Louie Schwartzberg: Gratitude Revealed
Louie Schwartzberg is an award-winning cinematographer, director, and producer whose notable career spans more than four decades, providing breathtaking imagery using his time-lapse, and cinematography techniques to tell inspiring stories celebrating life.
Louie’s theatrical releases include Fantastic Fungi, narrated by Brie Larson, the 3D IMAX film Mysteries of the Unseen World with National Geographic, narrated by Forest Whitaker; the theatrical feature, Wings of Life for Disneynature, narrated by Meryl Streep, America’s Heart and Soul for Walt Disney Studios. His Soarin’ Around the World ride film is one of the most popular attractions at Disney Theme Parks worldwide.
Louie‘s three TED talks have over 65 million combined views. He is the only artist to be inducted into the Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Foundation’s Invention Ambassadors Program. In 2017 he received the Debra Simon Leadership in Mental Wellness award from Global Wellness Summit. He was Oprah Winfrey’s guest on Super Soul Sunday, and his Gratitude Revealed programs premiered on the OWN online platform. Louie received the 2020 Grand Visionary Award from the American Visionary Art Museum, in addition to many Clio awards and Emmy nominations.
Gratitude Revealed, A Movie by Louie Schwartzberg
Interview by Sandie Sedgbeer
Join us for the Official Launch Party! The date is 4/20, the time is 7 pm EST/4 pm PST and it is a 2-hour show packed with some very special peeps. At 9 pm EST/6 pm PST, to close the show, Louie will play the trailer to Gratitude Revealed, and then everyone will have full access to The Louie Channel AND Gratitude Revealed through Earth Day 4/22. Click the image above or visit https://www.louiechannel.tv
To listen to the full interview of Louie Schwartzberg discussing his new movie, Gratitude Revealed, by Sandie Sedgbeer on OMTimes Radio and TV’s flagship show, What Is Going OM, click on the video or audio player below.
Louie Schwartzberg joins us today to discuss his latest and perhaps most heartfelt film, “Gratitude Revealed.”
With so much turmoil and uncertainty in the world, it’s easy to lose sight of what makes Life meaningful. The smiles of a loved one, the laughter of children, the Wonder of the natural world, and the kindnesses and interactions that connect us. But despite everything that’s going on around us, we have so much to be grateful for.
Yeah, not the least being that there are people in the world like today’s guest award-winning filmmaker, Louie Schwartzberg, who’ve made it their mission to remind us of the beauty in humanity, the resilience of the human spirit, the value and benefits of community connection and compassion, and the vital role that the simple act of Gratitude plays in our lives, our health, and the wellbeing of our world. He is renowned for his breathtaking imagery, magical immersion, visual healing, and profound Time-lapse cinematography that have made such gloriously vivid movies like Fantastic Fungi, one of my favorites, wings of Life, and the 3D IMAX movie Mysteries of the Unseen World. So successful.
Louie Schwartzberg: What a gift and a pleasure to be here with you.
Sandie Sedgbeer: What a wonderful movie. I’ve watched it three times now, and I’m just vivid, stunning, stunning imagery. So, Gratitude Revealed started its life as a short, little TEDx talk, and then it grew into this movie. So, tell us the inspiration behind the first film and how it grew into a feature film?
Louie Schwartzberg: Well, when I heard Brother David’s talk about Gratitude, this poem that he had written, I thought I could illustrate it and be able to make it something that would engage young people actually. At that time, I had two college-aged daughters, and if anyone has college-aged daughters, you know how they roll their eyes every time you want to give them advice, and they say, Dad, you’re so cheesy. And I wanted to see if I could create something that wouldn’t be perceived as new agey. So that was sort of the impetus to experiment. And when I created it, and they had it be part of a Ted Talk, lo and behold, what I discovered went viral. And so many young people have commented that they use it as a video alarm clock to align themselves every day that they turned it into practice. And so, I knew there was something there.
