Sid Bennett is a film and television director, producer and writer.
Sid Bennett has written, directed and produced over a hundred hours of mainstream TV programmes in the US, UK and worldwide. His two-hour film Mermaids: The Body Found, a fantasy drama made in documentary-format, netted one of Discovery Channel/Animal Planet's biggest cross-platform audiences in its history. [1] Sid Bennett's other TV highlights include the third and fourth episodes of Prehistoric Park (2006), Predator X (2009), I Shouldn't Be Alive (2005–2012), Man vs. Wild (2010), NASA space documentary Houston, We Have A Problem (2014) and Lucy Worsley's Fireworks For A Tudor Queen (2018). He has received over 20 international awards and nominations for his documentaries and drama. He has also written several award-winning screenplays and scripts, drama and documentary, some of which are in pre-production or already produced. [2]
Sid Bennett made his feature film directorial debut with The Dinosaur Project (2012), a found footage science fiction film. The low-budget, high-concept thriller filmed on location in South Africa initially received mixed reviews, but has since acquired cult movie status. [3]
Sid Bennett is also the author of the book Mermaids: Discovery, a conspiracy thriller which follows on from the TV Movie Mermaids: The Body Found. [4]
Animal Planet is an American multinational pay television channel, and associated AnimalPlanet.com website content, owned by the Warner Bros. Discovery Networks unit of Warner Bros. Discovery. First established on June 1, 1996, the channel is primarily devoted to series and documentaries about wild animals and domestic pets.
Walking with Dinosaurs is a 1999 six-part nature documentary television miniseries created by Tim Haines and produced by the BBC Science Unit, the Discovery Channel and BBC Worldwide, in association with TV Asahi, ProSieben and France 3. Envisioned as the first "Natural History of Dinosaurs", Walking with Dinosaurs depicts dinosaurs and other Mesozoic animals as living animals in the style of a traditional nature documentary. The series first aired on the BBC in the United Kingdom in 1999 with narration by Kenneth Branagh. The series was subsequently aired in North America on the Discovery Channel in 2000, with Avery Brooks replacing Branagh.
Sea Monsters, marketed as Chased by Sea Monsters in the United States, is a 2003 three-part nature documentary television miniseries created by Impossible Pictures and produced by the BBC Studios Science Unit, the Discovery Channel and ProSieben. Following in the footsteps of The Giant Claw (2002) and Land of Giants (2003), special episodes of the nature documentary series Walking with Dinosaurs, Sea Monsters stars British wildlife presenter Nigel Marven as a "time-travelling zoologist" who travels to seven different periods of time in prehistory, diving in the "seven deadliest seas of all time" and encountering and interacting with the prehistoric creatures who inhabit them. The series is narrated by Karen Hayley in the BBC version and by Christopher Cook in the American version.
Walking with Monsters – Life Before Dinosaurs, marketed as Before the Dinosaurs – Walking with Monsters in North America, is a 2005 three-part nature documentary television miniseries created by Impossible Pictures and produced by the BBC Studios Science Unit, the Discovery Channel, ProSieben and France 3. Walking with Monsters explores life in the Paleozoic era, showcasing the early development of groups such as arthropods, fish, amphibians, reptiles and synapsids. Like its predecessors Walking with Dinosaurs (1999) and Walking with Beasts (2001), Walking with Monsters is narrated by Kenneth Branagh.
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 nature documentary television miniseries produced as a co-production between the BBC Natural History Unit, BBC Worldwide, Discovery Channel and NHK, in association with CBC. Five years in the making, Planet Earth 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.
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.
The Genesis Awards are awarded annually by the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) to individuals in the major news and entertainment media for producing outstanding works which raise public awareness of animal issues. Presented by the HSUS Hollywood Outreach program, the awards show takes place every March in California. The awards have honored such well-known personalities as Michael Jackson, Aaron Sorkin, Anderson Cooper, Peter Gabriel, Ellen DeGeneres, Jane Goodall, David E. Kelley, Paul McCartney, Arthur Miller, Stephen Colbert, Oprah Winfrey, Prince, Jacques Cousteau and Ian Somerhalder, as well as journalists, film and documentary writers and producers, print and broadcast news outlets in the United States.
David Bruce Norman is a British paleontologist, currently the main curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Sedgwick Museum, Cambridge University. From 1991 to 2011, Norman has also been the Sedgwick Museum's director.
