'Life on Our Planet', Director, Sophie Lanfear

0:07Sophie LanfearIs that background okay? I know it's not great on the edit, but

0:12Jawad MirThat's okay.

0:12Sophie LanfearIt's

0:13Jawad MirIt, reflects what you do.

0:15Sophie LanfearYes, lastminute.com.

0:19Jawad MirWell, that's the world of documentary, isn't it?

0:22Sophie LanfearYeah. It's, too much to do all the time.

0:27Jawad MirAgreed.

0:27Sophie LanfearNot enough hours, not enough hours in the day.

0:30Jawad MirOh, don't, you don't have to tell me, I completely agree. I wish there was 48 hours in the day, but busy.

0:35Sophie LanfearLooks cool your end there. It's, is that your office or?

0:40Jawad MirYeah, it's my office and little bit of a podcast studio. I do all my post-production work here, and, it just keeps me in the space of, you know, cinema world basically.

0:52Sophie LanfearLooks cozy. Like it.

0:55Jawad MirY… yeah, it is nice, kinda away from everything.

0:59Sophie LanfearBut…

0:59Jawad MirBut it can be, it can be daunting at the same time

1:01Sophie Lanfear... Where are you based?

1:03Jawad MirToronto. Yourself?

1:04Sophie LanfearToronto. I'm in Bristol, in the UK.

1:07Jawad MirOkay. Yeah, I've been to Bristol.

1:09Sophie LanfearYeah.

1:09Jawad MirYeah, lovely place. Yeah.

1:10Sophie LanfearYeah.

1:10Jawad MirAwesome. Well, thank you for joining. Appreciate it.

1:12Sophie LanfearPleasure. Yeah, thank you for having me.

1:15Jawad MirYou know, really, excited to chat to you about Life on Our Planet, specifically I think you directed episode five and eight.

1:23Sophie Lanfear... Three and eight.

1:25Jawad MirThree and eight, okay. Three and eight.

1:27Sophie LanfearYeah.

1:27Jawad MirWhich... They all were fantastic. I actually, I don't really binge watch, I take my time but, you know, I was pretty much hooked from the very beginning. And I think I finished it, on two different plane flights.

1:44Sophie LanfearWow.

1:45Jawad MirIt was just a n… you know, three, four episodes each flight, from, San Francisco to Toronto, and a phenomenal series. Really enjoyed it. I just wanna say that up front first.

1:56Sophie LanfearOh, thank you. That's quite the marathon. I'm not sure I could sit through eight hours of Life on Our Planet. That…

2:05Jawad MirWell, when you're sitting on the plane trying to find things to do, and if it's something good that you can watch, you know, it helps. It, you can't watch everything, it has to be good, right?

2:14Sophie LanfearYeah.

2:14Jawad MirBasically. But yeah, no, before we get onto that, Sophie, I wanted to sort of speak to you about your career, how you got started, what your journey has been, and we will sort of pa… take our path to the series and how you know, started working on that.

2:30Sophie LanfearWell, my path was, originally I wanted to be a vet, which, I'm a failed veterinarian, essentially. I didn't get into veterinary school. And so I had to rethink everything when I was 18, and I was devastated 'cause I'd sort of geared everything towards getting into veterinary college. So I had to take a year out, reapply to university, and in that year I went to Africa and worked on a game reserve.

3:00Sophie LanfearAnd I got really into photography, and I sort of then realized, actually wildlife filmmaking combines these two worlds. They combines arts with sciences, and I'd always loved art, doing sort of drawings myself and then photography 'cause it was such a great medium. It's much quicker than like having to draw or sketch yourself, so you can kind of be artistic with light and I really enjoyed that side of things. So then I sort of st… I sort of ch… swung around and geared everything from that moment on to getting into the BBC Natural History Unit. And so I did a zoology psychology degree at Bristol University, where I knew the Natural History Unit was based. And I just tried to get as much work experience as I could, which was very difficult. But I got my degree, and then I went back to Africa for a year working with meerkats. Cambridge University had a meerkat project.

3:54Sophie LanfearAnd they were f… they were filming, I don't know if you remember a series on Animal Planet called Meerkat Manor?

4:01Jawad MirNo, I haven't. I mean, there are so many of them now I haven't seen that, yeah.

4:05Sophie LanfearSo Meerkat Manor was very successful for Animal Planet. It was, it was a long s… long-standing sort of docu-drama, if you like, into the world of meerkats. And I got, involved with helping the film crews, and because I, my knowledge of meerkats I could sit there and predict what they were gonna do, and I could take the f… the camera operators to the meerkats and help them out, basically. And then from there I slowly built contacts in that world, and I got my first job, on a meerkat feature film that the BBC were making, again, sort of employed for my expertise with watching and observing wild animals or meerkats and being able to predict their behavior.

4:40Jawad MirSure.

4:40Sophie LanfearAnd then slowly I kind of worked my way into the television industry and, amazingly with no training. Like, no… there was no film school. There is now, there's now specialist masters courses you can do in wildlife filmmaking, but at the time there was nothing. It was just…

4:58Jawad MirRight

4:58Sophie Lanfear... You know, reading up as much as you could about, you know, all the television formats, all the different cameras, trying to persuade people to let you kind of talk to them about the industry, about how cameras worked, about filming, and you just had to sort of be like a sponge and absorb as much of that information about how to make documentaries as you could in order to make yourself employable. So yeah, it was hard work at the beginning, but I'm glad I didn't give up, I guess.

5:25Jawad MirThat's fantastic. That's great that you had, you know, even though you got rejected from something, but you still kind of kept your interest in a similar field, which is, you know, obviously wildlife, animals, and kinda tapping that into the, from the creative, angle. And I can see that now that you mention it, the amount of, I wouldn't, I wouldn't say research, but if you wanna say that sort of is seen in the episodes, in all of them, right? It's just that i… it helps with the director obviously too, when he or she knows what exactly they're tackling more than, you know, because that's what their thing is, not just based on what research they have done because that's what they have lived for a long time. And it, and it shows clearly. So that's, that's a really cool story. I thank you for sharing that, I appreciate it.

