Sea Studios Foundation is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization, headquartered in Monterey, California. Sea Studios was founded by Mark Shelley, a senior series producer for National Geographic. It is a team of filmmakers, scientists and public opinion leaders dedicated to raising public awareness and creating action on issues involving the planet’s health and sustainable development worldwide.
In 2001, in collaboration with the National Geographic Society, Sea Studios produced The Shape of Life, an eight-hour special that focuses on the evolution of the animal kingdom and animal biodiversity. It combines a science-based content with pioneering techniques in underwater and deep-sea filmmaking. The Shape of Life earned several major film festival honors, including "Best Scientific Content" and "Finalist" at the 2003 International Wildlife Film Festival; the 2003 CINE Golden Eagle Award, for Episode 2 and Episode 6; "Semi-finalist" at the 2003 Animal Behavior Society Film Festival; "Best of Monterey" at the 2003 Access Monterey Peninsula Edgar Kennedy Awards.
Sea Studios' Strange Days on Planet Earth initiative has ongoing partnership with the National Geographic Society. It began as a four-part television series in 2005, hosted by Edward Norton. The series earned 14 major film festival honors, including Best Series at 2005 International Wildlife Film Festival, the environmental equivalent of the OSCARS, "Best" in Field Research and Scientific Exploration at The 2005 Explorers Club Documentary Film Festival, the Greenpeace Environmental Award at the 2005 Linden Wildlife Film Festival, the prestigious Panda Award at the 2004 Wildscreen Film Festival, "Best People and Animals" award at the 2004 Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival and many more.
In 2008, Sea Studios Foundation launched a massive 360 campaign, named "Think Beyond Plastics", to raise awareness of the implications of overuse of plastic. The campaign is run by Daniella Russo and was awarded Best 360 campaign at 2009 Jackson Hole Film Festival.
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.
Strange Days on Planet Earth is a four-part television program on PBS concerning human impact on the environment. It is narrated by Edward Norton. The show was produced by Sea Studios Foundation. Strange Days on Planet Earth grew into an ongoing partnership with the National Geographic Society to bring focus on our personal connection to the planet's life systems.
Nigel Alan Marven is a British wildlife TV presenter, naturalist, conservationist, author, and television producer. He is best known as presenter of the BBC miniseries Chased by Dinosaurs, its sequel, Sea Monsters, as well as the ITV miniseries Prehistoric Park. He is also known for his unorthodox, spontaneous, and daring style of presenting wildlife documentaries as well as for including factual knowledge in the proceedings.
Stephen James Backshall is a British naturalist, explorer, presenter and writer, best known for BBC TV's Deadly 60.
Tristan Bayer is an American actor, filmmaker and the host of the Animal Planet series Caught in the Moment, and was nominated for an Emmy for individual achievement in a craft: cinematography.
Mark Shelley was the Senior Series Producer for National Geographic Television & Film. He is also the founder and the Executive Director of Sea Studios Foundation, a non-profit team of film-makers, environmentalists and scientists who create films that raise public awareness of major issues facing the planet.
Baron Peter Von Puttkamer is a Canadian filmmaker known for his unique approach to adventure documentary series for network television, and for his work with Indigenous communities in his country and around the world. He has won major international awards for his work as a writer, director and producer, and was recently nominated for the 2015 Environmental Media Awards for his Nat Geo series, Biggest & Baddest, which he directed and co-produced with his wife and business partner, Sheera Von Puttkamer. For over thirty years, the couple has run Gryphon Productions and has a catalog that includes hundreds of finished films and videos, many that have appeared on television and cable networks globally and continue to be used in classrooms and outreach centers as educational and advocacy videos.
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.
Oxford Scientific Films (OSF) is a British company that produces natural history and documentary programmes. Founded as an independent company on 8 July 1968, by documentary filmmaker Gerald Thompson, it broke new ground in the world of documentaries, using new filming techniques and capturing footage of never before filmed activities of its various subjects. In 1996, Oxford Scientific Films was sold to Circle Communications, where it retained its own identity as a division within the company. The following year, Circle Communications was taken over by Southern Star Entertainment UK. Under the new ownership, Oxford Scientific Films produced multiple award-winning programmes and films, including the Animal Planet series Meerkat Manor.
Christian Baumeister is a German cinematographer and award-winning director focusing on nature and wildlife productions.
Montana State University’s Master of Fine Arts Program in Science & Natural History Filmmaking (SNHF), founded in 2000, continues to be the only MFA program of its kind in the world. It takes students with backgrounds in science, engineering, and technology and prepares them as filmmakers with the creative and critical skills necessary to produce work that contributes to the public understanding of science. Students in the program come from a wide variety of backgrounds including the physical sciences, the social sciences, engineering, technology, medicine, and law.
Yellowstone is a BBC nature documentary series broadcast from 15 March 2009. Narrated by Peter Firth, the series takes a look at a year in the life of Yellowstone National Park, examining how its wildlife adapts to living in one of the harshest wildernesses on Earth. Yellowstone debuted on BBC Two at 8:00pm on Sunday 15 March 2009 and has three episodes. Each 50-minute episode was followed by a ten-minute film called Yellowstone People, featuring visitors to the Park and locals who had assisted the production team. The series was the channel's highest-rated natural history documentary in over five years with audiences peaking at over four million.
Vulcan Productions produced documentary films, television programming and virtual reality experiences that drove awareness around environmental and social issues. The company was founded in 1997 by late Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen and his sister Jody Allen. It closed in 2021.
ArgoFilms is a production company specializing in documentary filmmaking. Established in 1990, ArgoFilms has received six Emmy Awards, a duPont-Columbia Award for Journalism, four Genesis Awards, and over one hundred other awards internationally.
Chris Morgan is a British-born ecologist, conservationist, TV host, filmmaker, podcaster, and author. His ecology and conservation work focuses on bears and other large carnivores worldwide. Over the last 25 years Morgan has worked as a wildlife researcher, wilderness guide, and environmental educator on every continent where bears exist.
Patrick Morris is a British producer, director and series producer of many wildlife documentaries.
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.
Riverbank Studios is an independent film production company based in India and founded by the filmmaker and conservationist, Mike Pandey.
Tim Gorski is an American cinematographer, film producer and animal welfare activist, known for his documentaries concerning animal welfare and wildlife conservation, among them the piece How I Became an Elephant (2012), which has received awards and favorable reviews in the media, and his earlier piece Lolita: Slave to Entertainment (2003). Gorski's filmography is visible online.
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