Secrets of the Bees, Director Nadége Laici

0:00Jawad MirWe are not here forever. All of us are gonna go one day. But we're leaving all of our work. If you were to sort of come back in whatever shape or form, and there were people watching your work… ... All over the world…

0:11Jawad Mir... What particular movie or show or scene that you have worked on that would you would, bring a smile on your face when people are watching it?

0:20Nadége LaiciIt would be this, these two films, 'cause I think they reflect my work the most. But, like, the second film, the second film in the Bees, showing the relationship between people and nature is what I love the most. You know, following this beekeeper, Ryan, and his family was amazing because he sort of has been used to b… doing beekeeping in one way and taking his bees and for them to pollinate. Having loads of bees dying and then coming back and trying to rebuild his numbers. And if I die tomorrow and, you know, people watch this, I th… I think I'll be really proud of them watching this scene. That is the last bit of work that I've done.

1:05Jawad MirWelcome back, everyone, to another episode of Kingdom of Dreams podcast, the making of stories, the making of movies. I'm your host, Jawad Mir. Today my guest is Nadaj, director of Secret of the Bees, a two-part documentary series by National Geographic that's on Disney+. It was a fantastic conversation. I learned so much about bees by just watching the two-episodic series, but also talking to her. On the podcast, I told her that I've never seen bees captured the way they were captured in this two-part series. So I do urge that you watch the episode first and then listen to this episode. I hope you enjoy. Good to have you. Thank you so much for taking the cha… time to chat. I truly appreciate it. I had the pleasure of watching the two episode of Secret of Bees, and I'll tell you that I have never, ever seen anything like that before.

1:51Nadége LaiciReally?

1:51Jawad MirAnd especially…

1:53Nadége LaiciWow

1:53Jawad Mir... With the usage of the macro lenses and being in there and the attacks on the hornets, the spider on the flower, which I have never seen in my life, like, a white spider. All that stuff, and obviously the educational element and the humorous part with the very quirky music. Really entertaining.

2:12Nadége LaiciOh, nice. Well, I'm glad you liked it. It means a lot. Thank you.

2:16Jawad MirMy pleasure. So please tell me your background first, your initial, you know, the cl… to get the context of how you kinda got onto this. How did you get into this world? Have you been always wanting to get into the nature, wildlife, documentary, narrative, you know, human documentaries or whatever that is?

2:40Nadége LaiciYeah.

2:40Jawad MirIf you can talk about that'd be really cool to know.

2:42Nadége LaiciYeah, so I guess... So I grew up in, I grew up in Switzerland. ... And for us there, it didn't, you know, we didn't know much about this industry, the wildlife documentary industry. In England, you know, it's known a lot more. Where I live now, it's known a lot more about now. And you know, in the States as well, there's a whole industry. But where I came from, it was, you know, nobody... It was not a job that, you know, I knew about. But I always wanted to work with animals. And then, and I really wanted to, you know, leave Switzerland because it's, I knew that I wouldn't be able to do much else than…

3:24Jawad MirSure

3:24Nadége Laici... Being a vet. So I, so I studied in the UK. I was very lucky to do that. And then, and then I realized that by chance I was in Bristol, which is the capital of wildlife filmmaking. And I thought, "Oh my God, that's, that's what I want to do." And academia I could see that was not for me. And so I started, you know, getting in touch with people, and I had, I'd studied zoology, so kind of went with that.

3:53Jawad MirSure.

3:53Nadége LaiciAnd I was always into photography, so kind of like was the perfect, you know, symbiosis of both things really.

4:03Jawad MirAmazing. So you're currently at Silverback Films.

4:06Nadége LaiciYes.

4:06Jawad MirWho, they produced Secret of Bees. They have also worked on Life on Our Planet, the Dinosaurs, who I had the pleasure of speaking to the two directors and one of the cinematographers. And how did you get yourself in there in terms of, was it through your portfolio over the years?

4:24Nadége LaiciYeah.

4:25Jawad MirAnd you think…

4:25Nadége LaiciI mean, but yeah, very much so. I think, I mean, I had worked with, so the series producer, Huw Cordey, I had been, writing to him for a while how much I, you know, how much I loved his stuff. You know, I, he's done a series called South Pacific when he was back at the BBC, and I love that, and I watched that when I was at university. So he's one of the first people when I wanted to get into this, into the industry, one of the f… first people I got in touch with. But you know, I worked at the BBC for a while, and then I did various things for other in… independent companies. And finally I got chance to work with him on a smaller project to do a, to edit-produce one of his shows. And then when Bees came around, they got, they got in touch with me really, and I was coming to the end of another contract with another company. So I was very lucky, 'cause I'd been wanting to work for Silverback for a long while.

5:26Nadége LaiciI mean, the stuff that they make and that we make now, 'cause I'm part of it, is brilliant. It's just such high quality, you know? So it's, it's not only about the stuff that I'm working on, but it's seeing what all of my colleagues are working on and getting inspired by their work. 'Cause we collaborate a lot between producers in this company, which is brilliant.

