We wanted to feel like conquerors, like nature hunters, but all we could really feel was a sense of oneness.

I've always been quite smitten with Koyaanisqatsi.

It's a wonderful film and it shows us the world with no words, just set to Philip Glass music and it's incredibly powerful and it speaks volumes.

But I knew this film, that wouldn't be right.

We have indigenous people like a Sami reindeer head.

The Pajalau, the community in Indonesia who spearfish.

We had Amazon tribes who we talked to use Super 8 cameras.

Were you at any point aware of reacting against nature? what the current norm is, or was it simply that there is something organic about Super 8 that you felt enabled people to see rather than just look?

You just trusted that they were able to share their story in a way that would fit the story that you didn't know you wanted to tell, maybe.

Well, I think in a way, a bit of it was down to us to have to fit the story around what they were telling us.

So let that become the story.

Absolutely.

And again, that's why you couldn't really have scripted it and you couldn't have too much of a definite idea of what each one was going to be you just had to have a hunch that it felt good and that they were doing it for the right reasons and they had enough of an understanding of what we were trying to do and I didn't want to tell each filmmaker too much about what other people were doing we did have some examples we had a short edit that had sort of three of us doing this to as a proof of concept both for funding and also for for future contributors additional contributors but it was really important they went and started doing blueprints of each other so they all felt fresh and different and personal yeah god when you were talking then you just sort of you set off so many thoughts in my brain and A lot of them were about subsets of people I was thinking about, because one thing you said was, you know, you trusted all these people and you've given them a voice.

I would like to just a caveat on that would be that some of them are already, you know, incredibly adept environmental storytellers that we were lucky to have wanting to join in with us.

But then we were able to put a Super 8 camera in their hands, usually for the first time.

And what are your thoughts on that? And what's your experience of that?

Really hard.

Um, and so it started with that community and- and the Straight8 community globally.

I mean, all over, on every continent there are people that I know.

Um, but then gradually as the project grew, BFI Doc Society came on board, Screen Scotland came on board.

We were able to bring on a casting producer.

And then we started going like, "Well, wouldn't it be nice to have a sort of Maasai, uh, filming maybe lions?" And like two days later she'd found someone that could do it, and the cameras were on their way.

And then, you know- We wanted to have some indigenous voices in there.

Yeah

feel to that.

Yeah, absolutely.

I think that's the thing.

It does create an intimacy.

You're right there in the moment.

You have to move your body to where you want to get the shot.

And obviously with respect to the animals as well.

Tell us about that.