The Private Life of Plants - with Alice Jones

[00:00:00] Who's that? A Simelea watching something getting very excited about it. She's probably watching The Private Life of Plants, Kate, as she should be. Mindless Wittering Production All I knew was I wanted to try and understand the way the world works, the natural world.

[00:00:28] We explore because we are human. Science is the storytelling of our time. So me storytelling has always been the way to leave some. Cut! Hello and welcome to Who Moved the Tortoise, a podcast about science and wildlife filmmaking. I'm Kate Dooley. And I'm Alex Hemingway.

[00:00:54] And as usual we're joined by someone from the world of science or wildlife television to talk about the film or TV show that inspired them. This time we're talking to showrunner Alice Jones. Alice read Natural Sciences at Cambridge and went on to complete the MSc in Science Communication

[00:01:11] at Imperial College London. Her TV career began on the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures, and she then worked on a raft of science shows largely for the BBC, including Stargazing and multiple films with Brian Cox. From there she's worked with people, animals and in extreme locations on every continent

[00:01:30] on the planet, directing on epic blue chip series One Strange Rock with Will Smith, our universe for Netflix and most recently she is the showrunner on BBC Solar System. She's been down one kilometer under the sea in Will Smith's t-shirt, not sure what happened to her own clothes.

[00:01:48] She nearly missed filming a rocket launch due to a tyre puncture and almost got a cruise stranded in Antarctica. But it hasn't all been challenging. Her world record of the most stairs descended by a slinky came off without a hitch.

[00:02:02] Alice's choice for the film or TV show that inspired her is the opening episode of David Attenborough's 1995 series for the BBC, The Private Life of Plants.

[00:02:50] So the really important first question is why were you wearing Will Smith's t-shirt on a submarine? So that was for actually Welcome to Earth, which was commonly known as OSR2, One Strange Rock series 2, which became Welcome to Earth, where we were privileged to have Will

[00:03:09] Smith not just talking to us as a sort of a host doing interviews down the lens, but we had him in the field. So when we started developing that series,

[00:03:19] I was on quite from quite near the beginning and we decided to try to take him to crazy places. And I remember we had some pitch meetings and we were talking about taking him in a submersible. And then, you know, fast forward eight months later and it's happening.

[00:03:35] And you sort of like, how did this happen? We've actually got Will Smith and we're on a boat we're about to go under the water. He hadn't arrived yet and we didn't quite know whether

[00:03:44] it was all going to work. And so obviously we had to test what we were planning to do with him in advance. And I was very lucky to be able to go in the seat and go down.

[00:03:53] And one of the things that we were doing was a classic science demo. And we wanted to talk about color and how color behaves in the natural world, and particularly in the underwater world. And the whole program ended up being about color in darkness. And we were descending

[00:04:08] down to the depths. And after you go past just a few meters, the colors start to change as the water absorbs a different wavelengths of light. So we were actually putting Will in a red

[00:04:19] t-shirt to show that as you descend quite quickly, the red gets absorbed and his t-shirt would become black. And we just wanted to make sure it actually worked. So I got to wear his t-shirt.

[00:04:30] He had a couple of them. I don't know whether it was actually the same one. But it was like a polo shirt in a slightly synthetic fabric. I wouldn't necessarily choose to wear it in a hot sweaty sub. But there you go.

[00:04:43] But you did? I did. And also, I mean the t-shirt was one bit and it was amazing. And I painted my fingernails rainbow colors, which was great because you could sort of see them change as you go down.

[00:04:54] But when you actually get down there, it was just ridiculous. It was one of the most incredible things I've ever done because we were looking at light and color and bioluminescence and

[00:05:06] is the trippiest thing in the world. So you flash the submarine's lights and I don't know what they are, but things flash back at you. It's like being in Star Wars opening credits. You're surrounded by

[00:05:19] sparkling lights that just go into infinite darkness in three dimensions all around you. It was so weird. So I very quickly forgot about Will Smith's shirt and probably my job and just enjoyed it really. We do get to go some amazing places, don't we? Did the demo work?