5:48Jawad MirYeah. No, the Silverback Films is like a holy grail essentially, right? In wildlife photography or cinematography or storytelling. And what I totally love about The Secret of Bees is, which I kind of touched upon the very beginning, that... So I'll tell you, so my wife, she watches nonstop nature documentaries.

6:09Jawad MirRight? Like… I don't, be, very honest with you. I'm a producer-director myself, and… ... I have not done any sort of nature stuff. But over the years I've been all over the world, and I have filmed so much stuff, like, you know, very scenic shots with a m… macro lens, with zoom lens, with, you know, eagles kinda grabbing the fish and all that fun stuff.

6:30Jawad MirAnd I'll tell you, watching the dinosaurs, which I saw last we… a couple of weeks ago and then yours, I have been... I'm like, "Why do not h… I have something that is so to..." Like, I have all these series of shots. Why don't I put something together? Because I wanna see... You know, when you work on something that kind of reflects…

6:48Jawad Mir... Back, like, all the stuff that you have done. So your project and the dinosaurs have sort of inspired me to do that.

6:55Nadége LaiciOh, great.

6:55Jawad MirAnd I really, it's really… I really appreciate that because there's just something about nature and wildlife that really connects you to the heavens, I think… ... And makes you discover who you are more than anything else, I feel.

7:12Nadége LaiciYeah. I mean, for me too, I mean, and animals have always been part of the... You know, and nature in general, it just makes you feel, I think, you know, just stepping out in my garden, suddenly you feel relaxed. And I… what I love about nature documentaries, and I'm sure, like, that's be the case with you as well when you, when you are working with different animals, is, y… there's so much you don't know. Like for example, with bees, I thought I knew bees. I'm a biologist. I thought I, you know, I've seen them in my garden. I kind of know that they're in a hive, blah. And then I started working on this project, 'cause I was really not an expert, and not… and I wasn't an expert in macro photography, which is the technique that we used the most…

7:58Nadége Laici... On this film. But just instantly I started learning so much about not only the honeybees, which to me were quite familiar, but the 20,000 species of bees that are in the world. And you know, we were not short of stories. And that's what I love in general about wildlife filmmaking, is even though I think I know it, but I don't, and I become an expert. In the space of three years, you know, y… my team and I, we just became experts about bees. Or at least we think we are. You know, might not be. But, you know…

8:32Jawad MirYeah

8:32Nadége Laici... We have to, we have to be to understand and to be able to translate it to an audience and make it simple and make it entertaining as well.

8:41Jawad MirAnd that's always the challenging part, right? Like, there's so many elements to all these stories about insects, about animals, whatever that is. And you kind of answered my next question about how did you… how much did you know about bees. And honestly, aside from knowing about bees that you would normally learn in high school or universities and all that, my main knowledge comes from the animated film Bee Movie.

9:05Nadége LaiciOh.

9:05Jawad MirI don't know if you've seen.

9:07Nadége LaiciYeah. Do you know what?

9:09Jawad MirWhich is a…

9:09Nadége LaiciI did start to watch it, but it irked me straight away that they were all males. And I was like, "What?" If y… if you knew the simplest thing about bees is most of them, or most of the ones you see, are females, even the solitary ones. 'Cause the ones that are actually doing the work in this, they're, they're all, they're all females, basically. And so yeah, that, it co… Like, I did watch, like, maybe the first 20 minutes, and then I had to turn it off 'cause it annoyed me a little bit too much. But you know, it's entertaining. A lot of people have mentioned it to me. And then there's some good stuff in there, but yeah, it's very, they're all males. They're all, like, boys, and you're like, "Well, you've, you missed, you missed a trick there. Could have made it a lot funnier if they'd been all female."

9:55Jawad MirYeah.

9:55Nadége LaiciAnd the boys, you know, like lounging around being fed, that would have been a really good joke, 'cause it's kind of what it is in the, in the hive really.

10:03Jawad MirYeah. Yeah. That's so cool. So let's get into a little bit more technical stuff, right? So when you just became involved in this project, how much planning sort of went into that, "Okay, you know what? This is… we're gonna have to shoot this mostly macro." I mean, there is a lot of other stuff in there too.

10:22Jawad MirMostly macro and getting in there, and obviously there's that element of being stung, right?

10:27Nadége LaiciOh, yeah.

10:27Jawad MirLike, how am I gonna... Right? And I'm su…

10:29Nadége LaiciYeah

10:29Jawad Mir... I'm assuming you probably got stung a few times.

10:32Nadége LaiciA few times. Although, you know, maybe in total five, six times. A couple of times badly, that were very painful. But most of the time, you know, fine.

10:43Jawad MirYeah

10:44Nadége Laici... 'cause I'm not, I'm not allergic. You know, some people, you know... Our presenter, Bertie, is allergic. Well, he's not allergic, but he's got a, he's got allergic reactions, so his half of his face just like... But and you'll see that in some videos that are gonna come out later. But, yeah, so we had, we had a lot to think about, you know. But the… we knew initially that we were gonna have quite a few years to think about this. And my bosses, they really wanted the films, or, like, s… if you want the sort of like, through line that was gonna take you through the films to be the honeybee hive. So we knew that we were gonna follow this honeybee hive for a year, and we were gonna have two years to film them. So that we knew. And so we got five hives, and we put them in one of our main cinematographers' garden so that he could have them really close to him, and it would be easy for him to film them.