6:15Sophie LanfearYeah. I just think it's nice to say that… You know, from failure really comes something better, something greater. And I wouldn't have known that at the time. I was devastated. But actually for people out there, you know, rejection can actually lead to something better than you imagined, and I think it's quite a nice story for that reason.

6:36Jawad MirIt is so true, and, you know, I realized that in the last five, six year or two, and I always talk about this to my wife, that I've become so used to rejection that it's like one after the other. Okay, move on. You know, like you don't even dwell about it now. It's like just let's just move forward. It is what it is. What can you do, right? So, and I think that's a good thing to have to go through rejection because it makes you pivot and makes you stronger. It makes you deal, teaches you to deal with things more, you know, efficiently and professionally.

7:05Sophie LanfearYeah, pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and go again.

7:10Jawad MirYeah, there's no choice. Or you can just cry and go do something that you hate and be miserable for the rest of your life. It's that simple. No, I know it sounds very bad, but it's that simple. Either you pick yourself up and you move on, or you're just, you know, gonna be sad, and that's not the choice that you should make. And how did you come on board on this series? I know you're, you're part of a production house. Is it Silver?

7:36Sophie LanfearSilverback Films, yeah.

7:37Jawad MirSilverback Films. So I'm assuming you've done stuff with them before. So that's probably how you kind of got angled into this project. But how did your journey to Silverback Films came about? Like, how did that, when did that happen? Was it recently? What was the story leading up to that?

7:54Sophie LanfearYeah, so I worked at the... It took me a long time to get into the BBC Natural History Unit, and I finally got in to the BBC and I worked my way. It also took me a long time to get onto these big landmark series. So I knew I wanted to ultimately get a job as a producer on a David Attenborough big landmark wildlife series.

8:14Sophie LanfearBut it took probably, I'd say, about eight years before that happened. And I just made it onto a landmark in the BBC called Life Story… ... As an assistant producer. And it came to the end of that and, I got a phone call actually from Alastair Fothergill. So Alastair Fothergill and Keith Scholey are the executive producers or CEOs of, Silverback Films, and they have an incredible pedigree. They were both head of the Natural History Unit. They,.. Alastair was responsible for Planet Earth, Frozen Planet, Blue Planet. So he, you know, that was his thing, the big landmarks, and he left the BBC to set up his own company with Keith. And they had a great series called The Hunt, which was another BBC David Attenborough series. And they were looking for people, and I'd just finished on Life Story and Alastair gave me a call and said, "We're looking for assistant producer. You know, we've heard great things about you. Why don't you come join us?" And so it was a quite a big dilemma to leave the BBC, having s… worked so hard to get where I wanted to be, but equally an amazing opportunity 'cause I'd heard such good things about The Hunt and the footage they were getting, and I was excited by it.

9:26Sophie LanfearSo I just thought, you know, why not? So I left, and that was 10 years ago. So I've been at Silverback…

9:31Jawad MirWow

9:32Sophie Lanfear... 10 years now. And Alastair gave me my first producing job on Our Planet, which was David Attenborough's first landmark for Netflix. So I produced and directed the Frozen Worlds episode of that series. So yeah, it's kind of, it's been an amazing place to work and I'm, yeah, really appreciative of being in a position to be able to produce these shows. It's, yeah, really incredible.

9:57Jawad MirThat's interesting that you mentioned, David Attenborough. Again, I was gonna ask you, have you ever worked on a project where, you know, he narrated, so obviously that answers that question. But what's interesting is, I mean, I'm sure you know about the series Prehistoric Planet via, from Apple, and he narrated that. And we have Morgan Freeman here. Did you... Because I think Prehistoric Planet came out, I think it's in its second season if I'm not mistaken. I know my kids and I saw the first, I probably saw the first few episodes and then I got busy and I never got around to it. Did, had you seen that series at all? Was there any sort of, you know…

10:35Jawad MirThey're two, they're, they're two different series, let's just be clear about that, because that's just about dinosaurs. This is about evolution more or less.

10:43Sophie LanfearYeah. So they are very different series. They were commissioned, I think, I think Life on Our Planet might have even been commissioned first. So th… ... They take an incredibly long time to make these.

10:55Jawad MirYeah.

10:56Sophie LanfearAnd initially Life on Our Planet was also split 'cause Prehistoric Planet was commissioned as an eight parts and it was split into two, and so they had, they got four parts out and now there's the second four parts.

11:08Sophie LanfearThen they were gonna do a similar thing for Life on Our Planet, but they actually decided not to do it in the end and keep the eight together. So we were kind of working alongside, and of course, we have all these non-disclosure agreements now. You can't talk about anything.

11:22Jawad MirYeah.

11:22Sophie LanfearSo of course we knew that it was happening and they knew that we were happening. We knew that they were sort of different things for different streamers. But yeah, it was, they were so different, it wasn't really... You can't really compare. Other than the VFX, you can't really compare the stories. They're so different in their messaging and their narrative.

11:40Jawad MirYeah

11:40Sophie Lanfear... And they both came out of Bristol, so we're, we're quite proud of that fact.

11:47Jawad MirYeah. No, it's, it's, it's, it's, something similar happened with, another series. My friend and my cinematographer, he worked on it's the Apple series Becoming You, which is about the world of kids and babies, which is a great series by the way. And I think similar something came out with, from Netflix too. So I think there's always that overlap. Sometimes those things, those things have been happening for the longest time. You know, as far as I can remember from the '90s, there's two meteor movies, two end of the world movies and, you know, all that stuff. So that's, and they're, they're different. They're all different. The idea is the same, but they're, they go in a completely different path, which is, which is good for the audience too.

12:26Sophie LanfearDo you know there was even w… my, the very first film I worked on that I was saying, the meerkat film, it was funny…

12:32Jawad MirWhich one, sorry?

12:33Sophie LanfearThe, this, the meerkat film, which was from, it was Harvey W…

12:37Jawad MirYeah

12:37Sophie Lanfear... Weinstein, it was the Weinstein Company and BBC Films, and BBC Stu… not Studios, that didn't exist then. It was BBC Drama. Anyway, there were two identical meerkat films being made, one by Animal Planet, who owned the Meerkat Manor brand, and then the BBC had made this separate film, and we were, again, filming 100 kilometers from each other down the road. Both were allowed…

12:59Jawad MirOh, wow

12:59Sophie Lanfear... To talk to, n… we weren't allowed to talk to each other. We knew that both films were happening, and then in the end, the Weinsteins bought the other one, and I don't think it was ever even shown. So that's Hollywood for you.

