David Parer

Last updated

David Parer, winner of best cinematography in a documentary, AACTA awards 2011. David Parer, AACTA 2011.jpg
David Parer, winner of best cinematography in a documentary, AACTA awards 2011.
David Damien Parer
Born
David Damien Parer

(1945-07-29) 29 July 1945 (age 78)
Melbourne, Victoria, Australian
Occupation(s)cinematographer, natural history film maker
Notable workWolves of the Sea
Spouse Elizabeth Parer-Cook
Children1 (Zoe)
Relatives Damien Parer (uncle)
Amanda Parer (niece)
Ray Parer (great uncle)

David Damien Parer AO ACS is an Australian natural history film maker, working in partnership with his wife and sound recordist, Elizabeth Parer-Cook. [1]

Contents

Parer was conscripted into the Australian Army to go to the Vietnam War in 1970, but he entered a Masters program to study physics in the Antarctic. Parer spent the summers of 1970 and 1972 in Antarctica studying cosmic rays at Mawson Station. While there he filmed his first documentary. David subsequently joined the Australian Broadcasting Corpora tion ABC Natural History Unit making wildlife films, where he met his wife and fellow film maker, Elizabeth Parer-Cook, in 1977. After the Natural History Unit closed in 2007, the Parers have continued working as a freelance team. [1]

Awards

The Parers' films have won over 130 Australian and international awards including the Golden Panda at Windscreen twice and three Emmy's. [2]

He was awarded the Golden Panda from Wildscreen (known as the green Oscars) for:

Wolves of the Sea, Gold Panda for Best Film at Windscreen 1994
Mysteries of the Ocean Wanderers, Gold Panda Best Cinematography Windscreen 1994
Dragons of Galapagos, Gold Panda Wildscreen 1998

He has been awarded the AFI award for the best cinematography for a non-feature film four times, for :

Edge of the Cold, 1978
Bird of the Thunder Woman, 1980
The Dragons of Galapagos , 1998
Island of the Vampire Birds, 1999[ citation needed ]

His other work as a cinematographer and producer includes:

Douglas Mawson: The Survivor, 1983
The Frozen World, 1984
Nature of Australia: A Portrait of the Island Continent: A Separate Creation, 1988
Killer Whales: Wolves of the Sea, 1993
Platypus: World's Strangest Animal, 2003
Terrors of Tasmania, 2004
Australia: Land of Parrots, 2008
Out of the Ashes, 2011

Many of Parer's documentaries have been narrated by noted naturalist David Attenborough. [1]

Parer received an Honorary Doctor of Science from Monash University, Melbourne 17 March 1989. [3] [4]

Parer gained "legend status" at St Patrick's College Old Collegians' Association. He attended college there from 1962 to 1964. [5]

Parer was inducted into the Australian Cinematographers Society's Hall of Fame in 2008. [2] He was appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia in the 2024 Australia Day Honours for "distinguished service to wildlife cinematography, to literature as an author, and to the environment". [6]

Family

His uncle was Academy Award-winning war cinematographer, Damien Peter Parer, who filmed Kokoda Front Line in 1944 in Papua New Guinea.

Related Research Articles

Russell Stewart Boyd,, ACS, ASC, is an Australian cinematographer. He rose to prominence with his highly praised work on Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975), the first of several collaborations with director Peter Weir. Boyd is a member of both the Australian Cinematographers Society since 1975 and the American Society of Cinematographers since 2004.

<i>Natural World</i> (TV series) British TV series or programme

Natural World is a strand of British wildlife documentary programmes broadcast on BBC Two and BBC Two HD and regarded by the BBC as its flagship natural history series. It is the longest-running documentary in its genre on British television, with nearly 500 episodes broadcast since its inception in 1983. Natural World programmes are typically one-off films that take an in-depth look at particular natural history events, stories or subjects from around the globe.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Damien Parer</span> Australian photographer (1912–1944)

Damien Peter Parer was an Australian war photographer. He became famous for his war photography of the Second World War, and was killed by Japanese machine-gun fire at Peleliu, Palau. He was cinematographer for Australia's first Oscar-winning film, Kokoda Front Line!, an edition of the weekly newsreel, Cinesound Review, which was produced by Ken G. Hall.

Wildscreen is a wildlife conservation charity based in Bristol, England.

Cherub of the Mist is a documentary film based on the life of two red pandas, namely, Mini and Sweety, who were released into the Singalila National Park in the Darjeeling District, India. The documentary which was filmed by Naresh Bedi and Rajesh Bedi over 2 years, followed Indian biologist Dr. Sunita Pradhan who at that time had been studying red pandas for over 10 years. It was the first time that someone had filmed the rare red pandas in their natural habitat and shows the animals in courtship, mating, nest building, and the rearing of cubs. Red pandas are found in Nepal, through North-eastern India and Bhutan, and into China and are listed in the Red Data Book. The population of red pandas at that time was estimated to be around 2,500.

Dean Semler ACS ASC is an Australian cinematographer and film director. Over his career, he has worked as a cinematographer, camera operator, director, second unit director, and assistant director. He is a three-time recipient of the AACTA Award for Best Cinematography and an Academy Award winner. He is a member of both the Australian Cinematographers Society (ACS) and the American Society of Cinematographers (ASC). In 2002 he was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia (AM).