11:47Nadége LaiciAnd if anything happened to them, you know, he would be there to film them.

11:51Jawad MirYeah.

11:51Nadége LaiciAnd he loved that because he'd never had bees before. And this is Alastair McEwin. So Alastair McEwin is, like, the absolute legend of macro photography. He's worked on all the Planet Earths, everything with David Attenborough in it, he's, he's worked on that. And unfortunately, he passed away a couple of weeks ago, so just before the films came out. So that's really…

12:13Jawad MirOh my God

12:13Nadége Laici... Really sad. Yeah. Yeah, he was…

12:15Jawad MirIs it the gentleman who was in the, in the s… in the actual, like, the blue jacket and shooting with the macro lens? Is that him?

12:21Nadége LaiciOh, no. That's, that's Bertie. That's Bertie Gregory…

12:24Jawad MirOkay

12:24Nadége Laici... The presenter.

12:24Jawad MirOkay.

12:24Nadége LaiciNo.

12:25Jawad MirOkay.

12:25Nadége LaiciSo Alastair, no, Alastair was, you know, he was already well into his 70s when we started filming the f…

12:33Jawad MirOkay

12:34Nadége Laici... The, that, the, those films. So it was amazing for him that he was working still, you know, at the pinnacle of the industry still in his, well into his 70s. He just didn't wanna retire.

12:44Jawad MirYeah.

12:44Nadége LaiciAnd, yeah, he's got the most amazing ideas about, you know, macro photography, and he can modify lenses, and he can, you know, he created this sort of, this kind of motorized thing where we could put the, one of the, combs from the hive and we could move it, like, all through the space and kind of have it, you know, level with the camera, and then we could move it. So some of the moves that you'll see, it's not the camera moving, it's actually the comb that we were moving with a motorized head. So that was amazing. He created that just for this show.

13:20Jawad MirWow.

13:20Nadége LaiciIt just gives you an example. At the very beginning, we met with our two main cinematographer, Alastair McEwin, who was gonna be in charge of the honeybees, and then all of the other species of bees, the wild bees, were gonna be filmed by John Brown. So this is, like, the hornet sequence and the Dawson sequence, you know, are two big ones that he did, John Brown. And we met in this room at Silverback, and we kind of thought, "Okay, well, what can we do?" You know, "What kit do we have? What kit do we need to buy? What do we need to create?" And, you know, John Brown already had ideas. He's got his own, you know, gizmos, but he's got, he's got this amazing, motion control rig which allows you to move the camera v… in very small movements, but very, and very stable, which is very important for macro…

14:14Jawad MirRight

14:14Nadége Laici... 'cause it's such, it's such small stuff.

14:17Jawad MirYeah.

14:17Nadége LaiciAnd you can get really eye level with those bees. So it was about sort of, you know, f… we knew that we had a lot of time, and we knew that we could really think about the kit that we were gonna get, develop new kit and new techniques, and that was, that's what... We had a few months at the beginning to think about that, which is essential in a series like this.

14:38Jawad MirYeah. Yeah, that macro lens, which has been out for a good 10, 12 years, you know, the skinny, the thin one… ... And it was, it w…

14:46Nadége LaiciYeah, the Laowa Pro.

14:47Jawad MirYeah.

14:48Nadége LaiciYeah.

14:48Jawad MirAnd it's, it's, it was executed really well. I played around with it maybe about seven years ago. It's a fantastic lens, but it's only designed obviously for certain situations, right? I think I have seen over the years it being sort of put into, like, these bottles with balls or with miniatures, like, kinda going in and making it look grande and everything.

15:09Nadége LaiciYeah.

15:09Jawad MirBut this was, this is something completely different and, you know. And your first day of dealing with bees on the, if you wanna call it a set, right, what was going through your mind aside from obviously telling the story? Was there a fear factor or what have I done or this is fascinating?

15:24Nadége LaiciOh, yeah. Well, yeah, I mean, we had, 'cause w… we, none of us were beekeepers apart from my, the exec producer, Alastair Fothergill. So he is a beekeeper, so he already knew all of that stuff. But we had kind of a crash course in beekeeping, and the first time, you know, we had our five hives, and the first time we opened the hive and with the bee… we had a beekeeper with us who was teaching us, and you get all of these bees, you know, flying into the air. Because you open their hive, they start flying around. They're not necessarily aggressive, but they just start flying. And I was petrified. I was literally, we were all, like, with our, with our arms…... Like this, and we're, like, trying to breathe, trying to keep breathing. 'Cause they do smell a little bit, your stress. So I was trying to, like, breathe, and it's, it's very intimidating, if you've never been around bees. So I had very much that in my mind, and obviously we h… we were all wearing these bee suits…

16:25Jawad MirYeah

16:25Nadége Laici... Which by the way are not made for filming at all, so make filming quite hard.