13:10Jawad MirOh, wow. Yeah. Yep, that is Hollywood for sure. Wow, that is interesting. I actually asked this question s… from somebody once on my podcast, and like why, I don't know if you remember, but back in the '90s there was a, Deep Impact and Armageddon that came about like a month or two apart from Disney and DreamWorks. There was, volcano movies, Dan… Dante's Peak with Pierce Brosnan, and Volcano with Tommy Lee Jones.

13:37Sophie LanfearYeah.

13:37Jawad MirAnd I asked somebody like, "Why, how does this happen?" Like, why, like do studios start racing after the other just for audience? And he said that, I forget who it was. It was like a cinematographer, an editor, or a producer. He told me that at some of the parties, somebody would mention an idea, you know, "Hey, I'm working on this," or, "I'm developing this," and then somebody would take that and pitch it to the other, a… and then it just kinda goes from there and it becomes like two, three different studios working on almost the same thing.

14:08Sophie LanfearYeah, a seed becomes two separate trees. Yeah. Interesting.

14:12Jawad MirYeah. Yeah. Yeah, no, for sure. You know one thing about nature documentaries, I'm a huge nature buff myself. Like I love traveling to very scenic places. I've done a l… like I'll always take my gear with me, I'll take a drone, I'll fly. Like just, it's just something that I totally love and I absolutely fall in love with. And a lot of that, you know, nature cinematography or whatever you wanna call it, photography, drives, for me it drove from watching stuff like Planet Earth, you know, or the wh… the early documentary series, just capturing nature, the time lapses and all that. And filmmaking itself is a very, it was one of those things where you have to have significant patience, complete patience. But nature, documentaries, I mean, that's like another level of patience, and, you know, fighting through weathers or conditions, whether it's bris… blisteringly cold or extremely hot. How do you cope with something like that and, you know, being there not just once but several times over a span of months or years to recapture, to get another angle?

15:22Jawad MirHow do you deal with that?

15:25Sophie LanfearI guess it's, it stems from the fact that the starting point is enjoying that in the first place. So I'd say that majority, if not all of the people in our industry, really love just being outside in the wilds of nature, watching it and observing it and looking at animals and sort of being absorbed in it and there's something really beautiful. I remember when I was working with the meerkats, and you're sat with... 'Cause science can be really boring and slow too, right?

15:53Jawad MirYeah.

15:53Sophie LanfearLike collecting data, and with the meerkats we'd be following them every day collecting data on them. But sometimes you'd be waiting for the meerkats, it's so hot, and they lie down during the middle of the day. And so you lie down under a sh… a tree waiting for them to move, and y… you're so still that all the wildlife around you get these antelope, these deer, giraffes, rhinos, and they just kind of wander past you and they don't know you're there. They haven't detected you, haven't seen you. And there's something beautiful about a window into that world where you're not the predator human. You're, you're…

16:25Sophie Lanfear... You're, you feel like, it's a magical moment where you feel like you're watching nature as if it would be without humans existing. Because obviously as soon as they know you're there it influences their behavior, unless they're really habituated to humans and not scared of them. And so I guess it stemmed really from that kind of addiction to the sort of being immersed in nature, but then add to that the craft of documentary filmmaking, and like you say, it's got so high now in what we do. The bar is so high of obtaining these incredible shots and incredible light and incredible moments and behaviors that have never been seen before film before. And so it is a bit like the Holy Grail. You are ch… always chasing that and you're always trying to strive to do better, film better, do it like no one's ever done it before. And so I guess it's just that sort of drive in, within the profession really, and then you're combining those two things. You're combining the kind of storytelling producer side of things with the technical cinematography side of things with then the wildlife, and it's just a really intoxicating mix of worlds that is just so engaging.

17:34Sophie LanfearI mean, I could sit all day in nature and watch it and tune into the bird song and the alarm calls and the predators walking past and… ... Yeah, it's, it's an amazing thing, and also just taking such inspiration from the little creatures in front of you. Like I remember in Antarctica watching penguins climbing up a hill and, you know, these are birds that are incredibly agile in the water, but on land they have to come ashore to breed every year, and they're a little bit, you know, they're tiny with these waddly pa… paddle-like feet, and they're going up the hill, and it's this huge hill in Antarctica with like snow…

18:07Sophie Lanfear... And slippy and icy and they're falling down, and some of them have been attacked by leopard seals, so they've got these whole, blood everywhere and just holes, you know, their guts hanging out. And yet they still go. They still march. They still don't let that affect them, and they kind of trudge their way s… sort of one step at a time, and they beat us. Like, they're quicker than us up those hills. So it's amazing. I take great inspiration from those characters as well.

18:32Jawad MirYeah, like you said, failure is something that teaches you to move forward, right? And it's not an option for you to stop. And it's funny you mention that, you know, at re… in storytelling whether you're doing wildlife documentary, any documentary, socio-political, you know, food, or even narrative film, I find it, I find it really interesting that I learn so much from the stories that I'm making and the characters that are in there, and the perseverance that they're going through. I'm like, "Okay, who am I?" Like, you know. The... And it's funny that you're making this film, but you're learning so much from these people or these characters or these animals, and it's just a fascinating circle of life.

19:19Sophie LanfearAnd that's the thing, it's a beautiful thing about documentary filmmaking. You know, no matter what, you throw yourself into that world, don't you? And I lo… I mean, I love, Life on Our Planet was exponential in terms of a learning curve. I mean, I did read zoology…

19:33Jawad MirYeah

19:34Sophie Lanfear... At university, but you don't cover evolution in the level of detail that we did. And so the first thing you do when you're given a show to make is, yeah, there's a rough structure, but you kind of chuck it out the window when you get on board, and you're like, "Right, how do we tell the story? This is the time period I've been given." And you just go into just reading everything, educating yourself on every single asset so that you... Every sorry, every single facet so that you can pick out and weed your narrative story through all this literature and how do you make it relatable? How do you make it entertaining? How do you, how do you, all these amazing things that you've learned and discovered, how do you tell that to an audience? 'Cause that's the exciting part for me.

