the new netflix documentary fantastic
fungi features super satisfying time
lapse footage that was filmed over the
course of 15 years by this pioneering
artist my name is louis schwartzberg i'm
a filmmaker and i love to take audiences
on journeys through time and scale and
that that's a real rush let's go behind
the scenes and find out how these time
lapses were made for fantastic fungi
well i think the biggest surprise for
people watching the film
is they think that it's all filmed
outdoors and there's a lot of reasons
why you can't film time lapse of plants
and fungi outdoors number one there's
wind which would make the object shake
and rattle and look like a charlie
chaplin movie number two
there are bugs and other elements that
would interfere with the filming the
light has to be constant you know even
during the day the light fluctuates
so i built a studio on top of my garage
if i was shooting
one frame every 15 minutes that means
i'm shooting
four frames an hour times 24
is 96 frames 96 frames is four seconds
of film
so the way it works is i had somebody
build an intervalometer for me
intervalometer means it triggers a
camera one frame at a time there you go
in 24 hours we'll have one second of
film it also triggers the grow lights to
come on and off and the photo lights and
the photo lights is the beauty light the
gorgeous tabletop
cinematography lighting the grow lights
are these sort of led lights that are
kind of weird and pink i think they were
developed for people growing cannabis
and i'm able to program the
grow lights to be like sunrise and
sunset if i leave the grow lights on 24
hours they die i set up shots in the
morning i check them at night i realize
i've turned it into a spiritual practice
it actually literally gets me up in the
morning because as soon as i'm out of
bed i'm thinking oh i wonder what the
flower did last night is it still in
frame is it in focus i have to imagine
what the framing in the composition is
going to look like tomorrow or two days
from now or a week from now and that is
a transformational experience because
you have to put your mind into the
mindset and the intention of the flower
or the fungi thinking where it's going
to grow how big will it get and if
you're right boy it's a rush and if
you're wrong it means you just got to do
it all over again
louie and his team consulted mycologists
fungi experts on how to grow mushrooms
in an environment free from bacteria and
bugs for the film
but which was the most photogenic fungus
lion's mane had these little kind of
tiny tentacles that would emerge and
they would wiggle in this really
beautiful wave-like pattern i'd say
roughly you know the ratio of success to
failure it's roughly about one out of
six maybe one out of ten
it's extremely difficult to do when i'm
shooting the close-up of the fungi
growing we create a miniature set moss
and logs and rocks time lapse macro
cinematography your depth of field is
very shallow we use macro lenses a
hundred millimeter canon 180 millimeter
canon
and a 35 millimeter micro lens so
naturally the audience will know won't
be focusing on the background if i'm
doing more of a master shot
where we use for example motion control
we will put up a blue screen
and then we will composite in a sky or a
forest to really make it believable to
be able to move the camera was something
that was impossible to do
in special effects
prior to motion control cinematography
so with motion control they took cameras
and combined it with computers to do a
repeat move meaning it shoots one frame
it stops shoots another frame and stops
and you have this controlled dolly move
while the mushroom is growing basically
it's dolly track and a tripod head that
now has little motors on it that enables
the
computer to program a pan a tilt and the
length of the move on the dolly as well
as control the camera and focus
all these things have to be working
together
as if it was a real time shot but one
critical component of the fungi story
was impossible to film using traditional
techniques
the mycelium is like the tree
and the mushroom is like the apple to
the tree the mycelium
an underground root-like system that
branches out kind of like the internet
connecting plants and trees to each
other you got a couple of problems here
a no light
b
smaller than the eye can see it's only
one cell thick so what we did
was we used scanning electron
microscopic photography for the electron
microscope to work they work in a lab
on a giant slab of concrete because any
vibration would ruin the shot you take
the specimen and you put it under the
microscope and you bombard it with
electrons and you get the most
extraordinary close-up detail
that is unimaginable to the human eye
and we use those images as a reference
for
computer generated animators to use and
we created these incredible shots of
traveling through the mycelial network
throughout his career louis has pushed
the envelope of our visual language both
in terms of tech and artistry he also
pioneered the stock footage industry the
company he formed to license his vast
library of clips was eventually bought
by getty images
i started shooting time lapse four
decades ago by looking at time-lapse
clouds back in 1970 when i pioneered the
first 35-millimeter cameras that could
go outdoors and shoot one frame at a
time
shooting fungi and flowers and plants i
basically have a camera rolling 24 hours
a day
seven days a week
from commercials to imax to feature
films it's impossible to not have seen
the work of louis schwartzberg at some
point in your life
i love to film hummingbirds again
looking at life from their point of view
enables you
to realize that all of life
has a different metabolic rate and i
think all of life has a different frame
rate
so for example a mosquito on your arm
you know having a little drop of blood
takes a look at that hand coming towards
it in ultra slow motion and has plenty
of time to take off because its
metabolic rate its
lifespan is way shorter than our
lifespan and our lifespan is way shorter
than the redwood trees lifespan this
reality of you know real time human
point of view is not the only point of
view and that's really the beauty of
cameras and time lapse cinematography
it's actually a time machine and you
could talk about this stuff in
scientific terms you get to have
einstein explain the theory of
relativity but until you see it you
really don't get it
the longest thing i've ever shot was a
mouse rotting you can say that
decomposition is the end of life i argue
that it's the beginning of life you see
this kind of rippling of the fur and
then that kind of dissipates and then
you see some bones and then you see the
grass grow up in between to observe
the pattern and the rhythm of how it
decomposes is actually really beautiful
louie's art has given him a unique
perspective on nature time
and the nature of time
what i'm really engaged with is really
trying to understand you know the
intelligence of nature and how we can
live in harmony with it
and that means at times using you know
time lapse camera to be able to observe
it in their time frame it's a shared
economy under the ground where nutrients
and food are shared for ecosystems to
flourish
without greed and i personally believe
that should be the model for how we
should live our lives we should take
that wisdom from below the ground and
bring it above the ground