16:30Jawad MirYeah.

16:30Nadége LaiciYou know, getting the eyepiece on your, on your eye with, we've had many issues with that. But yeah. So I was, I was kind of mix of worried for my team, worried for myself, and I thought, "My God, if I'm that stressed the first time we open the hive, how am I gonna be when, you know, we've got all of these bees and we're trying to film them?" But it's funny with these animals. You kind of start recognizing the sound they make, and you know when a hive is not happy and when a hive is happy. And when it's happy, it does, like, this very calm buzz. Even when they're flying, they're quiet. They're quite calm. And when you start recognizing their calm, you sort of calm down yourself, and it was honestly the second time already it was completely different. And then you get a bit more too relaxed, and then they start stinging you 'cause you've, haven't closed your, you know, your bee suit well enough or something like that. So it's always when you let your guard down, that's when, that's when you can get stung and when you, when you're not careful and there's one that gets stuck into your hair or something like that, which is very common.

17:39Nadége LaiciBut yeah. But it's funny. Like, at first, yeah, we were all a bit like, "Whoa," but after a while you kind of get used to them.

17:47Jawad MirYeah.

17:47Nadége LaiciAnd, you know, the last thing that they want to do is sting you really, bees.

17:52Jawad MirYeah.

17:53Nadége LaiciThey don't wanna die. So it's, it's still relatively rare that they, that they do end up stinging you.

18:00Jawad MirYeah. I'll tell you what, like, the hornet scene, it was, it was very personal for me because when I was a kid…... When I was a kid back home in p… in Pakistan, I was, like, about 10, and we used to have this massive chicken farm in the back of our house. And these chickens was used to go in this garage, massive garages, where there were, like, all this broken furniture, and they would hide in there and lay eggs. And I was very fascinated with, like, grabbing the eggs and, you know…... Obviously, you know, we… just the whole grabbing them and taking them home and whatever. And there was this one time three hornets bit me on my ankle, and I still remember that feeling at the same time. So when I saw that sequence, it was like, "Yes."

18:42Nadége LaiciYeah. You know what? I feel bad 'cause we have painted them as the baddies, you know. They are…

18:47Jawad MirYeah

18:47Nadége Laici... Very important for our ecosystem.

18:49Jawad MirYeah. Yeah.

18:50Nadége LaiciBut yeah, we had one of our team got stung right on the head by one of them, and it's super painful, so I don't know how you did it with three in your ankle. That must have been horrible.

18:59Jawad MirIt was pretty bad. It was horrible. But I… One of the things that's really cool about that whole sequence was I never realized that hornets... I mean, I know they are bigger than bees, right? Bees are a little bit more thicker, especially, you know, the queen and all that.

19:14Jawad MirBut in that sequence, hornets are giants in front of bees.

19:17Nadége LaiciYeah.

19:18Jawad MirLike, it's, I was…

19:18Nadége LaiciI mean, these are the two species that are the most, like... You know, in terms of size, they're, like, they're, like, so different. Like, the hornet is the size of my thumb, really.

19:29Jawad MirYeah.

19:29Nadége LaiciAnd then the bee is smaller than a European honeybee. You know, Asian honeybees are a little bit smaller. There's several species of them, but this one, Japanese honeybee, is quite a lot smaller than our honeybee. And so the size difference between the two is huge. And one bee has got, is, can do nothing. So they really have to work together to, you know, to defend themselves against the, these hornets. Because otherwise…

20:02Jawad MirYeah

20:02Nadége Laici... Their hive really quickly can get destroyed, you know? So yeah, it's very impressive that they've got this kind of like, this amazing way of protecting themselves, because these Asian honeybees, they don't sting as much. They're not as aggressive. But they've got this amazing way of protecting themselves against pred… predators that can get into the hive, which is really interesting.

20:27Jawad MirYeah. And to be able to create 115 degrees of heat inside their home to… and that pretty much takes care of the hornet, i… is quite remarkable. I mean, it just... You know, watching this nature stuff, as much as, you know, it... The thing with nature docs here, sometimes they become a little too long, and time is of an essence nowadays. Like, you have no time. So, but you tend to appreciate, like, you just totally understand so… in some capacity what are we doing here and how smart are these animals or bugs and, you know, it's fascinating. It is so cool. And we don't know anything about them even. Like, we think we do, but we don't know much…

21:11Jawad Mir... About how they operate.

21:13Nadége LaiciYeah. It is crazy. I mean, the thing about bees that we were lucky with, you know, this is, like, Secrets Of is part of a strand. We've had Secrets of the Whale, Secrets of the Elephants. You know, the more recent one, Secrets of the Penguins. And with those, I feel like the audience is more used to knowing quite a bit 'cause they would have seen them in lots of documentaries. But the advantage we had on this series is that bees are not featured that much. Maybe you'll have the odd, the odd series, you know, of David Attenborough or, like, the ones that... I don't know w… if you get those in America. Probably the Planet Earths…

21:50Jawad MirYeah. We do

21:50Nadége Laici... And stuff like that.

