This third taster for The Seed Beneath the Snow The Sequel reflects one of my favourite entries from David Fleming’s Dictionary for the Future – “Encounter” – where he becomes less the intellectual economist and more the poet, attempting to describe a kind of mystical experience.

As it happens, he takes the perfect example from the work of our Deep Time explorer, Dr. Stephan Harding, Coordinator of the MSc in Holistic Science at Schumacher College. Thinking through the best way to put this on film, I struck gold when I asked Stephan himself exactly what the experience of encountering another being means to him:

 

Filming that sequence was a delight. Stephan was every bit as poetic as David, and I believe I managed to find a piece of music that could express something of the timeless moment he described.

The only problem was the muntjac deer. There are muntjacs in the woods near where I live, and I was pleased when I managed to get some footage that could be included (I hope it’s not too great a surprise that filmmakers don’t rely on the deer in question just turning up when filming a reconstruction like this, for all our good fortune with the train in taster #1!). However, when I showed the first rough-cut to Stephen, he gently pointed out that the muntjac deer I had carefully captured was actually a roe deer… Whoops. Time for a change of deer! So now you have the right deer starring (and staring) in the film. I hope you like the result.

Following up on some of the comments received, here is a variant version of the taster. Of course in the final documentary this will change again.

Next stop will be filming a repair café as part of a sequence about Transition Towns, a worldwide movement heavily inspired by David Fleming’s vision.

It sounds a really good idea – free repairs to ailing goods to keep them out of landfill – but I’ve never been to one, so it’ll be fascinating to see how it turns out.