[00:05:38] When he comes back up from the depths you've spent like most of the film in the depths with him and so the t-shirt's largely dark apart from when you put artificial light on it and you see the

[00:05:48] red again. But then when he sort of rises up to the surface again, it is absolutely mind-blowing to see the colors return and they do return in sequence. You get the yellows first

[00:06:02] and that's why often submarines are yellow because you can see it longer than other colors and then right, like in the last sort of 20 meters it just goes from sort of black to brown to ridiculously bright red. All the color kind of completely returns and Will brilliantly said

[00:06:21] the sun bursts back into your life and it just sort of did. Back here on Dry Land, how tricky was it to choose something to talk about in sight as your

[00:06:31] inspiration? Oh really hard. I feel a bit like a... I don't feel like I'm really allowed to be here because I don't really have a film that inspired me you know. I feel a bit of a fraud.

[00:06:45] I was a massive telly addict. I watched a lot of telly. I love telly. I've always really enjoyed it. I'd like to think that I read lots of books but I just don't. I watched a lot

[00:06:56] of telly when I was younger. But Science TV, the traditional sort of... I've listened to many of your podcasts and there's some amazing films that have been talked about but often like the things like Horizon just they didn't resonate with me. I think a term for Horizon

[00:07:11] is that's often used is like heavyweight. It's heavyweight science documentaries or at least it was back in the day and they were quite heavyweight and they're amazing and they're mind-blowing and if you sit down and watch them they're incredible but they were heavyweight and

[00:07:26] they're quite masculine, they're quite grown up and I just like the escapism of telly. I like it to transport me to places, to feelings, to things, to ways of seeing that I haven't

[00:07:38] experienced before and that Horizon is good at that but for me I like stuff that's got a bit more joy or silliness or warmth, emotion maybe you call it. Not that Horizon's don't have emotion

[00:07:52] but it's a different type so I feel like I'm bashing Horizon now but it's also other other programmes. I feel like I didn't really have one thing that that I watched and was like

[00:08:02] right I'm going into science, right I'm going to go into Science TV. So I've sort of been racking my brain really about what what I did watch and what has inspired me and

[00:08:12] there's been lots of different things and I think I mentioned to Kate that I have to mention Carol Vorderman in amongst all of this. I loved watching Countdown and before then I loved watching

[00:08:25] How To and I just watched a bit on YouTube actually. The set's incredible of How To and they just go around talking about cool bits of science or stuff that can change your life

[00:08:38] and I loved that and there were little demos, ideas, it was fun, it was warm, it was very accessible I suppose and for kids but I loved all that. How does a dog keep its cool? How can you make shoes as a paper?

[00:08:58] How can you have a thunderstorm indoors for women of it? How? How? And Carol I just really like her. She knows stuff, she values knowledge and she's also quite light-hearted and I used to go home and watch Countdown loads of my mum and I think also Richard Whiteley

[00:09:37] on Countdown was from Yorkshire, it was made in Leeds, I grew up in Yorkshire. It felt very easy and lovely to watch and I remember for a long time I wanted to be Carol Vorderman.

[00:09:51] I think there's a naivety that I definitely had because I didn't really know what a career in television was. The only career I knew was presenting and I think when I first went in

[00:10:01] that's what I thought the only thing there would be that I could do and I didn't really know about the role that I do now. I'd have been awful, I hate being on camera, I hate having my

[00:10:11] photo taken and all of that kind of stuff but that did really inspire me but as a filmmaker those things are there in the bubbling in the background, the tone, the warmth, the engagingness

[00:10:22] but as a filmmaker I don't think that was it so I've looked back at lots of things and I thought about Planet Earth which has had a big influence on me but I felt like that wasn't

[00:10:31] again quite right either so I was just sort of noodling around on Wikipedia and stumbled across the David Attenborough back catalogue and the one thing that just jumped out to me was the private

[00:10:44] life of plants and I remember it and I started watching it and it came flooding back and it's wonderful, I just love it. I could watch their first 20 minutes of it again and again and again

[00:10:58] so as soon as I saw that I thought do you know what that's going to be it? We could talk about that. Midwinter and the countryside is so still it seems almost lifeless but these trees and bushes

[00:11:12] and grasses around me are living organisms just like animals and they have to face very much the same sort of problems as animals face throughout their lives if they're to survive. They have to fight one another, they have to compete for mates, they have to invade new territories