20:11Sophie LanfearIt's like lichen on program three, I was like, do you know, any executive producer when you tell them you're gonna open a show on lichen is gonna think you're mad and you're nuts, and you know, it won't sustain, it's boring, blah. But I see it as my job to make it interesting and exciting and relevant. And you know, that was a real challenge on the opening of episode three to start with lichen, going into sort of moss and ferns, and making that engaging. But I love it because it's relatable, and everyone can look out their window and see lichen. I mean, you can see it, I can see it here on the stone faces of the building, like. And that thing was one of the first, it's not one species, it's two, and it was one of the first combination of species to make its way out of the oceans, and I just think that's remarkable. It's an amazing thing, and I wanted to sort of tell people about it and in a really visual way that kind of amazes them, and inspires them, and excites them. So I love it. I love the challenge of that and…

21:09Jawad MirYeah

21:09Sophie Lanfear... Hopefully that was something that people will learn and remember.

21:14Jawad MirYeah. No, I learned a lot. I mean, even my kids, they were watching it. Well, I made them watch the first episode. They're like, "We've already seen Prehistoric Planet." I'm like, "No, this is different." And they watched the first episode, and then I had to, do the rest on the plane because I was traveling, and then I found out that they're on episode five on their own, so, you know, they're…

21:36Sophie LanfearWow

21:36Jawad Mir... And they're 13 and 11, so it's not like something, you know, they kind of just took it on their own. So it, the, what you try to do i… is, has worked I'm sure beyond, you know, people that you can imagine. And what's interesting about this series is from your angle, I mean, it's different in the sense that you're dealing with there's a lot of stuff that's obviously real, and there's a lot of stuff that's visual effects. That learning curve, I'm assuming you probably didn't do anything of that nature before to that level. Is that correct to assume?

22:13Sophie LanfearZero. Yeah.

22:15Jawad MirSo what was that like? Because obviously there's storyboarding involved, and the movement of cameras, knowing exactly what's gonna go animated in there. What was that like? Please run that by me.

22:28Sophie LanfearYeah. Well, my partner actually is Jamie McPherson, and he was the cinematographer and VFX director of photography on the series. And so you can imagine, like, if you're together, you live and breathe it, right? Even every night, every morning we talked about it. And, what was interesting was we had to look back at Jamie's footage for, that he'd shot from the hunt and, you know, he's one of the top wildlife camera operators. And so we'd look at his rushes and be like, "Okay, what makes his rushes A, stand out, but B, organic, and real, and visceral, and feel like you're there?" And we kind of studied what the little camera decisions are in camera, and the imperfections…

23:08Sophie Lanfear... In a shot that, you know, 'cause you, the animal, you don't know what the animal's gonna do. I mean, you can guess what the animal's gonna do, but you're, you're sort of reacting to how the animal behaves. And so we kind of looked at his footage, we spoke to... 'Cause ILM had never worked in this way either before. ILM…

23:24Jawad MirYeah

23:24Sophie Lanfear... You know, it was new for them. And so we all sat down a year before we shot anything and we just talked about, okay, how do we do this? What camera angles? What are the rules that we're gonna put in place, like? So we decided that we wanted to film it as we would. It's got to sit alongside natural history as well, which is very difficult 'cause it's puts the natural history under a lot of scrutiny. Sorry, the VFX…

23:46Jawad MirYeah

23:46Sophie Lanfear... Under a lot of scrutiny. And so we decided that we'd try and shoot where possible on long lens to give it that compressed look that you get, the sort of 50 to 1,000 Canon lens that we use for a lot of wildlife documentaries. It's a very good sequence building lens because you can obviously pick up a lot of different shot sizes. When you get single one-off behavioral moments, it's a great lens for that. So you can change shot sizes, so you have cut points. So we pretty much used that lens for most of the sequences. And so we put rules in place, that enabled it to have all the fabric and design of what a wildlife shoot would have. And then we had Jamie there to sort of have that consistency of look and style that he brings to it, so that all the VFX back plates, everything is shot by Jamie. And it's all real world environments. That was another important decision. Like, do we go CG, like Jungle Book that's 100% VFX, or do we go… Let's film as much of the plate as we possibly can, and then just put the creatures into that. And I think actually that gives it a very much more visceral feeling.

24:47Sophie LanfearIt's much more organic feeling to the shots, and it helps embed those creatures, I think, better than if we'd chosen to just go down the 100% CG route. So there was a lot, a lot of working it out, sort of testing new methods out. We even had Jamie bought, like, the whole cast of plastic... I think there'll be some making of snippets coming out in the next week or so about it. But it, he, we had little plastic dinosaurs, and we would, instead of... It was a much quicker process than storyboarding. So with his iPhone, he would do tracking shots, and we'd move them around with little bits of paper on the desk, and we'd map all that out, and then we'd actually edit with those as well. So, we were able to do the pre-visualization, again, in a very untraditional way, that is not sort of normal to the process. And because we didn't have endless amounts of money, obviously, you know, we couldn't change... Jonathan said, Jonathan's the VFX supervisor at Aardman, and he was like…

25:43Jawad MirYeah

25:43Sophie Lanfear... "You can't change your minds." You know, once you've edited the story, that is it. You have to stick to that, and you can't just make a creature and then change your mind. He said in Hollywood that happens all the time. They'll get down, they'll have done all the VFX shots, and then s… someone comes in and says, "No, I don't like that," you know, "You need to change the entire look of that character," or whatever. And he's like, "You can't afford that. You're gonna have to work out what your story is, work out what your shots are, and go and shoot that and stick to that." but that's fine because we were kind of used to working like that anyway with natural history. You know, we haven't, we can't change the shots that we come back with from a shoot. It either happens or it doesn't happen, so…

26:21Jawad MirYeah

26:21Sophie Lanfear... We were kind of used to that way of thinking. But it was, yeah, it was a huge learning curve for all of us.

