9 Hours of Summer Forest – Pure Nature, No AI, No Loops
This new film is a journey through more than nine hours of real summer forest – uninterrupted, unlooped and recorded entirely in nature.
The journey begins in the cooler forests of Germany’s higher elevations, where tall conifers and old deciduous trees create quiet, shaded spaces beneath the canopy. Gradually, the scenery changes as the film moves towards the lush floodplain forests along the Rhine, with their dense vegetation, old trees and rich summer birdlife.
Rather than creating a short sequence and repeating it, I wanted this film to preserve the feeling of actually spending many hours in the forest. Every scene is different, and the natural soundscape continues to change with it. There are no repeated video sequences and no repeated audio tracks throughout the entire film.
Gentle wind moves through leaves and treetops, birds call from near and far, and sunlight slowly changes as it passes through the canopy. Some moments are quiet and almost completely still, while others are filled with the sounds of an active summer forest. These natural variations have deliberately been preserved instead of creating an artificially constant ambience.
All footage was filmed by me on location in German forests, and all of the sound comes from my own field recordings. No stock footage, stock audio, AI-generated imagery, AI-generated sounds or synthetic nature sounds were used.
The film was created primarily for sleep, relaxation, meditation and studying, but it can also simply run in the background as a window into the forest. At more than nine hours long, it can accompany an entire night without returning to the beginning.
Recorded in the field
For the sound recordings I used a matched pair of Sennheiser MKH 8040 microphones together with a Tascam Portacapture X8. The MKH 8040s allow me to capture both the subtle background atmosphere of the forest and individual birds while retaining the natural dynamics of the environment.
The video was recorded with a Canon EOS R6 Mark II, primarily using the Canon RF 28–70mm F2 L, RF 10–20mm F4 L and EF 70–200mm F2.8 L II lenses.
The scenes were filmed over many separate visits to the forest rather than during a single day. I selected and combined some of my favorite summer and late-spring recordings into one continuous journey, while trying to preserve longer stretches with a similar landscape and atmosphere rather than constantly jumping between locations.
Pure Nature
No AI. No stock footage. No synthetic sounds. No audio loops. No video loops.
What you see and hear really happened in the forest.
This was one of my most extensive nature-film projects so far, and in many ways a collection of some of my favorite forest recordings from recent years. I hope it can provide a quiet place to return to – whether for a few minutes, a few hours, or an entire night.