21:51Jawad MirYep.

21:52Nadége LaiciThere might be, like, one or two per series about bees in the past, you know. But we really had a lot of things that had never been filmed before or so long ago, or people wouldn't even know that they were filmed. So some stuff has... But the Dawson bees, they were filmed a long while ago. Not in the... But obviously the kit has moved on, so we were able to show something that's completely different. And the hornets with the Asian bees, they were filmed but a very long time ago, maybe 20, 25 years ago. More recently for something, but, i… you know, people didn't see it. So we were very lucky in that we could, you know, pretty much any sequence we went for, like, most of the audience would have never seen. So that's the thing. There's a lot of secrets and stuff to unpack with bees, and there's new science all the time. You know, the stuff in the, in the lab with, Dr. Sami and Alice Bridges, you know, when they look at the bees playing.

22:53Nadége LaiciThat's only very… that's very new science, the fact that these bumblebees can solve problems and learn from each other. You know, they're still discovering new stuff every year. So I mean, I'd happily make another... We… I always said to people I could have made five episodes. We had so many stories and so many things. But yeah, we were limited to two, and that is good that people think, "Oh, I could have watched more," you know?

23:18Jawad MirYeah. Yeah. No, that's, that's good. That's true. And bees are such an important element as much as every animal or insect is to human beings, but especially bees, right? Because of honey and all that, and many other reasons. Do you remember a moment while you were filming this where you understood your... Like, how… I'm trying to figure, like, way how to ques… put this question properly. Is that how meaningful they are to you as an individual and how much grateful you are to them?

23:57Jawad MirBecause we can't exist without bees.

24:00Nadége LaiciYeah. I mean, we could maybe exist, but with great difficulty. You know, most of…

24:06Jawad MirYeah

24:06Nadége Laici... A lot of our diet would be very different. So I think, I think there would be many people wouldn't, wouldn't have enough food on the table, you know, in s… in quite a few countries. Yeah, there was a…

24:17Jawad MirI think in the doc it said one third of the po… population…

24:20Nadége LaiciYeah

24:20Jawad Mir... Of the world, right? Yeah.

24:21Nadége LaiciOne th… one third of every… one third of the food that we eat essentially is pollinated by bees…

24:26Jawad MirRight. Yeah

24:26Nadége Laici... Or as a result of bees. So w… so I think the moment that I really realized... Was when I went to, so I filmed this, beekeeper who, lives in Oregon and has got… ... You know, thousands and thousands of bees, and then every year in January, February, he brings his, all of his bees, 6,000 hives he brings to, California to pol… to pollinate the almonds. And he used to, he used to pollinate even, you know, apples, pears, a lot of other stuff, cranberries. And, you know, all of this fruit and stuff, you know, not only it feeds the United States, but a lot of the, our almonds come from this, from this region. And, you know, seeing these like, the, this, the amount of trees over there in a place that's fairly, like, there's no other wildlife there. There's absolutely nothing. It's so silent. It's the most wei… it's the weirdest place I've ever been to. And then I realized, you know, without the bees, you know, nothing, none of that would…

25:29Nadége Laici... Would work. And it's not the only place, you know, it's not the only monoculture. It's like a lot of other apple, pears. Apologies, I'm just recovering from a cold.

25:43Jawad MirIt's okay.

25:44Nadége LaiciSo it's, you know, that was pretty, that was pretty sobering to think about at that time, that what we'd done to our, to our planet, essentially. And that we needed to bring the bees in because the, because the natural pollinators, well, first of all, there's not enough of them there, but also there's, yeah, there's too much, there's too much, stuff to pollinate, so you need to bring... You know, most of the bees in the US, most of the honeybees in the US, they come to this place in January to pollinate the almonds. That's how many you need. So yeah…

26:26Jawad MirRight

26:26Nadége Laici... Without them, all of that would collapse really. I think I'll be all right.

26:33Jawad MirI think, that's okay. I think, there was a series, I don't know if it was in Yellowstone or Yosemite, where they reintroduced wolves. There's a whole like a 5 to 10 minute sequence, which I'm sure you have seen, and how that completely changed everything at the park, like from the flow of water to, you know, plants and trees and different wildlife popping out. And it's amazing how as everything is so connected, kinda like, for lack of better word, circle of life in Lion King, right?

27:03Jawad MirLike how every… everything is so connected to each other, and we don't, we don't see and appreciate that much because if we did, I think the element of being grateful comes really easily into us. Like how lucky we are to be able to have this all around us.

27:18Nadége LaiciOh yeah, I'm quite familiar with the wolves of Yellowstone and, yeah, it worries me sometimes. You know, there's a p… there's a f… there's a sequence that we were thinking of doing and then we, you know, because of what was happening in China at the time, we couldn't really go and film there. But, there's a place in China where they don't have any bees anymore. They've sort of spri…

27:41Jawad MirWhere in China?

