.

38:50Guest 2Yeah, it was great.

38:51Guest 1Yeah. We filmed,.. It was funny. It was a funny shoot in a way, wasn't it?

38:56Guest 2Yeah.

38:56Guest 1We were filming…

38:57Guest 2It was very

38:58Guest 1... Late, and we set our stegosaurus and allosaurus sequence in, like, geothermal kinda landscape with, like…

39:05Jawad MirYeah

39:06Guest 1... Going off, which was really cool. Looks amazing. But you ha… you're quite restrained, aren't you, Joe? 'Cause you had to film everything from boardwalks for safety…

39:13Guest 2Yeah

39:14Guest 1... Reasons and to not damage the ground, so that was a pretty hard one for you to shoot and no drone.

39:19Guest 2Yeah. We got creative, but we got very lucky. We did get very lucky, 'cause we were just standing next to a geyser, or a geyser as they say in the US, that just started going off, and it went off for about an hour, and we got loads.

39:33Guest 1Amazing, yeah.

39:33Guest 2It was like we got super lucky.

39:35Guest 1And that's the opening shot of the sequence.

39:37Guest 2Yeah.

39:38Guest 1Yeah.

39:39Guest 2So yeah. I guess, I guess, Jo, I just wanna say, like, all projects, like The Dinosaurs or even an… you know, the big natural history projects, they're just a massive huge team effort. So, yeah, it just ta… it really takes, like, a village, literally a village of people. So, you know, whether it's ILM or, you know, us sort of on location or, you know, the post-production team, you know, a… and all the pr… all the huge amount of logistical plans that our produc… production management do. You know, it's just a massive team effort. So I just wanna say big up to everyone that worked on the, on The Dinosaurs, 'cause it's very much a team effort.

40:15Guest 1Absolutely.

40:16Jawad MirI…

40:16Guest 1Even down to the sound

40:18Jawad Mir... 100%.

40:18Guest 1Sound, grading and everything.

40:20Guest 2Yeah.

40:20Guest 1The people at Framestore 59, oh my God, they did such a good job.

40:23Guest 2Yeah, they did great. They did really good.

40:25Jawad MirYeah. I think, I think the every aspect of production, post-production is equally important, but I always find that, and sometimes I even overlook those people because, you know, we're always talking about sound, story, music, but that production planning, the fixers, finding the…

40:44Guest 1Yeah

40:44Jawad Mir... Locations, the car… the carnets, you know, the tickets and all that without that nothing would happen. And I wish we were able to recognize those people more.

40:55Guest 1Yeah.

40:55Guest 2Yeah.

40:56Jawad MirYou know, because they really are the backbone of every production.

41:01Guest 1Yeah. And yeah, they don't get recognized enough. There's not enough, like, awards. I mean, we…... We have the RTS West of England Award here, which no one in the world will have heard of, but we, but they do the…

41:12Jawad MirNever heard of it.

41:12Guest 1... One Production Management Award on that, don't they, and that's it. But they need to do more, because like you say, it couldn't be done without people doing all those carnets and all that paperwork. And often the show will finish, we'll finish making a show, and there's, like, six months of paperwork still to do.

41:28Guest 2Yeah.

41:29Guest 1As well.

41:29Guest 2Yeah. Yeah, that's very true.

41:31Jawad MirYeah. That must become sometimes a little too boring when you're doing paperwork nonstop.

41:38Guest 1Yeah.

41:38Jawad MirAwesome, guys. Listen, it's been fantastic. I really appreciate your time to take to chat about The Dinosaurs. I love the series. I loved Life of o… Life on Our Planet. I'm looking forward to more stuff. I know Silverback just released Bees, Secret of Bees.

41:54Guest 2Yeah.

41:54Jawad MirCoup… yesterday or a couple of days ago. So looking forward to more stuff. I'm sure there's some exciting stuff being cooked, and I'm excited to see them.

42:03Guest 1Ooh, yeah. Lots of good stuff coming out from Silverback I think this year, so yeah.

42:08Jawad MirAwesome, guys.

42:09Guest 1Yeah.

42:09Jawad MirThank you so much.

42:10Guest 1Thanks for having us. Thanks a lot.

42:12Guest 2Thank you so much, Jo.

42:13Jawad MirThank you, guys.

42:14Guest 2Take care.

42:14Jawad MirTake care.

42:15Guest 2Bye-bye.

42:16Guest 1Bye.

42:16Jawad MirBye.