[00:11:34] but the reason that we are seldom aware of these dramas is that plants of course live on a different time scale. We had an allotment I love being in the back garden, I loved bugs, the natural world

[00:11:48] I've always been interested in sort of how things came to be and science and stuff, I'm a product of my parents they've sort of raised me that way thinking about that kind

[00:11:57] of stuff but I really think that this series what it does is it shows you something that you can't experience in your back garden on your own and it uses the craft of television to transform our way

[00:12:09] of seeing things. It uses the technology at the time, techniques of time lapse particularly to reveal something that you can only see with television so it can't be made in any other way

[00:12:23] it's not just an illustrated lecture I mean it kind of is but it's so much more than that because it's something that you can't experience in a lecture, you can't experience it in a textbook,

[00:12:31] you can't experience it even just by going out into your garden. You've got to film it, speed it up and then suddenly the world is transformed before your eyes and I think that that's what this program does brilliantly and I think that's what hopefully most science

[00:12:46] TV tries to do is to try to transform our way of seeing the world and perceiving it. Yeah it's a plant I view, seeing life kind of on their time scale or in their point of view from

[00:12:58] their position lower down on the ground or you know how they move across time and space and they're kind of these little time capsules that they live in these seeds or whatever it is.

[00:13:08] And it's line-blowing. It's alien some of it isn't it? It's weird, it's alien, it's arty, it's sort of a bit abstract at times and it's got this beautiful wonderful rapper of Attenborough

[00:13:21] and his lovely voice and he pops up every now and then. And he catches the seed or we eat something and it's so nice seeing him do a bit more isn't it? He's not in it much but when he does turn up

[00:13:33] his TV gold you see him a bit at the beginning and there's these amazing transitions between the specialist photography and then the sort of the real-time photography where Attenborough is there so you see him in the forest and then it's the forest transforms through the seasons

[00:13:49] and then that scene there's a scene about a sort of like a tumbleweed type of plant and it rolls down a sand dune and it's beautiful and then suddenly he picks it up and so there's these

[00:13:59] nice little moments but what's great is my favourite bit about Attenborough in it is that he's just got such good tele-instincts so he goes after this fruit the durian fruit that stinks of rotting flesh and then of course can you imagine 12 year old me sitting there watching

[00:14:16] it going uh it must you know they really build it up to be the stinky fruit and then he just goes and deliciously takes a bite out of it and he's he's just all in it's lovely but you can sort of

[00:14:30] experience it through him. I have to say the smell to my nostrils at day eight is that fairly disgusting uh what an open sewer with just a dash of coal gas would be a fair description but that

[00:14:48] comes from the rind that's the advertisement this is the fruit and and that's very different that's very different but um it's really pretty good kind of um slimy caramel cream perhaps there would be a description of this. And then again later in the film there's this brilliant

[00:15:14] shot of an elephant doing a poo. Oh my god the rhino and the elephants both doing a poo I mean I've got a kid and that was too much. It's so I can't believe they I can't believe they put that

[00:15:25] on it's quite explicit anyway the poo coming out the poo comes out of the of the bottom yeah rhino and of the elephant it's like not just one they do it twice and then Attenborough

[00:15:39] comes along and picks up the poo. So of course everybody's going to love it and but what's brilliant is inside that poo is this little seed of the acacia plant and a plant can only grow because these bugs

[00:15:53] have infested it and it's only by going through the digestive system of the elephant that they can survive and actually germinate you know so it's just this there's a re there's a pure

[00:16:03] purpose to it but a delight in you know just diving into the reality of nature and I just think it's wonderful. Can we jump in the time machine and go back to the day of transmission? Wednesday the 11th

[00:16:17] of January 1995 Cotton Eye Joe is number one in the UK charts. That's a platter of the past isn't it? The first episode of Attenborough's new series about plants is going to be broadcast

[00:16:31] that evening at 9 30. Can you tell us a bit about who you were where you were how old you were what you were doing at that time? So it was January 95 so god I've my mass is terrible I think I was

[00:16:44] 11 nearly 12 is that right um and I mean looking back now I can't believe I remember so much from being that age I felt really grown up like and also I've looked back at what what I was doing that

[00:17:02] year a little bit and it was the year I bought the first tape my first what was your first tape what was it? It was super grass all right yours is so much cooler than mine mine is kind of cold

