Insects on Film: Secrets of a Wildlife Cinematographer

Capturing the natural world on film is always challenging, though never more so than when filming insects. They’re tiny, often elusive and live their lives out of sight. Yet those tiny lives are extraordinary and the more we see, the more we appreciate how truly sophisticated the little creatures that run our world really are.

Steve Nicholls has spent the last 40 years making wildlife documentaries around the planet, but he’s an entomologist by both training and inclination. So, whenever he can, he makes films which reveal the insect world in all its glory, whether that involves dangling from 500-metre cliffs in the Himalayas in pursuit of giant honeybees or squeezing through the cracks in an Andean glacier searching for the Patagonian dragon (actually a rather non-descript stonefly). But to really immerse viewers in the insects’ macro world takes more than this – it needs a technical armoury of specialist lenses, motion control rigs and visual effects. Often complex set-ups are developed just to achieve a single shot – and sometimes they even work.

In this talk, Steve takes us through the trials and tribulations of filming insects, often frustrating, frequently hilarious as he tries to reveal the innermost secrets of Planet Insect.

The talk accompanies our exhibition Entographica: insect-inspired artwork, which runs from 2-26 February – see here for more details. The exhibition will be open from 6.30pm on the night of the talk.

Dr Steve Nicholls is an award-winning television documentary producer and director. He has spent thirty years making wildlife films, including ten with the BBC Natural History Unit, among them the hugely successful Alien Empire (1996). He has won many awards for both his films and his photographs, including Winner of a News and Documentary EMMY award for Outstanding Individual Achievement in a Craft: Cinematography – Nature. He is the author of several books including Planet Insect (Apollo/Head of Zeus, 2024) and has served as a trustee for the Avon Wildlife Trust. As well as all this he holds a PhD degree from Bristol University for his research on dragonflies.

 Read more about Steve here.