Neil Nightingale (born 6 February 1960 [1] ) is a British freelance wildlife filmmaker, executive producer and creative consultant with over 35 years experience at the BBC. From 2009 to 2018 he was the creative director of BBC Earth, BBC Worldwide's global brand for all BBC nature and science content.
In this role Nightingale led the development and production of new forms of commercial content including feature films, [2] 4D experiences, [3] live events, [4] interactive visitor attractions [5] Giant Screen films, [6] and Digital Projects. [7] He is the co-director of two 3D feature films, Walking with Dinosaurs 3D (2013) [8] and Enchanted Kingdom 3D (2014), [9] as well as executive producer of BBC Earth's slate of theatrical and 3D giant screen films, including Tiny Giants (2014) , Wild Africa (2015), [10] Earthflight (2016) , Incredible Predators (2016), [11] Earth-One Amazing Day (2017) [12] and producer of Oceans: Our Blue Planet (2018). [13]
Nightingale attended Wadham College, Oxford [1] and graduated with a first class degree in Zoology. After working as a freelance science journalist for New Scientist , he joined the BBC in 1983 as a researcher and assistant producer in a variety of television genres, including current affairs, regional programmes, science and education. [14]
His first natural history production credits were for a number of programmes in the Wildlife on One series. He later moved on to the challenges of engaging audiences with series on fossils and plants as the producer of Lost Worlds, Vanished Lives and The Private Life of Plants , both of which were collaborations with veteran broadcaster David Attenborough.
In 1995, Nightingale took on the role of Series Editor for The Natural World , BBC Two's long-running flagship natural history series. Under his editorship, The Natural World's programmes won awards at every major international wildlife film festival as well as the Royal Television Society award for Best Documentary Strand. [15]
He went on to produce five episodes of BBC One's Wildlife Specials as executive producer. He was also executive producer of several series in the Continents strand for BBC Two, including Wild Africa and Wild Down Under . In 2003, Nightingale went on to become Head of the Natural History Unit, the largest wildlife film-making production unit in the world,. [16] He led the Unit for 6 years; from February 2003 [17] until June 2009. [18]
Under his leadership the Unit developed its reputation for innovative and ambitious natural history broadcasting. He oversaw well-received television series including Planet Earth (2006), Springwatch (2005), Wild China (2008) and Life (2009), as well as the Unit's largest-ever radio production, World on the Move (2008), which followed migrating animals live, [19] and Breathing Places, an ambitious multimedia campaign which successfully encouraged thousands of people to undertake hands-on activities with nature. [20] He also moved the Unit into the field of feature films with Deep Blue (2003) and Earth (2007), both spin-offs from successful television series. Earth is the most successful documentary feature film produced in Britain ever.
In January 2009 the BBC announced that Nightingale was to stand down after six years as Head of the Unit to return to programme making. He was succeeded in the role by Andrew Jackson. [21]
Nightingale was a co-founder and vice chairman of the BBC Wildlife Fund, a conservation charity established in 2007. Its appeals raised over £3 million for endangered species conservation, and it has funded almost 90 projects in the UK and around the world. [22]
From 2002 until 2009, Nightingale was a trustee of Wildscreen, a charity which organises the biennial wildlife film festival of the same name in Bristol. Its ARKive project aims to create an online database of all the world's threatened species.
As Head of the Natural History Unit, Nightingale faced down criticism over the issues of viewer deception and value for money for licence fee payers.
In 2007, because of a lower than expected licence fee settlement, the BBC announced major cutbacks across its factual production departments, including budget and staff cuts at the Natural History Unit. [23] The cutbacks were highly disapproved of by veteran broadcaster and natural history enthusiast David Attenborough, a long-time collaborator with the NHU. [24]
The following year, Nightingale defended the Unit against accusations of profligacy with regard to the production costs of the Big Cat Live series. According to newspaper reports, a production team of 94 people was based in a luxury hotel in Kenya during three weeks of filming. [25]
Film techniques used by the Natural History Unit came under close scrutiny in 2008 following a number of scandals in which other programme-making departments in the BBC were revealed to have 'deceived' viewers. Examples of the use of tame animals (a red fox in The Nature of Britain ) and studio sets (deep sea life in The Blue Planet ) to simulate footage from the wild were brought to light. [26] Nightingale rebutted accusations of misleading viewers, arguing that it is almost impossible to film certain sequences in the wild and that the Unit is open about its methods. [27]
Sir David Frederick Attenborough is a British broadcaster, biologist, natural historian, and writer. He is best known for writing and presenting, in conjunction with the BBC Studios Natural History Unit, the nine nature documentary series forming the Life collection, a comprehensive survey of animal and plant life on Earth.