[00:17:14] mine was had away what is left oh my god that's so cool. No that's not cool Alice is far the coolest of the three that we've just I think I was maybe too self-conscious and really

[00:17:27] wanted because I had an older brother didn't want to be too embarrassing you know but it was also like I think back for good was that year so I was definitely into take that and E17 and stuff

[00:17:37] like that maybe eternal wig field yes you know we yeah I'm not gonna lie about my dreamy love of pop so much from that year seems to have influenced me but I thought I was really grown

[00:17:50] up but I was 11 that's so weird isn't it? There's studies though I think there's studies that look at the music you love and the cultural references you take are like your early teens kind of and for

[00:18:01] you I guess maybe very early teens that's when you get all your cultural references I think and what you think is really cool and you add more to that as you grow older but I think there's

[00:18:12] a real kind of touch point early teens where you're like that kind of sets your your cultural references the music that you love and then that's you for life right?

[00:18:24] So I was just I was at secondary school I must have been in year eight I remember what do I remember from year eight I remember my friends at school and I remember we went to Germany

[00:18:33] and everyone got drunk uh was it year eight? Hang on how old were you? But that can't have been year eight! Quite the expose this episode. I didn't get drunk me and my friend took course you did

[00:18:45] the empties and put them in the bin. We ran it yeah uh we were the goody two shoes but I just remember being a kid really and just loving music friends wanting to just do fun stuff

[00:19:00] but I've always loved science you know I loved uh who did we had Miss Jackson I think was our science teacher in year eight she was great and we had a good brilliant maths teacher Mr Whitfield? I can't even remember his name that's terrible I remember his face

[00:19:17] so I loved science and maths and you know ran home to watch Countdown probably still watching Blue Peter. I'm not really thinking about what I was going to do at all ever I remember we did a

[00:19:29] careers thing at school and you put it into the BBC computer or something and it came up you had to put it was a bit like an algorithm and you put your interests in

[00:19:37] and it came out as a forklift truck driver. Wow I got actuary but forklift truck driver seems weird for you. I know it was I just don't even understand it I think maybe because I said I like maths maybe

[00:19:52] I said something about engineering and then you know in a northern state school maybe that's what a lot of people would end up becoming. I don't know but I don't remember I think any

[00:20:01] of my mates became forklift truck drivers. Anyway yeah so that was me at that age not really thinking about anything and not yeah Attenborough has obviously been a huge influence to so many

[00:20:13] of us over our lives and he's just a constant presence he's just there in the background sort of overseeing all of our childhoods and guiding us in our well in my sort of interest

[00:20:26] to the natural world along with the other things so he's just been there it's not like I suddenly saw him and was like I'm you know I'm gonna go and work on programs like he makes it didn't

[00:20:38] it didn't even occur to me that that was a career. There's one thing that I did have in my life that opened up the doors to television and that was my dad so he'd been an archaeologist he is an

[00:20:51] archaeologist a retired archaeologist now and he'd been on TV a few times and it was probably around this time that he was on the big breakfast with Kylie so cool believe it or not he he's he

[00:21:06] met Kylie and he brought me her autograph and I've lost it I think or maybe he didn't get her anyway he was talking about Viking poo and stuff like that and he'd been on time team and I

[00:21:17] remember time team came to York where I grew up and dad was there whether it was on telly or not I don't know or it was just with his colleagues and I saw the crew on the bridge so I knew that

[00:21:30] television got made by people but that I didn't know much more than that but that that definitely did open my eyes to the reality that there could be a job there but it didn't it didn't click.

[00:21:44] So how did you find out about the Imperial Science Communications course and is that where you were like TV is the thing for me? So I did a science degree and was studying I did natural

[00:21:56] sciences which was very varied and broad which I loved as one of the reasons I chose the course because I couldn't quite narrow down but I just didn't really want to be a scientist.