26:28Jawad MirI'm actually speaking to Jonathan in two hours, or hour and a half. So I'll be, I'll be talking to him about the VFX. But, you know, going back to, I remember it was Planet Earth, I think it was the first or the second one. Have you seen Planet Earth II?

26:46Sophie LanfearYes.

26:46Jawad MirThe one

26:47Sophie LanfearYeah

26:47Jawad Mir... Okay. So there's a very popular sequence of the snakes and the iguanas, the chase.

26:53Sophie LanfearYeah.

26:53Jawad MirYeah. So they shot that over two years. They had to go back and, you know, f… do, redo some of the inserts and some of the cuts with different chases, and they just kind of put that together. With the real stuff that you capture, the real animals, not necessarily the, dinosaurs or prehistoric creatures, was there any time that you had to go back to get inserts of a similar sequence, just because something was missing or was there anything like that?

27:26Sophie LanfearIt has certainly in the past. I remember on Our Planet, when we made that series, there was a caribou migration story that they had to go back for 'cause it just didn't have the number. You know, the, so it's, it's, it's not a thing that isn't unheard of. However, on this series it was slightly different. We weren't really chasing, we weren't chasing so much, like, when you're working on these big landmarks, normally the Holy Grail is, like, right, new behavior, something that's never been seen before or…

27:56Sophie Lanfear... Raised the bar or new species. We weren't really so much chasing that, if you know what I mean. We were actually telling this bigger story, so we were picking actually the more representative behaviors in order to show the evolution or tell the evolutionary story. And so therefore we could pick behaviors that we knew happened. Also COVID was another one. Our whole production schedule was squeezed into such a short filming window that we just didn't have the opportunity to go back and redo things.

28:28Sophie LanfearSo there are definitely sequences that hit the cutting room floor. I remember for Program 8 we went to f… film desert owls, and no one had ever filmed desert owls before. They actually nest on the ground, not in trees, and it was a nice example to show, the adaptation of owls to the desert. But the sequence just didn't have enough behavior. It was a little, it just didn't work, and so we ended up cutting that sequence from the film and never…

28:54Jawad MirRight

28:55Sophie Lanfear... Saw the light of day. So I guess there's those sorts of things that happened. But yeah, I'd say this series, it wasn't so much about going back to get stuff as maybe other series might be…

29:04Jawad MirYeah

29:05Sophie Lanfear... In what we do.

29:05Jawad MirI think some… sometimes that's a blessing regardless of what you're doing, is if you know there's no option of redoing it. Just like shooting on film versus digital, you know? When you're shooting on digital, you know you can redo the takes because there's no, you know, film processing fee or negatives and stuff. But on film you're just kind of, like, limited, "Okay, this is what I gotta do." So sometimes restrictions sometimes can be beneficial in trying to drive the best out of you.

29:32Sophie LanfearYeah, the pressure I guess.

29:34Jawad MirYeah. Yeah

29:35Sophie Lanfear... I did do my first, the meerkat film was film, so I have experienced shooting on film for one project.

29:43Jawad MirYeah, no, I miss film, watching film, just the feel of it. Like, any time I see real grain on the big screen, like, I feel like I'm literally touching that grain, and it's just so, such a phenomenal thing. And it, I know, I mean, it, with things that, you know, technology, everything changes, and I'm obviously reaping a benefit of the digital technology myself, but it's, it's sometimes good to watch that, but sadly it's, you know, kind of going away.

30:12Sophie LanfearYeah, I think… ... For us it's, people just love to see nature and, you know, when you go into shops to buy televisions…

30:19Jawad MirYeah

30:19Sophie Lanfear... It's always nature. Don't know if it's the same in the States or Canada, but in England you go into a television shop and it has Planet Earth up on, you know, because it just looks so good and crisp and clear and vivid, doesn't it?

30:30Jawad MirYeah.

30:30Sophie LanfearSo I guess that there's the, certainly I think with what we do, there's the drive towards the more filmic look. I don't know. Might look like it's out of focus a bit or something.

30:39Jawad MirYeah, no, for wildlife documentaries, 100%. I was talking about, like, films like… You know, like Jurassic Park, Oppenheimer, you know, the films that we grew up watching and are watching right now. That's what I was referring to.

30:51Sophie LanfearYeah.

30:52Jawad MirBut speak… speaking of Jurassic Park, I mean, it's, it must be really cool to have your name attached to a project which has the name Executive Producer Steven Spielberg.

31:04Sophie LanfearYeah, that's a dream, isn't it? I mean

31:07Jawad MirIt is for everybody, including myself.

31:10Sophie LanfearYeah, I mean, of course, we all tr… we all, I grew up with that film. I mean, it just inspired so many people to get into dinosaurs, T-Rex. There's just so much about it, and…

31:20Jawad MirYeah

31:20Sophie Lanfear... It was when we, got the first feedback, we were so nervous before we sent anything off the very first time to Steven. And, I remember they... He's so busy, so we would send him things for review rather than sort of necessarily direct conversations with him. But I remember we got it back from Amblin, who, the executives at Amblin, and said, "Right, Steven's seen it, and he loves it." And we were just like, oh, it was the Lystrosaurus sequence, and it was just like, oh my God, like that's... We were expecting to be like, have real harsh criticism and it to be like, but you just know he absolutely loved it. He thought the animation was brilliant, and the models were really great. And so yeah, it was, that was a scary moment, but one that kind of luckily, ooh, Steven approved it, so we could move on, which was nice.

32:04Jawad MirThat's lovely. That's amazing to hear, and it's, you know, I've, I've heard that before so many times. Everybody's like, "You know, we sent it to Steven, and we were really scared, and it came back with like, 'We loved it.'" You know, he loved it, and I think he, if he, for him, I think the biggest thing is, aside from anything, is the storytelling, which should be a prime focus of everyone. And if he sees the story is carrying the film, then, you know, obviously there are visual effects with ILM. He's dealt with ILM all his life. So yeah, kudos to you. Kudos to you. That's, that's amazing.

32:37Sophie LanfearYeah.

32:37Jawad MirThat's amazing. On ch… cherry on top.