27:42Nadége LaiciI can't... Do you know what? I don't really know exa… the exact location. But they have to pollinate the flowers with, w… by hand basically. They've got these like little contraptions with little brushes, and they go and they pollinate by hand. And we couldn't get in the country at the time. I looked into going to film there, but we c… we couldn't for one reason or the other. It was fairly, you know, soon after the pandemic and everything. So that was a shame. But yeah, I just thought, you know, what happens if the, our world becomes like this? And you know, there's already places where we spray with so man… so much pesticide…

28:24Nadége Laici... That it's really, that we already like we don't, we're already suffering from the lack of pollinators. You know, even in England, you know, I don't see that many bees anymore. So it, you know, we, our insect life is super important, and that's what we were trying to, you know, do with the film really. We were trying to show how amazing bees are, how important they are, and make people care, and hopefully that's what happens. And then by the end as well to say, it's so easy if you want to help them. You know, whereas for other animals, w… that are featured on these programs, you know, whales, polar bears, et cetera, you know, you can s… you can say to people, you know, "Maybe use your car less," or, you know, do all of these things. But with bees is, it is something that you can do. It's, it's so easy. You just plant more flowers wherever you've got a little bit of space, outdoor space, you know.

29:25Nadége LaiciIf you've got a garden, if you've got a balcony, if you've got like a community garden or like a, in a school, just encourage to, for people to put more flowers that are good for bees, and then you'll see them turning up straight away. It's like within a matter of minutes. I think that in the Nat Geo team, they planted a garden in the honor of Secrets of the Bees recently in Manchester, and apparently I've, I was told within 10 minutes they had loads of bumblebees coming to the flowers. So you can see the effect is instantaneous, really with bees. It's not, it's not difficult. And I think that will, hopefully that will empower people, you know, to do, to do something because it's, because whereas with other species a bit harder, with bees it's, it's quite easy.

30:18Jawad MirYeah. True. In terms of post-production, you know, you said just earlier that there's enough to make like five episodes with…

30:26Nadége LaiciOh, yeah. Yeah

30:27Jawad Mir... You know, which always happens. We always tend to, you know, because with documentaries, you're always like shooting, trying to figure out what the story is. What was the process of post-production and… You know, was there any parts that you were almost gonna bring in, any sequence, as long as it sort of fitted in within the story of episode one, two, that you didn't?

30:50Nadége LaiciYeah, I mean, there were a few things that we didn't bring in, which was sad, but yeah, we only, we could only make two episodes. But when you talk about the post-production on these shows, it almost starts from the moment you start filming.

31:06Jawad MirYeah.

31:06Nadége LaiciBecause you have to, like, log all of the footage, and in macro it's super important. Because whereas when you are filming, like, let's say a big lion or something like that, you can scroll through the footage and really quickly see, oh, that lion is doing this, it's eating, it's hunting, blah. With bees, if you scroll through you think they're, they... You can't see what they're doing. You need to, like, watch pretty much, you know, every... You can't even speed it up. You need to watch to see if they're gonna do a little head movement, if they're gonna do, if they're gonna eat a bit of honey, or are they walking, or are they, like, buzzing, or something like that. So it's, so it was really painstaking to sort of log all of that footage so that we knew where bees were. When a bee was, like, doing a head movement or when it was, you know, filmed from above or filmed from right in front of it and you could see its eyes, if it was a close-up of a queen or a, or a worker, or c… or something like that. So that took ages.

32:07Nadége LaiciAnd obviously with honeybees we were waiting a lot for behavior to happen, so we were shooting so much material.

32:13Jawad MirYeah.

32:14Nadége LaiciAnd I started pre-editing stuff throughout the production.

32:18Jawad MirOh.

32:18Nadége LaiciSo I had editors coming in every so often and doing a week or two, and we would put stuff together. Like, for example, Ryan's sequence in the, in, Oregon to California, we edited that, you know, two years ago, the first version of that sequence. It was m… 10 minutes long. It was huge. And then when we c… actually came to the edit, we, there's a few sequences we edited, that w… you know, they're gonna be... I'm s… I'm sure Nat Geo's gonna release them in some shape or form, but we didn't get to put in the show 'cause there was just too much. We h… we know, we filmed a whole bit about a queen bumblebee, m… having her first, you know, babies and, like, sort of building her nest, building up her nest, which was shot by John Brown as well.

33:11Nadége LaiciAnd we didn't put it in the end because it was, there was so much of it and we already had the honeybees building their nest, so it was a bit too similar. Yeah, it was... I always really struggle with that, to leave stuff on the, you know, cutting room floor. But it just means that you've got the best stuff in your film and the things that are really gonna touch people. And then hopefully if they want some extra material they can come on the website or on... Probably they will be put on YouTube and you, they can watch what we, what we made. You know, we filmed more of, with the family as well, and I cut a whole little bit of a sequence of them looking at some bees, and the girls are very cute…... With their dad and it's really funny, but it just didn't work really with the story, so it sort of slowed things down. As you say, you know, people, the attention span of the audience now, and I can feel it in myself, you know, you kind of, you're used to seeing things really quickly.