[00:22:07] I did genetics and I've bred lady birds in a lab on the outskirts of Cambridge for a few months and it was wonderful but there was no fridge he couldn't make a proper cup of tea

[00:22:23] it was a bit grim and then I decided that I wanted to maybe do a PhD in butterflies and so I applied and then everybody seemed really ridiculously clever and I also realised I didn't

[00:22:35] really want to spend my life just studying butterflies and actually I was thinking about butterflies because I thought that other people would like them and it might be something that it might interest other people if I found out about that and my dad had mentioned

[00:22:50] sort of science communication probably through him knowing a bit about it he worked in museums as well and he's always talked about public understanding of science and I think it might

[00:23:03] have been him that mentioned that it could that there was a course and then when I was at uni someone else had mentioned it but it didn't really click until after uni and me and my

[00:23:14] friend we worked in a school and it was so boring the work the job that we got it was so tedious that we both decided we had to we had to do something that we loved and I looked into it

[00:23:26] in more detail my mum and dad said that they would cover the fees if I wanted to do a masters so I applied and got on to the course but I think at the time I thought maybe museums

[00:23:37] is what I wanted to do you know again I was into butterflies and old stuff I love going around charity shops and looking at old bits and bobs and so I thought maybe I'd like a life in

[00:23:49] a museum and I did lots of work experience actually in museums which was amazing but then I did work experience in telly as part of this science communication course and it was just brilliant

[00:24:02] it was brilliant me and my friends we went we were runners I suppose on the royal institution christmas lectures and it was it was it was it was literally brilliant and I never looked back

[00:24:16] I loved it so much it ticked every box in my brain and being I suppose it was creative we had to build demos I loved painting and arts and crafts so we were literally you know building stuff

[00:24:33] it involved learning you got to learn about this stuff it used your brain you had to think about how to explain things and it was a great team wasn't it because we worked out that I did it the

[00:24:46] year before you did yeah and the team in 2004 I did it and you did 2005 and working with Andy Marmary at the Royal Institution who is the guy who sorts out all the props and has like this amazing

[00:24:59] brain of how to demonstrate things from across the board in science he you can just ask him how would I demonstrate this and he will know and he can make it he loves a drill yeah and it was just so

[00:25:11] fun wasn't it working with a team of people to work alongside other people who had similar passions who were similarly sort of engaged and had the same ideas I sort of found my tribe and I'm friends

[00:25:24] with people who I met back then you know on during those lectures they're some of my best friends and I just think that just that definitely changed my life the royal institution christmas

[00:25:34] lectures and also it's such an historic thing it's been running for 200 years nearly I think we're coming up to the anniversary the year and so to be part of that chain of history and to feel like

[00:25:47] you're you're standing where Michael Faraday stood where Humphrey Davy stood in the in the same lecture theatre in the same prep room doing similar demonstrations actually in the lecture theatre where David Attenborough stood that really was inspiring and it was through the christmas

[00:26:04] lectures by doing those for a couple of years that I did meet David Attenborough and I did get to work with him for a day and I'll treasure that moment for the rest of my life. My name is

[00:26:15] David Attenborough and I gave the christmas lectures on animal behaviour in 1973. You might think that the orangutan would be a very good subject to try and teach to talk actually not so and for quite interesting reasons that the orangutan is in the wild a very solitary animal

[00:26:39] this is a mantis and he says beware by putting up his four legs his four legs have got barbs on them you see would you like a bit of a grape yes so they say don't meet your heroes what was

[00:26:57] it like meeting him and working with him. It was it was the best day I was probably you know it was probably the best day of my life I was with a really good friend of mine and it was at a time

[00:27:08] when the royal institution had just reopened it was a royal reopening of the of the royal institution after a huge refurbishment and we'd been working on the christmas lectures and they needed some assistance to help out doing some demonstrations for the grand opening and they

[00:27:25] were getting lecturers who'd been in past lectures to do small demonstrations for the queen so the queen was coming to open the royal institution and they were getting David Attenborough to to recreate one of his traditional lecture demonstrations on the bees waggle dance for the queen

[00:27:47] and I got to do it with my friend Kat who you know and I've actually got a photo that Kat gave me recently and it's got the side of our heads in it and David Attenborough and the queen

[00:27:59] and I sort of can't believe that we were there and did that it feels so special and it's only a day and I've worked with loads of people who've worked with him

[00:28:07] a lot more closely but it was very special and we spent the whole day with him and he told us stories from his time as of being a producer when he was working at the BBC and working on the queen's