32:40Sophie LanfearYeah, well, like you say, I think from day one they were, Amblin and Steven were, for that very reason, the story was so strong in this series, like, and they were really excited by that actually, 'cause I think they learnt a lot.

32:54Jawad MirYeah.

32:56Sophie LanfearSo, yeah.

32:57Jawad MirYeah. We… were you involved in post for the episodes that you directed?

33:04Sophie LanfearYeah. So, everything from conception right through to completion.

33:08Jawad MirRight.

33:08Sophie LanfearYeah.

33:09Jawad MirAnd as far as the narration is concerned, obviously, you know, it's there throughout the entire series. Was it a se… a series showrunner that was sort of managing that aspect, or were each director's dealing with the delivery or with the pacing of, Morgan Freeman's narration?

33:31Sophie LanfearWe were there. I was there for the com record with Morgan. We had... So we, in natural history we kind of, the producer directors write the films. They, do everything. They sort of write the films, they go into the com records, they fit the com, they decide, they sit with the composer and talk to the composer about pacing this, write cue sheets. So yeah, we're across every element and design of the show. Of course, we did have Dan Tapster, who was the series producer/showrunner for this.

33:59Sophie LanfearAnd he, you know, he was instrumental in kind of keeping this, the massive story across all eight episodes c… like, strong and cohesive. And also, he was really great at making sure there was a cohesive style across it, and we brought a script editor on to just kind of polish our scripts to make sure that all... 'Cause we all write in slightly different ways, and so, there was that consistency. It was Dan and him basically helped create more of a consistency, I'd say, than is normal in natural history. So that was another unique thing about this project, I guess, is that, a lot of effort went into making it cohesive across the eight parts and not just what we're used to doing, which is, individual filmmakers making their film within a series, and they can all be slightly different, which is usually a good thing when it's something like Our Planet 'cause you want that variety of kind of…

34:47Jawad MirYeah

34:47Sophie Lanfear... I mean, it's still obviously a cohesive series, but it's a bit more variety between the producers, whereas this one I think 'cause the connective tissue between it was so great, and we worked really hard on the end of one show to get you into the start of the next.

35:02Jawad MirThe next, yeah.

35:03Sophie LanfearAnd that, again, that was Dan Tapster was really great at driving that and making sure that it was, I guess, hopefully bingeable, and like you wanna know what happens next. And again, that's very hard to achieve in natural history normally. But because the story was so great with this one, I felt like that was a real success actually.

35:21Jawad MirYeah. Yeah, and I, and I anticipated in the last episode that it would sort of talk about now, right? But what I didn't anticipate, which I'm not gonna say, just for people who haven't seen it, the very last frame of the sh… you know, of the, of the series, the last episode, what it shows that, you know, what could happen if things don't go the way they should be. You know, they, if they keep going the way that they are.

35:48Jawad MirSo I know it paints a very not so, it completely contradicts visually from all the stuff that you've seen, but obviously there's a message, right? There's a call to action. And I thought that was pretty powerful. Like, the last frame was probably the most powerful thing in the entire series. Everything that led up from a spark of evolution to where we are today and where we could be tomorrow.

36:16Sophie LanfearYeah. Well, thank you. I... That was, I mean, we actually cut the end of the s… the last 15 minutes of the series. We were in the cutting room of that when the COVID lockdown pandemic thing happened, which was quite ironic. Because basically…... We felt the end of the series was so important to get it right, and so I wanted to cut it way before we were due to actually edit the films. And so that had time to specially shoot everything and make it feel really poetic at the end and really important and give it value. And I also wanted to get it right because… I didn't want to bash people over the head with a strong conservation message. I would much rather that, given what you've learned in the last eight hours, you've learned a hell of a lot about evolution, about extinction, about the past and how that informs the future and the present. And I wanted people to start to connect that up for themselves. And so I didn't wanna sort of hit people over the head with it, you know. I feel like some people are maybe be getting a little bit blind to it all because you just hear it all the time, right?

37:21Sophie LanfearAnd so I didn't want…

37:21Jawad MirYeah

37:21Sophie Lanfear... People to sort of turn off and be like, "Oh, here we go. Here's the environmental messaging at the end." So it's important to sort of celebrate human achievement and what we are and what we've become. But the flip side to that being the damage that has created collectively.

37:37Jawad MirYeah

37:37Sophie Lanfear... Not to point the finger at anything, but just humanity in general really.

37:43Jawad MirYeah. I get it.

37:44Sophie LanfearAnd so, and also to frame it in the context of the past, because there's huge analogies. There's, we know that when CO2 increases, like the Permian, what happens? And CO2 increases, you get global warming, you get climate change, and you get mass death, and that's essentially what we're doing, but we're doing it with meteoric speed. So we're doing it at the speed of this meteor impact that wiped out the dinosaurs.

38:09Sophie LanfearWe also know that, you know, the dominant species, essentially us, go in this one, in this case, going into a mass extinction, has never come out. And so I wanted to just people to reflect for themselves. I li… I like to have an active, not a passive viewer at the end of a show. Like, I like to sort of end on a question so that people are sat there thinking or they're outraged or they're incensed or they're emotional or something, so that you turn to the person next to you and you have a chat about it and a conversation about it, and it incites you to kind of think for yourself.

38:42Jawad MirYeah.

38:42Sophie LanfearAnd that's exactly what I was trying to get at the end of the series. I wanted people to be thinking for themselves, not to be feeling like they're lectured. But it was more like, "Here's the tools, here's the information, here's the education. Now draw your own, draw your own conclusions from that."

38:59Jawad MirYeah, and you did really well with that. Well, but first of all, it wasn't in your face like, "Here we go. Here comes a message." That wasn't there at all. At all. Like, I just didn't feel it in any way. And the second thing that I actually enjoyed, like you just said in a word, that the conversation, and that's something that I cherish as myself when I'm telling stories, is that I want people to get out of the movie theater or, you know, streaming service or wherever it is have a discussion, have a conversation because that's what we're lacking so much nowadays. Every freaking thing that's going wrong in the world is because a lack of conversation. And I don't know about climate change and global warming destroying us the way things are in the world right now. I think we're gonna destroy ourselves first before that even happens. But nevertheless, you know, phenomenally done series, episodes. I did wanna ta… tap into one thing, and I wonder if that was ever discussed or it was never on the table.