<i>Galápagos</i> (2006 TV series) 2006 British TV series or programme

Galápagos is a three-part BBC nature documentary series exploring the natural history of the Galápagos Islands and their important role in the formation of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. It was first transmitted in the UK on BBC Two in September 2006.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Australian Cinematographers Society</span>

The Australian Cinematographers Society (ACS) is a not-for-profit organisation founded in 1958 for the purpose of providing a forum for Australian cinematographers to further develop their skills through mutual co-operation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">James Honeyborne</span>

James Honeyborne is the creative director of Freeborne Media, he previously worked as an executive producer at the BBC Natural History Unit where he oversaw some 35 films, working with multiple co-producers around the world. His projects include the Emmy Award and BAFTA-winning series Blue Planet II, the Emmy Award-nominated series Wild New Zealand with National Geographic, and the BAFTA-winning BBC1 series Big Blue Live with PBS.

Christopher Eugene Parsons OBE was an English wildlife film-maker and the executive producer of David Attenborough's Life on Earth nature documentary. As a founding member and a former Head of the BBC Natural History Unit, he worked on many of its early productions and published a history of its first 25 years in 1982. Besides television, he was also passionate about projects which helped to bring an understanding of the natural world to a wider audience, notably the Wildscreen Festival and ARKive.

James Lawson Neihouse is an American cinematographer who has been involved with many of the most memorable and successful IMAX 2D and IMAX 3D films to date.

James FrazierACS was an Australian inventor, naturalist and cinematographer who invented the Frazier lens. He won many Australian and international awards for his work, including an Academy Award for Technical Achievement and an Emmy Award. He is known for filming documentaries for David Attenborough together with his long-time collaborator Australian naturalist, photographer and writer Densey Clyne.

Nicolas Lane Noxon was an American documentary filmmaker. He specialized in television programs dealing with history, science, and the natural world. Noxon produced television specials and series in association with ABC, David Wolper, Columbia Pictures Television, Metromedia, MGM, Survival Anglia, Time-Life, and National Geographic Television.

<i>The Shadowcatchers</i> Photographic history of Australian cinematography, published 2012

The Shadowcatchers: A history of cinematography in Australia is a photographic history of Australian cinematography, written by Martha Ansara and published by the Australian Cinematographers Society, which launched the project for its 50th anniversary in 2008.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Patrick Morris (director)</span>

Patrick Morris is a British producer, director and series producer of many wildlife documentaries.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Naresh Bedi</span> Indian filmmaker

Naresh Bedi is an Indian filmmaker, the eldest of the Bedi Brothers and a member of the second generation of three generations of Wildlife photographers and filmmakers. He is the first Asian to receive a Wildscreen Panda Award and the first Indian to receive a wildlife film nomination for the British Academy Film Awards. He was honoured by the Government of India in 2015 with Padma Shri, the fourth highest Indian civilian award.

Richard John Fitzpatrick is an Australian Emmy award winning cinematographer and adjunct research fellow specialising in marine biology at James Cook University.

<i>The Serengeti Rules</i> 2018 American film

The Serengeti Rules is a 2018 American documentary film directed by Nicolas Brown, and based on the book by Sean B. Carroll. The film explores the discoveries of five pioneering scientists—Tony Sinclair, Mary E. Power, Bob Paine, John Terborgh, and Jim Estes—whose decades of research laid the groundwork for modern ecology and offer hope that environmentalists today may be able to “upgrade” damaged ecosystems by understanding the rules that govern them.

Waghoba: Provider, Destroyer, Deity is a 2016 documentary short film about Indian tigers and their relationships with human society. It is directed and written by Malaika Vaz and produced by Sandesh Kadur. The film helped win the National Geographic ROAD Talent award for Wildscreen Festival.

The Dragons of Galapagos is a 1998 wildlife documentary film created by David Parer and Elizabeth Parer-Cook. It looks at the life on the Galapagos Islands. The couple spend two years living in a tent on the island of Fernandina to record the animals, with Parer working the camera and Parer-Cook recording the sound. It was produced by the BBC, National Geographic and the ABC and was narrated by David Attenborough.

References

  1. 1 2 3 Salleh, Annah (9 January 2023). David Parer and Liz Parer-Cook: the husband-and-wife wildlife documentary-making team, ABC News . Retrieved 9 January 2023.
  2. 1 2 "David Parer ACS - Australian Cinematographers Society". www.cinematographer.org.au. Retrieved 9 January 2023.
  3. "1980-1989 Roll of Honorary Graduates". Monash university. Retrieved 15 March 2020.
  4. Crompton, Richard (1 January 1989). "Honorary Doctor of Science David Parer (right) with brother Michael". Item held by Monash University Archives. Retrieved 21 February 2017.
  5. Media, Australian Community Media - Fairfax (11 March 2016). "Legend status for filmmaker". The Courier. Retrieved 9 January 2023.
  6. "Mr David Damien Parer". Australian Honours Search Facility. Retrieved 25 January 2024.