34:12Nadége LaiciAnd so to keep people watching is something that we constantly think about. And so sometimes, yeah, things don't get used unfortunately.

34:22Jawad MirYeah. No, it's true, and I completely relate to that. I mean, there have been so many times, especially this film that I worked on, that I directed about, I don't know if you know the Uyghurs in China.

34:32Nadége LaiciOh, yeah.

34:33Jawad MirThe... Yeah, so which is right here.

34:35Nadége LaiciOh, right.

34:36Jawad MirAnd, there was a sequence we filmed for 45 minutes in Prague with our protagonist. She was about capitalism, and this other guy who was more about trying to understand communism. And we followed them through the streets of Prague for 45 minutes. Amazing discussion. Couldn't put it in the film.

34:57Nadége LaiciHuh.

34:57Jawad MirIt w… it just, it just didn't work. Because it was such an engaging, dramatic, like, attacking back and forth in real places with people looking at them. But, you know, it, whatever serves the story. So it sucks…

35:09Nadége LaiciYeah

35:09Jawad Mir... That when those kind of things happen.

35:11Nadége LaiciAnd you, that's the thing, and I'm like, "Oh, is it a waste of time?" But you didn't know when you went to film that sequence that it wasn't gonna fit. Sometimes things come together in the edit, you know? And having…

35:22Jawad MirYeah

35:22Nadége Laici... Having the e… we've got a really amazing team of editors. You know, we had some pre-editors and then we had two main editors for this. And they come in with their own opinions as well, and they're filmmakers themselves, you know. And so they'll be like, "You know, you were really attached to this sequence, but I just don't think it does what you want it…"

35:44Jawad MirYeah

35:44Nadége Laici... "to do." And that was, that's really good. That's why I love working with people who have, who have not seen the material pretty much until you get to the edit.

35:54Jawad MirIt, I couldn't agree with you more. This project actually made me realize, and because we were tight on a budget, realize that how important it is to have another editor. And that's when I brought another editor and it just, and I made a vow, like, I'm not touching anything that I'm working on, that I am directing. Because you are so close to it and you're not gonna let go, right? So it's important to do that. Just to, wrap things up, a couple of things. What, and we may have touched upon this, what was the one thing that you learned about yourself after finishing working on this, like, post-production and everything and looking back at it now?

36:30Nadége LaiciOoh. Learned about myself. Oof. That's, that's a big question. Well, you know what? I had just had my son when I, when I made this film, so, well, just. Just coming off maternity leave, coming out of maternity leave. And so it was quite a special thing because I was trying to be a parent to a young child and also, you know, making these films. And, you know, I l… I learned that I couldn't do it all. That was, that was one of the main things. And I learned to, you know, with the bees as well, it was, it was amazing to be able to bring, you know, my personal life with my son and my work life and sort of get him really, enjoying the bees as well. So that was one of the things, one of the things that I learned is I could bring the two, the two worlds together, which was, which was really nice.

37:31Nadége LaiciWhen I thought they were actually really separate, you know, I had to keep my work life and my family really separate. But, it was, it was a real joy to work on something that I could actually get him involved with, you know, and look at the bees and be interested. So he's not scared of bees at all, and I don't know if he's, if he knows to this day that they can sting, which is, which is amazing. And more about the bees, you know, I thought straight away when I was gonna get, when we got the honeybees, I thought, "Oh my God, after the film I'm gonna adopt them for sure. Like, I'm gonna have honeybees. I'm gonna be one of those beekeepers. I'm gonna love it," et cetera. But I learned a lot about honeybees and how, you know, they are an animal that is being farmed and there's a lot of them, and in the US they're introduced, so they're not a species that's meant to be there anyway. In the UK, they… they're naturally there, but still there's a, there's a lot of them. And the bees you need to help are not the honeybees really.

38:33Nadége LaiciThere's lots of them and loads of people taking care of them.

38:35Jawad MirSure.

38:35Nadége LaiciThe bees that you need to help are the wild ones. And so quite quickly I was like, "Do you know what? I don't, I don't wanna have wanna have honeybees." They're lovely, but I've, I've taken care of them for three years. I've filmed them for three years, and I'm... What I'm doing at the moment is more like making sure my garden is as friendly to wild species of bees as possible so that they've got space to forage and space to come and make it, make it wild and make it, you know, good for, good for nature. And you know, honeybees will benefit from it as well, but that's one of the main things I learned from this film is, you know, honeybees are not, are not the whole thing. You need to take care of the variety of species that we've got around the world.

39:22Jawad MirAmazing. And a little bit more heavier question…

39:25Nadége LaiciOh, yeah

39:25Jawad Mir... If you don't mind.

39:26Nadége LaiciYeah.

39:29Jawad MirI believe that the movies and the TV shows that we as audiences like is, and you can like something really garbage. Like I'm talking… ... Like a really…

39:38Nadége LaiciOh, yeah

39:39Jawad Mir... Terrible movie. But you can still like it because it instigates a certain emotion at a certain stage in your life that sort of connects to you, and you remember that forever, right? I think that's how audiences connect to the film. In the same realm, we are not here forever. All of us are going to go away, gonna go one day.

