Getting the Shot: A Conversation with Cinematographer John Brown on Hacking Macro Photography and the Secrets of Bees of All Kinds

We recently had the chance to sit down with cinematographer John Brown to talk about his incredible macro work, the challenges of filming tiny creatures, and how technology is shaping the future of natural history filmmaking. John has been making films for about 30 years, and his soon to be releasing project on James Cameron’s the Secrets of Bees.

National Geographic Explorer Bertie Gregory immerses viewers in the remarkable lives of bees, some of the most vital creatures on Earth. Over the course of three years, specialized cameras offered an unprecedented look inside a single hive, unveiling its hidden dynamics. With over 20,000 bee species pollinating a third of the world’s food supply, this series reveals their stunning architectural abilities and intelligence, unlocking the secrets of their world.

SCIENTIFIC FIRSTS 

• The world’s first shot of broomstick bees in flight. 
• The world’s first footage of a vulture bee nest. 
• The world’s first footage of varroa mites invading a hive of honeybees defending themselves

BESPOKE BUILDS

• Custom hives and sets
• Hacked and DIY camera lenses and mounts

Here is our conversation, preserved in John’s own words.

Gillian Mutti: Lovely to meet you, John. Thank you for giving me some time, I really appreciate it.

John Brown: Pleasure.

Gillian Mutti: So, I do have to ask, I’ve watched the sneak peak episodes and if you don’t mind, we’ll jump right into it. I am clearly amazed by the cinematography in this, and the shots that were able to take place. How were you able to accomplish that?

John Brown: So, this kind of filming is something I’ve done for years. I mean, I’ve been making films for about 30 years, and a lot of it has been this very detailed macro photography. So we use a variety of different tools. The main lens we used to film this program was a thing called a probe lens, or a scope lens, which is very long, thin. Almost like a medical endoscope, but a bit thicker, and it just means you can get the viewer right in between, you know, the frames within a beehive, or right down at ground level, so it gives you a very sort of intimate perspective on, on the sort of insect world.

Gillian Mutti: Does the equipment give off the vibration or disrupt the bees?

John Brown: No, no, not at all, no, no. So, the bees, I mean, they’re very tolerant of disturbance. I should caveat that. It depends on the species. Honeybees like very tight spaces, and they like it dark, and they like to be squished together, which is obviously not ideal for filming. So if you’re filming honeybees, you need to sort of make the spaces within the colony a bit bigger and put some light in there. And it can take them a while to get used to that. So if you’re changing what they’re used to significantly, then they might take a while to get used to it. But if you’re filming something outdoors, where there used to be in natural light, then you don’t really disturb them with the presence of the camera at all. The camera doesn’t really vibrate, there’s no sort of movement, and you’re going to be moving the camera in a very slow, precise way anyway, so they do.

Gillian Mutti: I don’t know if it was a little serendipitous, but yesterday I was at a colleague’s winery, and there was a swarm of bees in one of the trees.  Our founder called someone to come collect them and they were so docile somebody came out the women shook the branch the swam was in and they followed the queen into a box

John Brown: I love honeybee swarms, I mean, I’ve kept bees for half my life, so I’m very familiar.

They’re just delightful when they’re swarming, because, they are not getting grumpy, they’ve got nothing to defend, they’re just sort of completely focused on keeping the queen safe. So you can, you know, you can pick up a swarm, you know.

Gillian Mutti: It was really quite magical to see. On that note what was a challenge or something you came up against that you didn’t think you were gonna have to solve for when shooting?

John Brown: I think probably the hardest shoot, I spent 5 weeks in the Amazon in Ecuador, doing two different sequences for the first film, one about fire bees, and one about vulture bees. And they were both extremely difficult, because the bees themselves were absolutely tiny. So the bee was about the same size as a honeybee’s head. So you’re working with the subject, which is absolutely minuscule. And they actually were quite sensitive, so you needed to be very calm around them, and particularly the fire bees were doing their thing on these very thin branches about 6 foot off the ground, so just even rigging the camera around them without disturbing them, and clamping everything off so it doesn’t blow in the wind. Then trying to tell a story of this tiny, tiny little bee, and make it characterful and interesting and appealing. That was really difficult. And plus, it was a very remote place, and it kept raining the whole time, and it was just one of those shoots that you were quite glad to get home at the end.

