Ed Sayers

As I said, I come from a generation in which it was usually through a mediating presenter, whether it's Johnny Morris or Chris Packham.

So later in the programme, I'm going to be talking to Ed Sayers, director of the recently released Supernature.

The film is recorded on the analogue format of Super 8.

Which is...

So I don't know about you, but there have been times when the high gloss, super high def, spectacular image quality and romping orchestral scores of some top end nature film productions have left me feeling a little cold, a bit detached.

And so it was with a sense of relief, joy, and honestly, good old-fashioned excitement that I watched Supernature, the recently released mosaic of miniature portraits of the natural world, gathered, guided, and narrated by a diverse array of filmmakers, all shooting on the age-old format of Super 8.

Helming the project is Ed Sayers, a long-term fan of the analogue format who previously founded the Straight 8 competition, where entrants create short films using a single cartridge of celluloid, lasting around two and a half minutes, and with all the editing done in camera.

I met up, digitally, with Ed to talk about Supernature, and I began by asking him why a format that was once considered past it and obsolete had proved the perfect tool to move the nature documentary into a bright new future.

It was funny 'cause I was interviewing the director who came on MK3D, and it's not a nature documentary, although that would be a kinda shorthand for what it is.

So what happened is, some years ago, I've spoken about this before, there was a thing called, um, the Straight 8 Film Competition, which Ed Sayers, the director, set up, and this is the, the short filmmakers would make a film, edit it in camera on a reel of Super 8, and then they would then send it in, and then if the film got chosen, 'cause it'd then be produced, and if it got chosen, they would see it for the first time at the festival.

And it was a brilliant competition, and people discovered that somehow working with Super 8 kinda unlocked something creative in short filmmakers.

And Ed Sayers became really, really interested in the way that Super 8 works.

In the same way I think that, that, you know, Mark Jenkin became absolutely fascinated by 16 mil and the Clockwork camera.

So for this project, what he was trying to do was to capture the diversity and wonder, and also endangerment of nature in a new way.

So you have, some of the people are renowned photographers and people who've, you know, done a lot of nature photography before.

Others are people who are completely new to this, and, and they, a- a- and what they want is the, the, the nature, but also the process of capturing it.