The wildfires in Los Angeles have been dominating our media streams. It’s truly been horrific to see people robbed of their homes as a result of our increasingly destructive weather patterns. It makes you question whether we are focusing our attention on the right things. The way these communities in Los Angeles are coming together are a testament to the kindness and love of their inhabitants. It seems serendipitous that the film “Every Little Thing” premiered in select theaters this weekend.
The film tells the story of author and wildlife rehabber Terry Masear. She has an ambitious goal: to save every injured hummingbird in Los Angeles. But the path to survival is fraught with danger. This heart-expanding Sundance 2024 hit introduces audiences to Terry’s diminutive patients through breathtaking slow-motion photography and emotional storytelling. Over the course of director Sally Aitken’s documentary, we become deeply invested in hummingbirds like Cactus, Raisin, Jimmy, and Wasabi, celebrating their tiny victories and lamenting their tragedies. Through Terry’s eyes, each bird becomes memorable, mighty and heroic. Her compassion and empathy serves as a reminder that grace can be found in the smallest of acts and the tiniest of creatures.
I had the opportunity last week to interview Sally Aitken about her beautiful documentary, Terry’s wildlife rehab for hummingbirds, and the community members in Los Angeles who come to Terry to help these birds. Sally is an Emmy® nominated director and writer, as well as a show runner of multiple international series. Known for visually arresting work characterized by sensitivity and humor, she relishes unknown stories and the world’s complexities. Her formidable directorial slate includes some of the most talked about and highest rated screen content for broadcasters around the globe, delivering both theatrical feature documentaries and hours of original programming to Amazon Studios, Disney+, BBC, ABC, PBS, Nat Geo, SBS, C4, Channel7, CBC, Foxtel, Discovery, the History Channel, ZDF, Arte, and TVNZ.
“Every Little Thing” is her second film to play in competition at the Sundance Film Festival after delighting audiences with her 2021 Sundance Film Festival hit, “Playing with Sharks” (now streaming on Disney+), the remarkable life of maverick conservationist Valerie Taylor and her love affair with the ocean’s most terrifying predator. Described as “extraordinary,” “visually stunning,” “enthralling” and “a moving portrait of grace and compassion,” it was named by The Hollywood Reporter as one of the 15 best films of the year.
“Every Little Thing” opened on January 10th at the IFC Center in New York City before expanding to select theaters nationwide. Learn more here: bit.ly/everylittlethingdoc
How did you come to this project, and how did you meet Terry Masear?
Four years ago, I made a film about another extraordinary woman called Valerie Taylor, who is like the Australian Jane Goodall of sharks. I made that film with producer Bettina Dalton, who also worked with me on “Every Little Thing.” “Playing with Sharks” was a very big success. It was invited to Sundance, and it sold well to Disney+. We were like, ‘Wow, well, we’ve got to do something together again.’
Bettina sent me a review of Terry’s memoir called Fastest Things on Wings, and my first thought was, ‘I love this. It’s so quirky. Who runs a hotline for hummingbirds?’ And also, ‘How much trouble do hummingbirds get into that they need to have a dedicated 24 /7 call center?’ I just thought, ‘what an unusual and strange story.’ But it was strange in a humorous kind of way THAT a story like this must be. I also didn’t know if it was a feature film. Then I read the book and I loved Terry’s POV. She’s very metaphorical in the book, which doesn’t deal at all with her personal story. It’s very much about her years as a wildlife rehabilitator. But there was something about how the book was written in it’s metaphoric offering that got me thinking, ‘wow, there’s really a beautiful film here,’ because it’s actually about compassion and kindness and the cinematic visual possibilities of filming hummingbirds, which are obviously magical creatures.
I also liked the idea of Los Angeles and this mythic cinematic story of a city that has been in so many different movies and so many different genres, being seen in a whole new way. I just thought there’s some really interesting elements here. But when you write all the elements down on paper, it shouldn’t work, right? What have you got? You’ve got a woman. You’ve got a house. You’ve got some birds. It’s not exactly gripping stuff. So it was really interesting to go on the journey of thinking about how to visualize the film, how to tell the story of Terry, and also lean into what we didn’t know, particularly how was the season going to unfold and what would come her way.
So it was this incredibly interesting blend of pure cinema vérité with a cinematic backstory. I tried to find a way of representing Terry’s own story, which was revealed to me during the course of the filming, and then this incredible visually poetic dance of the hummingbirds. And I felt, ‘wow, if there’s a way of putting all of this together, that’ll be great.’