[00:28:19] speech stories he's told before about how he had to choose her outfits he was funny he was charming he was he was literally so David Attenborough you just can't comprehend he's so authentic

[00:28:33] he's so true and so generous with his time and knowledge and experience I'm sort of glad it was only a day because maybe if I'd worked with him longer I'd discover that that's not true but I

[00:28:43] sort of think it is and I've written to him a couple of times to invite him to things to be on programs and I've thanked him for a couple of things and he's written back with his handwriting

[00:28:54] and you know it's just him and his daughter isn't it that sort of runs the whole show you should do a podcast series just chatting to him that's what I think I don't know why people

[00:29:04] haven't done it I could listen to him for hours and he's such a wonderful wonderful gifted storyteller it just flows out of every pore of his body and his experiences are extraordinary you know he's really witnessed such a transformation of the planet over his lifetime

[00:29:20] and it's a bit heartbreaking actually but he's got an incredibly important story to tell these acacia seeds have spent at least 24 hours inside an elephant's stomach that hasn't harmed them but it has killed stone dead those beetle grubs in fact the elephants digestive juices have

[00:29:44] disinfected these seeds just as efficiently as a farmer does when he dresses his seeds with insecticide it's wonderful that program it's really it gets a bit repetitive to be honest towards the end

[00:29:57] I always get a bit bored in programs about 40 minutes in and it does suffer from that slightly because it just tells the same story again and again and again of the interrelatedness of animals

[00:30:06] and plants but a lot of seeds a lot of seeds but each story is cool it's cool and it really shows the interconnected yeah nature is so clever isn't it how it's packaged things up or how it lets

[00:30:22] things travel it is so clever but the stories were quite short really aren't they the best description of that that I've heard is is it's a chocolate box style of filmmaking which is oh here's a tasty

[00:30:34] little morsel isn't that an amazing little story oh look over here here's another one and it can be a bit repetitive but it is just they just seem to have licensed to just go and choose the

[00:30:44] coolest stories and find a way of tying them together this one has landed on a tropical beach in northern Australia but I've no idea where it came from it could be from a tree just a few

[00:30:56] miles up the coast or it could be from another continent sea beans are the great success story of seed distribution every year they land on the coasts of europe have been being bought there

[00:31:07] by the Gulfstream from the Caribbean of course it's too cold for them there and they seldom germinate but provided they land in the tropics they will almost certainly grow there's one

[00:31:18] standing at the head of this very beach atom bra pops up all over the globe and it does have that colonial vibe to it but there's an innocence because it's just about interesting stuff and

[00:31:33] it's not trying to do anything else than tell you really cool stuff about plants that you and I think the thing I love about it is the start of it is just all this familiar stuff that we

[00:31:46] have seen all around it's very very English at the beginning it's in the woodland there's I think it starts with wild garlic there's hazel leaves dock leaves brambles the bramble becomes the evil

[00:32:00] thing that sort of creeps across and takes control but it shows you the ordinary in an extraordinary way the dandelion scene I could watch that on loop the dandelions are just so

[00:32:14] beautiful and it just is full of stuff that makes you go oh bloody hell that plant is really that is so clever or so beautiful it's a childlike fascination isn't it it's like how my daughter

[00:32:29] looks at dandelions and blows them and she loves it and she just runs around the grass trying to blow more and more and more that's how you watch it yeah it's childlike fascination but it draws your attention to important small details that reveal fundamentals of how

[00:32:44] the world works and and the interconnectedness of nature our reliance on ecosystems on the ingenuity of evolution and how this simple process has created just endless wonder of majesty even in the tiniest seed and also it's a meditation on time it makes you aware of how

[00:33:11] how we perceive the world in a very limited way we perceive it only on one time frame and that comes across I think as well in the very final piece to camera where he's got this magnolia flower

[00:33:25] plant that has been germinated from a seed retrieved from an archaeological site in Japan or something that's really old and it's gotten years ago and it seems to have an additional petal is this an ancient plant that has died out is it a genetic mutation I don't know

[00:33:45] but they don't really know but it's mysterious and I think they end with something about plants the first episode it's all about travel isn't it it's all about travel plants traveling moving so showing their movement in a way that you've not seen it before because you think they're