The Blue Planet is a British nature documentary series created and co-produced by the BBC and Discovery Channel. It premiered on 12 September 2001 in the United Kingdom. It is narrated by David Attenborough.
The BBC Studios Natural History Unit (NHU) is a department of BBC Studios that produces television, radio and online content with a natural history or wildlife theme. It is best known for its highly regarded nature documentaries, including The Blue Planet and Planet Earth, and has a long association with David Attenborough's authored documentaries, starting with 1979's Life on Earth.
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.
A nature documentary or wildlife documentary is a genre of documentary film or series about animals, plants, or other non-human living creatures. Nature documentaries usually concentrate on video taken in the subject's natural habitat, but often including footage of trained and captive animals, too. Sometimes they are about wildlife or ecosystems in relationship to human beings. Such programmes are most frequently made for television, particularly for public broadcasting channels, but some are also made for the cinema. The proliferation of this genre occurred almost simultaneously alongside the production of similar television series which is distributed across the world.
Planet Earth is a 2006 British television series produced by the BBC Natural History Unit. Five years in the making, it was the most expensive nature documentary series ever commissioned by the BBC and also the first to be filmed in high definition. The series received multiple awards, including four Emmy Awards, a Peabody Award, and an award from the Royal Television Society.
Alastair David William Fothergill is a British producer of nature documentaries for television and cinema. He is the series producer of the series The Blue Planet (2001), Planet Earth (2006) and the co-director of the associated feature films Deep Blue and Earth.
John Michael Salisbury, is an English documentary filmmaker specialising in natural history programmes for television. In a career spanning four decades, he spent over 30 years working for the BBC Natural History Unit where he produced a string of award-winning series, many in collaboration with David Attenborough. He retired from the Unit in 2006 but continues to work as a freelance producer. In 2007, he was made an OBE in the New Year Honours List for his services to broadcasting.
Wild Down Under is a BBC nature documentary series exploring the natural history of the Australasian continent, first transmitted in the UK on BBC Two in September 2003. It was broadcast in Australia under the title Wild Australasia in February 2004.
Planet Earth: The Future is a 2006 BBC documentary series on the environment and conservation, produced by the BBC Natural History Unit as a companion to the multi-award-winning nature documentary Planet Earth. The programmes were originally broadcast on BBC Four immediately after the final three episodes of Planet Earth on BBC One. Each episode highlights the conservation issues surrounding some of the species and environments featured in Planet Earth, using interviews with the film-makers and eminent figures from the fields of science, conservation, politics, and theology. The programmes are narrated by Simon Poland and the series producer was Fergus Beeley.
William Goodchild is a composer, orchestrator and conductor who produces music for film, television and the concert hall.
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.
Life is a British nature documentary series created and produced by the BBC in association with The Open University. It was first broadcast as part of the BBC's Darwin Season on BBC One and BBC HD from October to December 2009. The series takes a global view of the specialised strategies and extreme behaviour that living things have developed in order to survive; what Charles Darwin termed "the struggle for existence". Four years in the making, the series was shot entirely in high definition.
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.
Mike Gunton is a British television producer and a senior executive at the BBC Natural History Unit, the world's largest production unit dedicated to wildlife film-making. In November 2009 he became the Unit's first Creative Director.
Keith Scholey is a British producer of nature documentaries for television and cinema, and a former television executive. He is currently a joint Director of Silverback Films Ltd and Studio Silverback Ltd.
Madagascar is a British nature documentary series, first broadcast on BBC Two and BBC HD in February 2011. Produced by the BBC Natural History Unit and Animal Planet and narrated by David Attenborough, the three-part series focuses on the landscape and wildlife of the island of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean. Attenborough also appears briefly on camera at the beginning and end of the series. Each episode is followed by a ten-minute Madagascar Diaries segment, illustrating the techniques used to film a particular subject.
Attenborough: 60 Years in the Wild is a three-part BBC documentary series chronicling the 60 years career making wildlife programmes of Sir David Attenborough. The first hour-long programme, titled "Life on Camera" was broadcast on Friday 16 November 2012 on BBC Two at 9pm. The second part, "Understanding the Natural World" and third and final part, "Our Fragile Planet" were broadcast on following Fridays, 23 and 30 November 2012.
Patrick Morris is a British producer, director and series producer of many wildlife documentaries.
Planet Earth is a television and film documentary franchise produced and broadcast by the BBC. The franchise began in 2001 with the success of The Blue Planet. As of 2017, The Blue Planet has spawned 5 series and one feature film.