And then, that was back, I think, in 2014. After all these years, I’d been like capturing these magic moments with remarkable but ordinary people, let’s say, not celebrities. And I’ve been saving these nuggets. And during covid, when I really couldn’t go out and shoot, I thought this was the ultimate time to put the movie together. And so, in combination with experts, thought leaders, luminaries like Deepak Chopra, brother David, Jack Cornfield, I mean, the obvious people that are inspirational thought leaders.
I also had a lot of just ordinary people, the salt to the earth children. I edited for almost a year and a half, putting together the thousands of hours that I’d been filming into one giant umbrella of Gratitude, touching on things like creativity, curiosity, connection, love, Wonder, and forgiveness. I think the values add up to Gratitude. And I wanted to give people just an immersive journey.
Also, I think a couple of things occurred coming out of the pandemic. First of all, most of us have suffered from this idea of disconnection; what we took for granted, like having dinner with our friends and family. The political discourse has gotten really bad. And so, it’s only understandable that a lot of people feel a lot of despair and a lot of hopelessness out there.
The environmental crisis looms over our heads, especially, I think, for young people. So, it is understandable that people are depressed, and everyone’s talking about this mental health crisis that might be looming around the corner. And sometimes, the universe decides when things need to be born, and with “Gratitude Revealed, “I think it was the perfect moment because of those three big factors. And it’s not to cure despair or depression, but I think it’s a baby step in the right direction. Like, you can always be grateful for something: if my fingers move, I’m alive and breathing.
You can’t have both a positive and a negative thought in your head at the same time. So, to get yourself out of that negative spiral of rumination, of what’s wrong and being depressed, at least take a pause and find something you can be grateful for. And I think that, again, I thank the universe for creating the perfect timing for something to emerge.
Sandie Sedgbeer: So, when you were interviewing all of these people over a period, and then, of course, it all comes together to create this amazing movie, you spoke to some very interesting people. I mean, apart from all the luminaries that you mentioned, you spoke to people and interviewed women who had, you know, come out of prison and were looking at how they would change their lives, children, all kinds of people. Who was there one person or one moment that left a lasting impact on you?
Louie Schwartzberg: Well, there were a lot, I think, the women in the halfway house. I found that to be extraordinarily inspirational because that was a sequence based on creativity. You know, so who would think that you could talk about creativity with a program where at this halfway house, they were teaching these women standup comedy as a way to build self-esteem. So that was super-duper-powerful. The other one that really had a big impact on me was the woman in Appalachia, the rug weaver. And there I am in Kentucky, which is a quote-unquote red state, but here’s this like Wise Earth mama, you know, at this giant loom. And the wisdom that she shared as she was weaving this rug was so deep and profound that it rocked my soul.
Sandie Sedgbeer: And the way she connected it to her husband plowing the fields. Yeah, that was really, really interesting. It did get my attention too.
Louie Schwartzberg: It was like ultimate poetry. I mean, you couldn’t write anything more elegant than that. And again, it’s just coming from, you know, quote-unquote, not ordinary to extraordinary. People just aren’t famous.
Sandie Sedgbeer: Yeah. And, of course, she ended that by saying that what he does every day, which nobody tells him to do, is just commitment. And, you know, commitment is another one of those words like courage and trust that I think we’ve lost. We’ve lost our connection to a lot of those values. Yes. Over the years. Yeah.
Louie Schwartzberg: Well, in the movie, well, Jack Cornfield equates trust with patience. When he talks about patience, he really talks about trust, trust in Life, brother David, same thing. Trust in Life. Yeah, that opened up a whole other perspective for me as well. Trust is just like letting go and believing that what unfolds is what is meant to unfold. And that is it; there’s a lesson in everything that happens, good or bad.
Sandie Sedgbeer: Do you think that with what you do, you have to have a lot of patience to do what you do, and you have to have trust that you’re going to get the results you want? Do you think that making this film has changed that in any way or enhanced your trust in Life?