[00:33:58] just static but they're not they're very dynamic but then at the end they talk about time and how plants aren't just travelers in space but travelers in time this flower has an extra petal

[00:34:12] seven and this has eight is this a consequence of its long sleep or were all magnolia cobras two thousand years ago variable like this or could it be that this is an ancient species

[00:34:28] that has only survived as that one lone seed in an archaeological ruin it's too early to know the answers to those questions but whatever it is this is surely a marvelous example of the fact that plants with their seeds are not only extraordinary travelers in space but incomparable

[00:34:48] travelers in time so there is a grander a grander narrative bubbling gently under the surface it's not it's not rammed down your throat it is a bit chocolate boxy but I really really really

[00:35:02] enjoyed the last chocolate and it stayed with you this chocolate yeah stayed with you for years it has yeah empty it's now empty no I think the other thing that I I love about it now as

[00:35:16] a filmmaker having made these programs is I just so appreciate the craftsmanship I mean it is craftsmanship in this case I think everyone on the end credits is a man but of how people make television and how

[00:35:31] it's exquisite the macro photography the time lapse photography it's so fiddly to do it's so hard to get those shots there's a bit of graphics in there a bit of green screen it's a technical masterpiece from 1995 it must have been such an achievement to make that series

[00:35:51] and it's clearly inspired things like Green Planet today and I just think it's I just I like watching it now knowing how it's made and thinking about the people and the care and attention that they put into filming a dandelion you know huge budgets that have

[00:36:07] gone into these things that literally show you very very simple beautiful bits of the natural world and I love that the BBC has indulged our audiences in these little bits of nature that

[00:36:22] we so often can overlook I love that you still like knowing what you know now that you can still watch it and revel in it that says a lot about what they've done there and how they've done it

[00:36:33] and the music I think is great I mean it's it's quite dated I think that's what's really interesting knowing who I was at that time and thinking about all the influences the musical

[00:36:42] influences that I had at that time the music feels like it's from another era it's sort of reminiscent of the BBC radio phonic workshop and stuff like that it feels quite 80s I guess the people who

[00:37:24] made it were just older that that would that they were their musical choices but it's also cool like it's it is cool and there are these moments they where they just let you watch

[00:37:35] they're not they don't say too much they just let you watch and enjoy the the flower unfurling the tendril wriggling it's quite it's quite tactile in the way it allows the viewer to

[00:37:50] watch and indulge and it's quite sort of artistic sometimes in the way that it films as a scene of seed pods fluttering down like helicopters and it's got this wonderful sort of mechanical

[00:38:03] sound design that make you really appreciate the engineering of some of these pods but it's also filmed a bit like you'd imagine a contemporary dancer might have been filmed in 1995 uh there they're lovely moments that you can watch and enjoy and I think I remember watching Fantasia

[00:38:22] the Disney the Disney film and there's elements of that in it where I think in Fantasia there's like little dancing mushrooms and things and I feel like there's influences of that in this style

[00:38:33] of filmmaking which just allow you to just sit back and enjoy nature I agree there do feel like there are kind of Hollywood moments the fungi that opens up and it looks like something out of the film alien

[00:38:47] where the pods the eggs would open up um you know and then when you see I think it was the brambles shooting out and kind of climbing that felt quite alien like so there are these Hollywood influences already aren't there in definitely how they're telling the stories

[00:39:04] how they're filming it which makes it so broad yeah I think it's really interesting narratively because I've spent a lot of my career where people people are saying you know but you can't just do

[00:39:15] an illustrated lecture what's the story what's what are you saying and that's true and we and it's very important now when you watch Natural History and it is just so many chocolate boxes

[00:39:27] that are largely the same um and the only thing that can really differentiate them is the story but when you're just the only programme of outplants in the world I think it's sort of

[00:39:37] fine to just show the best bits and with Attenborough sort of leading you through you do kind of just sort of get away with it and leaning into those emotions I think

[00:39:51] it's sort of putting emotions that we would and an emotional layer onto the plants to try to reveal that they aren't just a leaf they're a being they're a presence they're an agent in the world

[00:40:03] a very important agent um and they have drive they have will they have desire you know these plants and is is it anthropomorphizing I don't know I think it's just revealing nature and how

