Stern & Wild filmmaker Michael Lachmann discusses his first trip to China, where he filmed the three-part docuseries Spacetime Capsule

With the slowdown in commissioning limiting options in the UK, many talented filmmakers are casting a wider net to find their next project. Between 2022 and 2023, Stern & Wild client Michael Lachmann was Showrunner and Director on Spacetime Capsule, a three-part docuseries exploring the latest advances in Chinese science and space technology. A Beach House Pictures production for CRS China, it was a major international collaboration which involved managing multiple remote production teams, VFX companies and edits in the UK, China and Singapore.

Michael is a BAFTA and Peabody award-winning filmmaker, working across a wide range of genres and formats, from presenter-led blue-chip series to docudramas and long-form feature documentaries. He was the lead Director on the BBC’s Wonders of… series that turned Brian Cox into a household name, and recently was Producer/Director on Brian Cox: Seven Days on Mars for BBC Two and Killers of the Cosmos for the Science Channel. His credits also include the remarkable film Cosmonauts: How Russia Won the Space Race for BBC Four and the Emmy-nominated Einstein and Hawking: Unlocking the Universe for the Science Channel.

Michael looks back on his first trip to China and the experience of shooting there.

I was sitting in a hotel room in Austria when the call came. I had Covid and everything seemed pretty grim. But on the other end of the line Donovan Chan (Creative Director) and Rob Sixsmith (Head of Factual) from Beach House Pictures in Singapore were offering the prospect of an adventure. Would I be interested in going to China to make a series about the mega-science projects being developed there? This was early 2022 and the world was only slowly emerging from lockdown, so the chance to spend a couple of months immersed in another culture on the other side of the world was impossible to resist.

Within a few weeks I was writing scripts and having virtual production meetings with General Manager Felix Feng Bo and the Beach House team in Beijing trying to piece together the stories and negotiate the tricky permissions we would need. Shortly after, I was on my way to China to start shooting.

As the country was still officially closed to foreigners we could only get one visa, which meant I would have to work with an entirely Chinese crew. I must admit the thought was somewhat daunting, but any fears I had soon proved to be completely unfounded. Each member of the team, almost without exception, was brilliant – creative, hard-working and highly skilled. They all spoke perfect English. In fact, most had studied in Europe or the US. Our fantastic DoP, Cui Ligong, had once been a taxi driver in Lewisham. And all the kit worked.

Our goal was to offer insights into the world of Chinese scientists and developers and their advances in physics, space exploration, new energy and artificial intelligence. Working in collaboration with the Chinese Academy of Sciences we had secured access to a huge range of experiments and institutions that had rarely, if ever, been seen in the West before. Almost every day there was a new location – we visited the world’s largest radio telescope carved into the limestone mountains of Guizhou, and toured neutrino detectors buried in vast caverns 700 metres underground in Jiangmen. There were fusion reactors and solar furnaces. In Suzhou we filmed the ancient art of silk production and in Shanghai discovered how that same silk is now being used to reinvent brain surgery.  

It was an amazing – if not entirely straightforward – experience. China can be a demanding place to work. Every day brings surprises and unexpected changes to plans.  It’s a difficult environment in which to be a control freak.

Pre-production is a challenge. There’s the language barrier. And cultural differences – no-one wants to say no to requests, but saying yes can also be hard. The distances are so vast, and the locations so remote that recces are all but impossible. Very often we would show up on location with no real idea of what we would find or who would be there. Frequently we found ourselves binning our shooting plans and making it up from scratch as we went along. 

For all the difficulties, however, I was constantly amazed at how open and amenable our contributors were. In a nation like China, you might expect people to be cautious and guarded – and there was some of that – but on the whole the individuals we met were so keen to tell their stories and show off their facilities that we were given amazing behind-the-scenes access. We were allowed to fly a drone through the structure of a brand-new neutrino detector – which I’m quite sure would never have happened anywhere else in the world. And we persuaded a nuclear physicist to draw in permanent marker all over the outside of his billion-dollar fusion reactor. (Admittedly, we didn’t realise it was permanent marker at the time. Top tip: gaffer tape cleans it up a treat). 

In just over seven weeks we crossed China from East to West and back again – visiting massive and vibrant cities and remote and impressive landscapes. We saw – and ate –things that I never would have imagined before. In that one block we shot almost the entirety of the three-part series. It truly was an adventure.

As a professional experience, shooting in China is extraordinary. You will need to be constantly on your toes and prepared to change all your plans in an instant. There will be days when nothing happens, and days where everything happens in a rush, but there is huge scope for invention and creativity. And just in terms of raw audience size, making a film that will get shown in the Chinese market will guarantee that tens – or even hundreds – of millions of eyeballs will see your work.

I’ve returned to China since that first trip – I’ve worked in studios there, and was asked to help judge student entries for the rather cumbersomely titled ‘Image Possibilities’ Coproduction Plan (IP PLAN), an international documentary production support scheme aimed at showcasing Chinese culture and development.

If the call came again today, I’d be on the plane tomorrow.

On location in Guizhou filming FAST, at 500m, the largest radio telescope in the world. From left to right, Camera Assistant Peter, Michael and Production Attaché Yijie Zhu