40:04Jawad MirYou know, there is a co… always conversation between science versus religion. You know, how did, how did life start, right? You know, the scientists will argue that it start with the spark of, you know, that's how life started, with a spark. But who created the spark? Like, where is there a divine power? Was that ever something a part of a conversation to even tackle in the series or to even bring it up, religion versus science, or was it completely sep… something separate?

40:32Sophie LanfearIt wasn't a consideration. Is that a bad thing?

40:36Jawad MirAt all.

40:37Sophie LanfearNot really.

40:39Jawad MirNo, I'm just curious

40:40Sophie Lanfear... I'd, I'd say that the majority, if not all of us on, come from that scientific background and I think it's... Also how do you get into that and which religion would you represent? You know, I think it would've been a can of worms and…

40:55Jawad MirNo. Yeah. Not religion. I'm just, I was just talking about where did life come from before this. Just a question, not even preaching. I wasn't e… I was, I was just qu… asking in general because it is, it, I mean, it obviously requires a series on its, on its own, to be honest. Like, it's such a huge topic that…

41:11Sophie LanfearYeah

41:11Jawad Mir... I mean, forget religion versus science now. Religion versus religions are in disagreement, right? So it's a, it's a, it's a different, thing. I was just curious because I think it's, it's a fascinating discussion and I would love to have it. I'd love to see it on a streaming service once with a, with a massive, outreach and just try to see where it leads.

41:31Sophie LanfearYeah. I mean, it's…

41:32Jawad MirConversation

41:32Sophie Lanfear... How hard to visualize what we would show.

41:36Jawad MirIt is. It is.

41:36Sophie LanfearIt's difficult. It's, it's…

41:38Jawad MirIt is

41:38Sophie Lanfear... But it is a g… yeah, it is. Going pre, g… rewinding the clock even further back is definitely, you know, definitely an interesting area. And I'm sure there's a lot of science, you know, about it. It g… it gets, it boils down to physics and chemistry probably, doesn't it? About where the atoms come from and what space is and what time is and all those things. I think it would be the fabric of the universe and, yeah. Maybe a bit too broad for our show.

42:06Jawad MirOh, no. I'm not even ask…

42:08Sophie LanfearOur area

42:08Jawad Mir... I'm not even asking that you should've done. I was just curious. I'm just, I love making conversations and asking questions that I don't even know the answers to. So, you know, it's just trying to figure out if that was ever on the table, which is, which is absolutely fine because like I said, it's a series on its own. What's, what's in store for you in the future? Are you working on anything right now?

42:31Sophie LanfearI am waiting for the next project. It's on the precipice of commission, so I, and I probably won't be able to talk to it for another f…

42:39Jawad MirThat's fine

42:39Sophie Lanfear... Talk to you about it for another five years anyway.

42:41Jawad MirYeah.

42:42Sophie LanfearBut no, it's, yeah, there's some exciting new projects coming up. But I real… personally, I've really enjoyed this blend of worlds. Like, I think it's a real exciting,... Development or new genre really of this sort of blend of VFX and the power to tell stories that we couldn't really tell so well before. And so I'm excited about where that's gonna take natural history in the future, because I think there are a lot of stories that have not been able to be told because of the visuals are too risky or it costs too much money. I'm not saying to replace, like, what you could go out and film. I'm s… I'm, I'm thinking of kind of concepts or things about evolution or biology that are very hard to get across visually. And now we have the power to do that with animation. So I think it's quite an exciting new format/genre actually, that we could see some really creative things coming in the next decade or so coming out of this sort of new world of CG complementing the natural world.

43:49Sophie LanfearIt's exciting times.

43:51Jawad MirWould you be concerned or are you concerned with the way AI is moving and in a decade's time, I mean, the way it... Okay, so let me put it this way. 20 years ago, or, you know, even 25 years ago, we couldn't have imagined the amount of doc series on nature there are, like, whether it's in the winder… wilderness or the abyss of the ocean. 10, 15 years from now, what if AI could create every single thing that we go out and shoot, especially in this, in this, sector, you know, of wildlife. Do you feel that is a possibility? Especially with now that the series that you worked on, I mean, they were computer-generated prehistoric creatures.

44:37Sophie LanfearNo, I... Yeah, I mean, I've been listening to a lot of podcasts on AI and the future and what's gonna happen, and it is frightening.

44:45Jawad MirYeah.

44:46Sophie LanfearI mean, I don't think people sort of say, "Oh, but we can use it," and I'm like, yeah, we can use it until it uses us. Like, I just, I can't imagine a future happening that it's not, AI is not gonna become its own thing, and, I think it's frightening from a point of view of what is real and what isn't real and the power…

45:06Jawad MirYeah

45:06Sophie Lanfear... Of that, you know, fake news. I think it's gonna hit the sort of…

45:10Jawad MirOh, yeah

45:10Sophie Lanfear... World of news before it hits our world, per se. But, no, I definitely think it's gonna be, interesting to see where that leads and, you know, just even the mimicry of people's voices, the mimicry of, like, narration, you know, the mimicry. I kind of initially, I guess naively, thought, oh, you know, well, we're a creative industry and, AI can't be creative, you know? And then you look at these pictures when you tell them to dream up a scene from the 1970s with X, Y, and Z in it, and then it comes up with it and it's photo real and it looks like a picture, and you're like, okay. Yeah.

45:44Jawad MirYeah.

45:44Sophie LanfearWe have... There is cause con… for concern. I think it would be ignorant to think there isn't cause con… for concern, to be honest.

45:51Jawad MirNo, it... And I think we're all part of it too, right? Because for example, not at a bigger level, but even at a smaller level, everybody's trying to save money, right? Whether it's for production, and especially for independent filmmakers. Okay, so for example, if I have to make a deck about something that I have zero dollars to go out and shoot to make a deck of or take photographs of, okay, punch it into, you know, AI, generate me an image. And then if that starts happening, which it is, I did it once. I took it to a streaming platform and I'm like, well, obviously I wanna do this, but I, you know, I had to because I had no choice. If that becomes a norm with ChatGPT and other stuff, and then Netflix also made a short animated film, which I haven't seen, which was completely AI generated, wh… what's to say that visual effects artists' jobs, animators' jobs, our jobs, you know, are probably at the last, in the end of the line, but still, it's, it's scary.