[00:40:16] it is in a different way and sort of drawing people's attention to that so I I love it yeah I mean it's totally you know their world is a life and death world as much as ours is so they're using

[00:40:31] but that kind of language aren't they the challenges of staying alive of yeah for them we're just seeing it in there in their world in their way on their time scale and there's a bit where I

[00:40:42] was sort of drifting off and getting bored where I was like oh it's another seed or another animal eating another plant moving it by you know it's all about travel so there's a lot about how

[00:40:53] plants have spread across different places so a lot of it's like an animal eats it and then moves and then poos but there's this weird scene on the side of a castle and you just think

[00:41:07] there's this really dull looking plant that I think I've pulled out of the wall in my garden before because it was a bit weedy and then they show that and it it's extraordinary it's this tiny little

[00:41:19] plant and it produces its seeds and then it produces tendrils that seek out little spaces and they plant their own seeds it's literally like this plant's got a hand and it's planting its

[00:41:32] seed and that allows it to grow upwards up the side of the face of a castle it's just amazing I can't believe you know I watch it and I'm like wow you know that is that's nuts that something

[00:41:47] does that and you would it's just stuff that we overlook all the time and I feel like people should know how cool the world is you know that is what this program is trying to do

[00:42:01] and I think that's what I'm trying to do when I make programs there's another scene there's a liana plant that has its seeds that fall down and they film it so beautifully so elegantly the

[00:42:14] craft of the camera team to and the director to see this event and then to capture it and then to edit it in this way that brings this tiny seed pod to life it's it's just like a piece of paper with

[00:42:28] the seed in it but it floats down and they draw your attention to its exquisite design it's like a glider and it allows this plant to travel through a rainforest it's beautiful aircraft designers have tried to build a wing as efficient as this one but failed

[00:42:53] even the faintest updraft produced by the slightest thermal is enough to lift this little glider with its seed passenger and so extend its flight I haven't really made natural history

[00:43:11] programs in the true sense and I don't know I don't know whether that is what I want to do either it is incredibly technical but I do think that this one does have a real passion to

[00:43:24] to tell a story of the plant life that is so often overlooked and it's it's not a complex narrative but it's just drawing your attention to the things that you haven't seen before and

[00:43:37] you know the hand of the director is excellent in this because it's tied the technical craftsmanship to an emotion so they've used the techniques the right techniques and they've sat out and filmed

[00:43:49] the right things to try to bring those plants to life for that brief moment of time and I do love that and also I've one of the things that's lovely about watching it for me is looking at

[00:44:00] the credits I mean it's all it's all member I have worked with quite a few other people on it Richard Kirby Tim Shepard the legend I think Rod Clark I worked with him years ago

[00:44:13] with some high-speed photography and so my eyes have been opened up to the world of filmmaking and and these techniques through people who actually made that program and they've shared their secrets with me and and they've given me tools to also tell stories in those ways

[00:44:31] different stories in those ways I feel really honored to be able to call some of those people on the credits my colleagues and and friends I suppose having had the chance to go back and

[00:44:44] watch it again for the purposes of this conversation how does it make you feel now and what does that film in that series mean to you I think that both the process of watching

[00:44:54] it but also listening to your podcasts has been a chance to look back and sort of reassess why I'm doing things now and you know it's a good it's a good moment to pause and reflect on whether

[00:45:09] we're still doing it for the right reasons whether we're still sort of happy pursuing it especially when the industry is fragile and complex and and a bit spiky to freelancers and and people on short-term contracts but I think it's it's reminded me that I love it

[00:45:28] I love making programs about science I love sharing that way of seeing with audiences and I feel so lucky to now know how to make those programs and to be able to do that

[00:45:47] for a living most of the time so I just feel an enormous sense of good fortune actually and a sort of a kick up the arse of reminding me to do it right and to make the programs that matter

[00:46:03] because it's powerful television it can change people's minds that their hearts as you know the hearts of minds and so it's important what we put on telly we have to do things right

[00:46:14] so it's been a nice reminder of why I do what I do and why we should do things and continue to do things and strive to do things better well look Alice thank you so much

[00:46:24] for coming on the show and bringing us this program it was a joy to watch and to talk about follow Who Moved The Tortoise on x at tortoise pod or email us at whomovedthetortoise.com this withering production