Louie Schwartzberg: Absolutely. I think, to be quite honest, I just had a recent medical scare where they found some of my arteries were blocked. And, you know, you have to think this could be scary according to the doctors, thank God, I got it caught up in time and fixed it. But that just really made me double down on Gratitude and the gift of Life and trusting in Life. And so, I’m sure you hear this all the time from cancer survivors or people who have gone through a big obstacle. But those challenges are a gift. Know, and you hear all of these people usually say that they’re more alive than they’ve ever been. They’re celebrating Life to the max. And I was surprised that I could even feel a deeper connection to Gratitude than I already had.
Sandie Sedgbeer: Wasn’t it Jack Cornfield in the movie that talked about Buddhism and how the Buddhists at the monastery where he trained would pray to have challenges in their Life?
Louie Schwartzberg: And I loved his line. He goes, “But you don’t have to pray. It’ll come.” Difficulties are going to come. We all have bumps in the road. And, you know, scientific studies have shown that people practicing Gratitude, for example, are more resilient. And resilience is really an important aspect of happiness and survival. Bad things happen to all of us: big things, little things. Somebody could scratch your car.
And for some people, that might be two days of depression, and for some people, they may go, no big deal. They’re not going to allow that incident to slow them down. Right, to get mentally depressed, physiologically sick over something because it’s all going to happen. And there are a lot of things that are out of our control. So, being resilient is a gift and a practice we all need to work on.
Sandie Sedgbeer: Yeah. And neuroscience also shows that Gratitude and generosity come together, that people are healthier, and it increases longevity. Yes. So, yeah. Good reasons to practice them both.
Louie Schwartzberg: And the people again, who journal a little bit, with, with Gratitude, the studies that U C S D in the cardiology department that I think Dr. Dean Ornish was involved with, the people with heart disease became healthier just by journaling. What they’re grateful for.
Sandie Sedgbeer: Yeah. And it’s a loop too. It’s a very beneficial loop because once you start practicing Gratitude and generosity, the brain becomes more altruistic. Altruistically inclined as well. So yeah. It’s a gift that keeps on giving. So, you are known for your pioneering work with time-lapse photography. How and why did you start using this technique?
Louie Schwartzberg: Well, thank you for asking. I think a couple of things. First of all, I started in photography, fine art photography, and fine art photography. I was always in love with, you know, the masters like Ansel Adams and Edward Weston, who shot big negatives and large formats.
I’ve always wanted to shoot a 35-millimeter movie film back when I was in film school. But the only people who were shooting 35-millimeter movie films were commercials and feature films. It was very expensive. It was very difficult to rent a camera that shoots 35-millimeter movie film, even back then. It’s a hundred dollars a minute for film development and processing. And that was back in 1972. So, one of the ways I could sort of get around it and also include my love of photography was to shoot a Time-lapse.
In Time Lapse, what you’re doing is you’re shooting one frame at a time on a movie film, and then you wait.
And with flowers, you might wait 10 minutes; with a cloud, it might be 10 seconds. And what it means is you’re not shooting many films. So, therefore, I’m saving money because it could take me a month to shoot a four-minute roll of film.
But the primary reason was a sense of Wonder when I saw the results of what I was filming because it really hadn’t been done before from an artistic point of view. Time lapses had been used in scientific studies where they put a grid behind the plant. They would measure the growth to prove that plants grow or move to the light. Kind of obvious. But it’s great to be able to showcase that. But nobody added, nobody did it from the point of view of beauty, you know?
When I saw shafts of light and canyons and clouds, metamorphize, and flowers open and close, it was a God, God’s eye point of view. It takes you out of your limited perspective, the arrogant human point of view, and realizes that whether a slow-motion hummingbird or a time-lapse with a flower, every living being had its own point of view and its own metabolic rates.
And it all needs to be cherished, celebrated, and protected. And it’s all different. And that’s beautiful. So, to actually see it, I think, is more powerful than talking about it. And because we’re so arrogant that our view is the only view, even culturally, we’re arrogant.