Walking with... is a palaeontology media franchise produced and broadcast by the BBC Studios Science Unit. The franchise began with the series Walking with Dinosaurs (1999), created by Tim Haines. By far the most watched science programme in British television during the 20th century, Walking with Dinosaurs spawned companion material and four sequel series: Walking with Beasts (2001), Walking with Cavemen (2003), Sea Monsters (2003) and Walking with Monsters (2005). Each series uses a combination of computer-generated imagery and animatronics, incorporated with live action footage shot at various locations, to portray prehistoric animals in the style of a traditional nature documentary.
King Dinosaur is a 1955 American science fiction film starring William Bryant and Wanda Curtis with narration by Marvin Miller. It was co-written, produced, and directed by Bert I. Gordon, in his directorial debut. The film was featured on season 2 of Mystery Science Theater 3000.
Ulrik Imtiaz Rolfsen is a Norwegian film director, producer and writer. He is best known for his action drama IZZAT (2005), his TV series TAXI (2011) as well as documentary films Voluntarily Forced (2014) and Recruiting for Jihad (2017). He often addresses national- and global discussion concerning immigration and racism both in his films as well as being an outspoken newspaper columnist and television debattant. In 2012 he founded the Oslo-based production company Curry Film AS. Other films directed by him, are the crime thriller Varg Veum - Bitter Flowers (2007) and the slacker comedy The Last Joint Venture (2008).
Lionel Friedberg is a documentary film director, producer and writer who has written or produced films for, among others, Discovery Channel, Animal Planet, PBS, the History Channel and National Geographic. He has 18 credits as Director of Photography on feature motion pictures, and has worked all over the world on both dramatic and nonfiction productions.
Frozen Planet is a 2011 British nature documentary series. It was produced as a co-production between the BBC Natural History Unit, Discovery Channel, Antena 3 Television S.A., ZDF, Skai tv and The Open University, in association with Discovery Channel Canada. The production team, which includes executive producer Alastair Fothergill and series producer Vanessa Berlowitz, were previously responsible for the award-winning series The Blue Planet (2001) and Planet Earth (2006), and Frozen Planet is billed as a sequel of sorts. David Attenborough returns as narrator. The series is distributed internationally by BBC Worldwide.
Animal Planet is an Indian pay television channel owned by Warner Bros. Discovery India for the Indian subcontinent, launched on 29 March 1999 as the Indian version of the American counterpart. It is available in three languages including Hindi, English and Tamil. The channel can be viewed on digital cable and satellite television in India. The channel is also available on its OTT services Discovery Plus.
Planet Dinosaur, is a six-part documentary television series created by Nigel Paterson and Phil Dobree, produced by the BBC, and narrated by John Hurt. It first aired in the United Kingdom in 2011, with VFX studio Jellyfish Pictures as its producer. It was the first major dinosaur-related series for BBC One since Walking with Dinosaurs. There are more than 50 different prehistoric species featured, and they and their environments were created entirely as computer-generated images, for around a third of the production cost that was needed a decade earlier for Walking with Dinosaurs. Much of the series' plot is based on scientific discoveries made since Walking with Dinosaurs, with episodes frequently stopping the action to show fossil evidence and the assumptions based on them. The companion book to Planet Dinosaur was released on 8 September 2011, and the DVD and Blu-ray were released on 24 October 2011. Planet Dinosaur is highly praised for its stunning graphics and 3D animation. The series was also accompanied by an online video game which has since become inaccessible.
Mermaids: The Body Found is a mockumentary television program originally aired on American TV channels Animal Planet and Discovery Channel. It tells a story of a scientific team's investigative efforts to uncover the source behind mysterious underwater recordings of an unidentified marine body. The show presents the controversial aquatic ape hypothesis as evidence that mermaids exist, along with a digitally manufactured video. A sequel broadcast called Mermaids: The New Evidence aired May 26, 2013.
Michael Kaczorowski, a nine-time nominated and three-time Emmy Award-winning producer and executive producer, is currently the creative director and producer of Bangkok Swagger. As executive producer, he is responsible for some of Animal Planet and Discovery's biggest and most iconic hits including Carrier: Fortress at Sea, Raising the Mammoth, and Walking with Prehistoric Beasts.
Tailored Films is an Irish cinema and television production company with 6 feature films and 10 TV series completed to date.