46:56Jawad MirIt is very scary.

46:57Sophie LanfearYeah. It's terrifying. And it's probably not far away, is it? I mean...

47:02Jawad MirNo. I mean, could you have imagined ChatGPT last year around this time? It pretty much came out in November of last year. Imagine, in one year, look what has happened. It's, it's crazy the speed. It's not just what's coming out, it's the speed it's coming out at.

47:19Sophie LanfearWell, the guy, I was listening to a podcast about the guy that left Google, X.

47:23Jawad MirYes

47:23Sophie Lanfear... And he said his, the turning point for him, the reason he left and he realized this, they had a room with lots of robotic arms in it, and they had balls on the floor, and they just let the arms try an algorithm, see if it came back, show it to the camera. Did it have a ball? No. And they... So it had a feedback loop happening. Have it, did it pick up a ball, yes or no? No. And it never picked up a ball. None of the arms in that room ever picked up a ball. And then he, talking back from lunch one day, and one arm had done it, had picked up a ball and shown it to the camera, and it got a positive result. Within the next few hours, the entire room was picking up the ball every single time. And so he just said what was frightening was the speed of learning and the fact that it could... 'Cause obviously it would then pass that algorithm to the rest of them all and then modify the algorithms and make sure, you know. And it, he just said it was just a real, it doesn't sound like much, but it was a real pivotal moment for him in realizing the speed at which that information and the learning could be passed on to a community of robotics.

48:25Sophie LanfearAnd it's, yeah, he said that was a huge thing that he didn't think was possible.

48:31Jawad MirThat sounds like a scene from a typical sci-fi movie, like when you're trying to make an invention and you go out for lunch and you come back and boom, something has happened. That, you know, that is, that is scary. But I, one thing that I, that I hope for is that when people, not just in the art industry or anything, like, you know, whether it's being a carpenter or, I don't know, being a doctor, there will always be a demand… Maybe not to the same place. Like, you know, once... Like, for example, visual effects came out since Jurassic Park, and now everybody's kinda going back to the practical effects, like they wanna shoot everything in the camera. And I hope that the speed that the AI impro… you know, becomes part of all our lives, at that same speed, if not faster, people start realizing that I want the real elements. You know, whether it's a real doctor or real storyteller telling a story. But, you know, it remains to be seen. That's, that's what I hope for, and that's what I'm counting on.

49:30Sophie LanfearYeah. Well, it w… it won't be long before AI has its own voice, and it's producing…

49:35Jawad MirYeah

49:35Sophie Lanfear... Documentaries for us to watch.

49:38Jawad MirYes. Yes. There's actually an interesting, I don't know if you must have seen it on social media, there was a robot, like a physical robot, life-sized robot playing table tennis with a guy, and he would just move from one corner to the other in ridiculous speed. I mean, I didn't even see the end of the video, and I'm assuming he didn't lose because it was like a three-minute-long rally, and he just, he... And for him, it's like nothing. Like, there's no m… muscle stretching. There is no pain on the shoulder or anything like that, right? It's great to watch, I won't lie…

50:12Sophie LanfearYeah

50:12Jawad Mir... But it's scary at the same time.

50:16Sophie LanfearYes. Yeah. I think, the... It'll be funny to look back in 50 years' time and think, "Oh, I remember when we were just laughing at AI because it could play us at table tennis." Yeah.

50:26Jawad MirYes. Yes. Agreed. Agreed. Well, this has been really fascinating. Thank you so much…

50:31Sophie LanfearYeah

50:31Jawad Mir... For your time, Sophie. I would love to talk to you more about your past projects, so if there is anything that is very dear to you, I'm sure it's like asking which children is more favorite of yours, but very dear to you that you wanna chat about, just let me know and, we'll, we'll, we'll do it. Because I truly had a great time talking to you. I loved the work you did in the series…

50:52Sophie LanfearOh

50:52Jawad Mir... And, would love to see more of your work, for sure.

50:55Sophie LanfearOh, thank you. Well, we didn't even get on to talking about walrus, so that might be one for another time.

51:01Jawad MirNo, for sure. What, when was, when did that come out?

51:04Sophie LanfearIt was Our Planet, and it was the walrus falling off the cliffs. I don't know if you remember seeing that.

51:10Jawad MirI don't.

51:11Sophie LanfearYeah.

51:11Jawad MirI gotta, I gotta…

51:12Sophie LanfearYou need to…

51:12Jawad Mir... Revisit that

51:13Sophie Lanfear... You need to watch Frozen Worlds, the Our Planet episode, and you, if you don't cry at the end of that film, it's horrendous.

51:22Jawad MirOur Planet.

51:22Sophie LanfearYeah.

51:22Jawad MirIt's on Netflix, right?

51:24Sophie LanfearYeah, Frozen Worlds. It's, it's the second episode.

51:28Jawad MirYou did just one episode or you did multiple?

51:30Sophie LanfearI just did that one. That was the first film I ever made. So.

51:33Jawad MirThat's, that's, that's a great angle. Okay. Great. Let's, let's do that. Maybe I'll, watch it sometime in the next couple of weeks, and perhaps we can chat before Christmas or in the new year.

51:44Sophie LanfearYeah. It's quite shocking. I think, comes with a rating.

51:49Jawad MirWell, don't tell me anything.

51:51Sophie LanfearYeah.

51:52Jawad MirDon't tell me. I will watch it. But I'm really looking forward to it, not for the reasons of watching someone dying or some animal dying, but just from the standpoint of storytelling.

52:01Sophie LanfearYeah. Well, thank you. Yeah. It's always lovely to chat about in more detail than, you know, 'cause you don't get the opt… opportunity to chat that often about the details of the craft. So yeah, I've really enjoyed it. Thank you.

52:14Jawad MirI hope you enjoyed this episode. Thank you so much for watching and listening. Don't forget to subscribe, like, share, and comment, and do come back for another episode. Until then, have a great day.