39:58Jawad MirBut we're leaving all of our work behind, right? If you were to sort of come back in whatever shape or form, what... And there were people watching your work… ... All over the world. What particular movie or show or scene that you have worked on that would, you would ever bring a smile on your face when people are watching it?

40:23Nadége LaiciOh, yeah. The, I mean, in the li… I think for, it would be this, these two films 'cause I think they reflect my work the most. But, like, the second film, the second film in the bees is really, it's my, it's my baby. It's where all the human sequences are. You know, this showing the relationship between people and nature is what I love the most, is what I really thrive on. And, you know, following this beekeeper, Ryan, and his family was amazing because he sort of has been used to be… doing beekeeping in one way and taking his bees and for them to pollinate and then, you know, having loads of losses, having loads of bees dying and then coming back and trying to rebuild his numbers. And follow… following him during this first year where he's trying to actually change what he's doing and building a big meadow where loads of pollinators can come and sort of change his business to be more about honey making essentially, and this meadow, that was, that was super special.

41:28Nadége LaiciSo I hope that people, you know, if I die tomorrow and, you know, people watch this, I think I'll be really proud of them watching this, seeing that it's the last bit of work that I've done. And then the other one is the Melipona bees that you might have seen in ep… in episode two where they, the, you've got this lovely community of Mexican women who have…

41:51Jawad MirYeah

41:51Nadége Laici... Got together and are keeping these native bees. And I think that's amazing that they've got this business for themselves and that they are protecting a species that's really endangered, and they're making, they're making money out of it as well. You know, this honey is very precious, and they're making shampoos and creams and all sorts out of this very precious honey. And they do, they're doing that, as well as, you know, living quite a, you know, a country where women are more traditionally in the home, and so they still have to take children and cook, et cetera, whilst the, their husbands are in the fields and working. And so the fact that they're having this bi… these businesses and also, you know, saving a species and also raising their families, I think that these people are, these women are just amazing. And so out of the, all of the sequences, if these two stay in people's minds about my work, that would be, that would be fantastic.

42:52Nadége LaiciBut hopefully we'll be back in a… You know, in couple of years time, three years time, and we'll be talking about the next thing and I'll have even more stuff to show

43:04Jawad MirSo that…

43:05Nadége LaiciOf that, of that ilk.

43:07Jawad MirSo that's a good point because that was gonna be my next question, which you're probably not gonna tell me what it is, which is cool.

43:12Nadége LaiciNo.

43:13Jawad MirYou know, that, are you working on something next? So I guess you are.

43:17Nadége LaiciI'm actually, at the moment I'm developing new stuff. So we're trying to get more business at Selva Back, and there are a few things that I've started that are really good, but we're trying to get, to get more things off the ground. You know, maybe or not to do with bees. I don't know. I can, I can make films about loads of other things, but yeah, the bees have really touched me and there's a few people in the film, you know, that I'd love to continue working with. You might be able to guess who, but yeah, there's, there's... I've, I've really met some brilliant people, who have a lot more to say in docu… in wildlife documentaries. And so I'm hoping that, you know, I carry on working with them. So that's the hope.

44:03Nadége LaiciSorry, I can't reveal any more, but yeah, that's what we're trying to work on.

44:05Jawad MirNo, that's fine. I, if somebody asks me what am I working on, I will just say the same thing, so it's all good. I completely understand. But thank you…

44:13Nadége LaiciIs your, is your film, In Search of My Sister fi… finished? Is it, yeah?

44:17Jawad MirYeah.

44:18Nadége LaiciOh.

44:18Jawad MirIt's on, it's on Am… it's on Amazon UK. You can either rent it or purchase it, and I know it's also on Tubi in North America…

44:25Nadége LaiciOkay

44:25Jawad Mir... Which is free, but it's with ads. I don't know if it's in UK. I'm not sure.

44:29Nadége LaiciOkay. Okay

44:30Jawad Mir... And then this one too.

44:31Nadége LaiciI'll, I'll try to watch it.

44:32Jawad MirRight here.

44:32Nadége LaiciCitizens of More. Okay, great.

44:34Jawad MirYeah, it's, that's more European-based, so you'll probably, you'll probably have heard of this place, for sure.

44:39Nadége LaiciOkay, great. No, I'm looking forward to it.

44:41Jawad MirYeah. I really appreciate your time. Thank you so much.

44:44Nadége LaiciOh, you're so welcome.

44:45Jawad MirLovely.

44:45Nadége LaiciThank you for having me.

44:47Jawad MirNo, my pleasure. Lovely chatting with you. Great two-episodic series, and, we're looking forward to your next stuff, and looking forward to chatting with you again when the next stuff comes out, whatever that is.

44:57Nadége LaiciThat's great. Thank you so much, Awad. Nice to meet you.

45:01Jawad MirMy pleasure. Thank you so much.

45:02Nadége LaiciBye.

45:02Jawad MirHave a great day. Take care. Bye.