Like if you live in America, do you think this is what Life is like? Well, it’s different in India, maybe different in China. Right? So just to be able to be in your backyard and realize that there are hundreds of different points of view on Life and how Life works and what are the building blocks of Life: symbiosis, teamwork, connection, nurturing, regeneration, rebirth, these processes go on. We are part of that as well. We are it, but to see it in plants and to see it in animals opens your heart.
Sandie Sedgbeer: We could never see it any other way. You know, if you hadn’t done this, we would never be able to see the life cycle of a flower. Just would be impossible. I think they’re using a lot of this in some of David Attenborough’s latest Planet Earth movies. And I remember watching one recently and being riveted because, again, they used this type of photography so much. Was any of that footage yours?
Louie Schwartzberg: Well, it’s sometimes it gets licensed, but I think I’m proud to say that I inspired, I think, a lot of people to do a time-lapse in the very high-end, high production way. You know, I did visual effects for Hollywood movies. I directed commercials. So, I took that same quality technology approach, which the BBC and others have also employed, like helicopters with gyro-stabilized mounts. So, there’s no jiggle. It looks like you’re on a tripod and can fly over giant landscapes. All of those were tools used for high-end production, major feature films, and commercials. And I applied it to nature, and so I’ve been shooting 35-millimeter films since 1972, and I have almost 2000 hours of material that is sort of my visual library.
Sandie Sedgbeer: Did you have any idea that it would lead to this kind of success?
Louie Schwartzberg: I’ve always believed I want to turn people on. The problem back then is where gatekeepers and certain models that didn’t allow it if you recalled or were, it used to be like three or four TV channels, and then there was cable and, now there’s streaming. So finally, like with my channel that I’m about to launch on 2/20 called the Louis Channel, I’ve skipped all the gatekeepers, and I can go direct to the consumer with the kind of visual healing content inspirational content. Because most television shows or movies are based on fear and anxiety. That’s the model for them to think about keeping people’s interest and engagement. And they call that entertainment, making you sit on the edge of your seat. What we’re learning is sitting on the edge of your seat and fear and anxiety build up cortisol in your body.
And I think eventually people will go, just like with smoking, and with fast food, there’ll be a giant clear revelation that this stuff is really bad for you, and it can shorten your life and make you sick. You can’t be watching thousands of murders and not feel that it’s going to have a negative effect on you. So what I’m trying to do is create an alternative. Think that it may be everybody, but it’s for the people that are part of your community. They would rather, I think, be inspired by nature’s wonders, which is medicine. It’s pure medicine, I believe. And it’s better than listening to stories of revenge, violence, cheating, anxiety, or conflict. They believe you can’t tell the story without conflict.
What is the real story of nature, especially the feminine side of nature? It’s all about cooperation and networking and nurturing and love and regeneration. Billions and billions of little interactions called pollination, called fungi, called microorganisms. Right now, billions of interactions are occurring in your body. Yeah. At this moment. And that’s not a story that they think is interesting. The story they show is to kill or be killed. Predator versus prey, the macho story. Even BBC, NATGEO, I mean, shark Week is still the number one popular week on Discovery because they’re pressing that easy button: fear, the primal fight or flight button. It’s easy to get that reaction. If I point a gun at you, I’m going to get a reaction. But that doesn’t take much talent, right?
To make you laugh, to make you cry, to make you feel that takes more talent. But to just like pointing the knife at you doesn’t take a lot of skill, in my opinion. So, yeah, that’s what we’re trying to do. And I think we need a new story. I’m glad that I’ve been saving all these magic moments, weaving them together, and whether it’s Gratitude, a journey into the soul or fantastic fungi, a journey into nature’s intelligence under the ground to learn about, a shared economy where nutrients are shared without greed for ecosystems to flourish. Those are the models that are literally under our feet, the blueprint for how to live in harmony, where everybody benefits for Life to thrive. It’s right there.
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