It’s such a gorgeous film. I wish I had been able to be at Sundance and see it at the big screen. Hopefully it’ll be coming to Chicago. I was curious how it was working with Ann Johnson Prum, the DP who slowed down the dance of hummingbirds. I just marveled at the beauty of that. Can you talk about working with her?
Not only is the footage beautiful, but Ann herself is the most beautiful human. So very early on, I realized that there was a visual possibility. But also, how do you go and film a hummingbird like that? It seems quite hard. First of all, she’s a cinematographer who had been an early adopter of phantom technology. Phantom cameras allow you to film at an incredibly high frame rate, meaning you can slow the image down. And she also happens to be a wildlife expert in hummingbird filming.
So I remember being with Bettina, and meeting Ann in Los Angeles to talk about this film. It was a great day when she said, ‘yes I’d love to film, that that sounds great.’ We actually have three cinematographers because Ann doesn’t shoot observational footage. Our two other cinematographers are Nathan Barlow and Dan Freene. They filmed with Terry and the birds at the house. Bettina combined using macro lenses to get in really close to the birds with using slow-mo film speed to be able to examine every detail of the flight. The balance of the texture in the footage, I think in some ways, really showcases the beautiful high-speed photography as well. So it was kind of a combination of all of those things. I’m so happy that you loved it visually.
It was so beautiful. I’ve never seen a bird up close like that before and and it was truly poetic just how you told the stories of her and the birds, with all of their quirks. In your director’s statement, you were talking about working with your editor Tania Michel Nehme and how it was kind of like unveiling a visual poem with Terry’s life and these birds. Can you talk a little bit about that process?
Definitely. I’m so happy you brought Tania’s name into this conversation because an editor that is in sync with you is honestly the best. Tania is an incredibly intuitive, sensitive personality. We’d made a film together previously and so I knew that she would have great sympathy for the material. But we really didn’t know how the film was going to be constructed. I had ideas that I was hoping we could express in the film, like the idea that it would be very lyrical and poetic, and I wanted to showcase LA, but I wanted to be in the world of Terry. These are all good ambitions to have, but I was writing the script.
So what happened is that at the very beginning of the edit, I knew that we had an opportunity with the observational experiences as well as this beautiful high-speed photography. I said to Tania, “I think our greatest challenge is that we have to make a film in which the smallest things feel epic and monumental. That’s the art of this film.” It was Tania who actually found the idea of using the flowers in the film, and I feel like that unlocked a whole other way of seeing the story through the incorporation of a few of these other elements that were in the right tonal register of delicacy and metaphor. Once that was sort of unlocked, we were then onto the next phase of the journey.
I was joking with someone earlier, and it’s a very technical answer, but I use a scripting software program called Scrivener, which is a little bit like a word software. I had three different scripts at one stage: one for Terry’s biography, one for the birds, and one for the finders of the birds. I felt in the beginning that it was difficult to knit this together. And then I had this one day where I realized I could take a scene out of each. It was literally like doing some kind of play. That helped unlock the story, at least technically, because it was so much. It’s really a delicate film because it focuses on the most instinctual elements. Underneath, there’s this enormity of stuff that didn’t make the film. It was like filtering all that stuff out to allow the film to be. It was an incredible joy to be in the edit. Who knew that telling the story of hummingbirds would be so heavy?
Right, and I think you just beautifully piece that all together. I really did appreciate you going into Terry’s life as well. Just hearing about her trauma and unpacking her relationship with her former partner was a really beautiful and healing experience. With that said, I was curious what you hope people see in your film.
That is such a good question because I hope in some ways that the film speaks to people, but ideally, in lots of different ways. Because it’s not a didactic film. It’s not a film that says you must do XYZ, or you must think this or that. It’s a film that hopefully is an invitation for all sorts of things.
And I’m so happy you use the word “healing.” There’s such a strong theme of healing. It’s not a secret that when my producer Bettina and Terry first connected, they worked out that they had suffered an enormous loss, each of them, but within a week of each other. That’s serendipity. All of these ideas of fragility and the precariousness of life and yet the wonder and the beauty and the magic of the world around us are all in the film. And yet, so too is the idea of resilience. I really hope people will come see the film and walk away it feeling sustained in some way that’s a bit undefinable. And that maybe in the experience of watching the film, they’ve touched something of their own humanity. There’s something about our humanity reflected back to us in this film, the parts of our humanity that we don’t usually scream about from the rooftops, things like compassion and kindness and awareness and empathy. All of these things are so much a core of what it is to be human. And yet, we’re in a world that hurts and we hurt each other and we’re cruel and those things get talked about all the time. Yet you see a film like this where you remember that the journey of being human can actually be a good one. Let’s remember that.
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