You may have seen the hit documentary Fantastic Fungi from Louie Schwartzberg on Netflix, taking us on a journey to discover the mysterious mycelium networks pulsing beneath our feet. Now, the dedicated filmmaker takes viewers behind the scenes to show his painstaking process. Filmed over a 15-year period in his home studio, Schwartzberg’s time-lapse footage depicts myriads of spores moving in all directions as they change color and appearance. In WIRED’s video we get the inside scoop on these spectacular visuals.

Schwartzberg explains, “…a mosquito on your arm, which has a little drop of blood, looks at the hand that’s coming toward it in slow motion and has plenty of time to fly away because its metabolic rate, its life span, is much shorter than ours. And our lifespan is much shorter than that of a redwood. Our reality is not the only point of view, and that’s exactly the beauty of cameras and time-lapse cinematography. It’s basically a time machine.”

Catch the documentary Fantastic Fungi on Netflix.