Another constant challenge was the size. I mean, often it’s the fact that you’re trying to create images that the audience will fall in love with, but your subject is tiny. And just the laws of physics mean that it’s not like photographing a human face. You’re photographing something that’s two or three millimeters across, but you want to give it all the character and sort of engaging qualities of a human face. I mean, you still want audiences to look at this little animal and engage with it.

Gillian Mutti: Yes, well, from what I’ve seen from my fortunate sneak peak you definitely did accomplish that, well done. And how did you get into cinematography?

John Brown: I’ve always been obsessed with natural history, so as a kid, I would just draw pictures of animals. I was obsessed with drawing pictures of animals, and when I could afford a camera, I bought a camera, and then I did a biology degree at university here in England, but always wanted to make films, and it just so happened that there was a film company near. So I went to Oxford University, there was a very famous film company called Oxford Scientific Films, so I kind of started working for them during my university holidays. And just slowly got to know people. I was super shy, I never said anything to anyone, but sort of slowly, slowly got to learn how to work cameras and so on. There are no sort of set routes into this industry. Everyone’s got their own different story.

Gillian Mutti: For sure. As technology has evolved throughout your time, what has been the biggest change with the technology you’re using, or do you find that it stayed pretty true in your field?

John Brown: Yeah, no, that’s a really good question. I mean, I think, in my career, because I’ve been doing it for a long time. I started shooting on 16mm film. Okay. So I was that generation that you. I grew up shooting with 400-foot reels of 16mm film, and you couldn’t see what you’d shot until you got back home and got it developed and all that kind of thing. So, there was a huge change when we switched from film to digital, and then you could see what you’d filmed, and you weren’t  nervous about whether you got the shot or not, because you could just check.

So there’s that transition from film to digital was significant. Our camera’s now much more light sensitive, which makes a big difference, particularly when you’re filming small subjects where you typically would need a lot of light to get a good quality image. So, now our cameras have good light sensitivity.

John Brown: The lenses haven’t changed that much, so some of my favorite lenses for filming macro are old microscope lenses from the 1970s, so it’s a mixture of some technology, particularly to do with lenses and the glass which hasn’t changed much, but camera technology has evolved. You know, quite remarkably, and the big change was from film to digital. I used to go away, you know, you might go away for 4 weeks to the Amazon, say, and you would take a suitcase full of film stock. Previously you might take 40 or 50 rolls of film and you don’t know whether it all got messed up and fogged at the airport on your way out, you know, so you could have spent a month filming the most beautiful stuff and get home and find the whole thing was ruined.

Gillian Mutti: Yeah, unfortunately, I know that a little bit too well, my father is a photographer and he actually has done quite a bit of stuff with National Geographic.  We had a dark room in the house I grew up in, and you didn’t want to be around when the film went… went sour coming back from location.

John Brown: Oh, Godness. So now we just have a much better idea of what we’re getting. On a day-to-day basis, it means we can start editing in the field, and that is something that’s search,

It’s such a luxury to start, particularly with these kinds of sequences, where they’re complicated stories. You’re kind of piecing them together like a jigsaw puzzle, and if you can start viewing what you shot every night, starting to edit a sequence, then you kind of know whether you’re building the story that you’re that you’re looking for.

Gillian Mutti: Does the story ever shift on-site?

John Brown: I would say all the time, and I think that’s probably one of the skills that… I think to be light on your feet as a filmmaker is probably one of the most important qualities. It’s good to go out there with a plan, but nearly always the plan changes, and often for the better, you know?

I was gonna say, one of the worst things you can do is stay committed to a plan when it’s not quite working. I think you just need to read the room and see… I mean, the animals kind of tell you where they want the story to go, so it’s a question of sort of being responsive to them and changing the story to sort of suit what they’re doing, basically.

Gillian Mutti: And I think that’s kind of the magic of it a little bit. I understand you have your plan, but when plans don’t always go the same way, it keeps you and your creativity on your toes.

John Brown: Oh, I love it. I think it’s one of the most exciting things, actually, is to sort of feel like no matter how much preparation you do, you’re still telling the story of something that you know, the animal’s gonna do what it’s going to do. So it’s a question of being prepared to sort of, you know, go with the flow of what’s in front of you.

Gillian Mutti: Well, that’s wonderful. Thank you so much for this. I really appreciate it. Thank you very much for your time.

John Brown: No, thanks to you!

Watch the Secrets of the Bees

Unscripted Series and Specials, Premieres March 31 at 8/7c on National Geographic and National Geographic WILD and Streams Next Day on Disney+ and Hulu.