Conservation Film-making: How to make films that make a difference
Conservation Film-making: How to make films that make a difference

Author: Piers Warren

Publisher: Wildeye

Published: 2015-09-14

Total Pages: 198

ISBN-13: 1905843100

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Never has the time been more critical for film-making to help make a difference to the natural world. This book shows you how. A complete 'how to' guide, aimed at both film-makers and conservationists who want to use film as a tool for conservation. Covers all pre-production activities including how to raise funds. How to choose and use the filming equipment you need, plus a guide to post-production. Explores reaching audiences, organising screenings, using social media, monitoring effectiveness and ethical considerations. Features case studies from leading conservation film-makers including Mike Pandey, Rob Stewart (Sharkwater and Revolution), Will Anderson (Hugh's Fish Fight) and Shekar Dattatri. Describes how organisations use film effectively in conservation; including Greenpeace, Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) and Great Apes Film Initiative (GAFI). 'For all of us who care about the environment and wildlife, and want to make a difference, this is an important book.' Jane Goodall, Founder of the Jane Goodall Institute and UN Messenger of Peace 'This book is of enormous value to everyone involved in conservation' Lee Durrell, Honorary Director, Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust 'Conservation Film-making is a richly nourishing book, a professional tour de force, and a compelling argument that films, when made according to the best practices contained in this book, can make a huge and positive difference to the world in which we live.' Professor Chris Palmer, Director of the Center for Environmental Filmmaking 'This terrific book will become the bible for everyone determined to fly in the face of everything-is-wonderful-and-happy natural history programmes and show, instead, that conservation can be awe-inspiring and watchable, too.' Mark Carwardine, Conservationist 'Conservation Film-making is a detailed and well-researched 'how to' guide, but it is more than that - it's a good read! It should be read by everyone involved in conservation, to understand better how film could - indeed should - be used.' Ian Redmond

Shooting in the Wild
Shooting in the Wild

Author: Chris Palmer

Publisher: ReadHowYouWant.com

Published: 2010-10

Total Pages: 386

ISBN-13: 1458715582

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Longtime producer Palmer provides an in-depth look at wild animals on film, covering the history of wildlife documentaries, safety issues, and the never-ending pressure to obtain the money shot. Marlin Perkins, Jacques Cousteau, Steve Irwin, Timothy Treadwell, and many other familiar names are discussed along with their work, accidents, and in some cases, untimely deaths. Palmer is highly critical of Irwin, and offers fascinating revelations about game farms used by exploitative filmmakers and photographers looking for easy shots and willing to use caged animals to obtain them. He also considers the subliminal messages of many wildlife films, considering everything from Shark Week to Happy Feet and how they manipulate audiences toward preset conclusions about animal behavior. In all this is an engaging and exceedingly timely look at a form of entertainment the public has long taken for granted and which, as Palmer points out, really needs a fresh and careful reconsideration.

Documentary Film: A Very Short Introduction
Documentary Film: A Very Short Introduction

Author: Patricia Aufderheide

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2007-11-28

Total Pages: 177

ISBN-13: 0199720398

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Documentary film can encompass anything from Robert Flaherty's pioneering ethnography Nanook of the North to Michael Moore's anti-Iraq War polemic Fahrenheit 9/11, from Dziga Vertov's artful Soviet propaganda piece Man with a Movie Camera to Luc Jacquet's heart-tugging wildlife epic March of the Penguins. In this concise, crisply written guide, Patricia Aufderheide takes readers along the diverse paths of documentary history and charts the lively, often fierce debates among filmmakers and scholars about the best ways to represent reality and to tell the truths worth telling. Beginning with an overview of the central issues of documentary filmmaking--its definitions and purposes, its forms and founders--Aufderheide focuses on several of its key subgenres, including public affairs films, government propaganda (particularly the works produced during World War II), historical documentaries, and nature films. Her thematic approach allows readers to enter the subject matter through the kinds of films that first attracted them to documentaries, and it permits her to make connections between eras, as well as revealing the ongoing nature of documentary's core controversies involving objectivity, advocacy, and bias. Interwoven throughout are discussions of the ethical and practical considerations that arise with every aspect of documentary production. A particularly useful feature of the book is an appended list of "100 great documentaries" that anyone with a serious interest in the genre should see. Drawing on the author's four decades of experience as a film scholar and critic, this book is the perfect introduction not just for teachers and students but also for all thoughtful filmgoers and for those who aspire to make documentaries themselves. About the Series: Combining authority with wit, accessibility, and style, Very Short Introductions offer an introduction to some of life's most interesting topics. Written by experts for the newcomer, they demonstrate the finest contemporary thinking about the central problems and issues in hundreds of key topics, from philosophy to Freud, quantum theory to Islam.

Making Dead Birds
Making Dead Birds

Author: Robert Gardner

Publisher: Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University Publications Department

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 168

ISBN-13:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Gardner's Dead Birds is one of the most highly acclaimed and controversial documentary films ever made. This account of the process of making the movie is also a thoughtful examination of what it meant to record the rituals of warrior-farmers in New Guinea and to present to the world a graphic story of their behavior as a window onto our own.

A Life on Our Planet
A Life on Our Planet

Author: Sir David Attenborough

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Published: 2020-10-06

Total Pages: 248

ISBN-13: 1538720000

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

*Goodreads Choice Award Winner for Best Science & Technology Book of the Year* In this scientifically informed account of the changes occurring in the world over the last century, award-winning broadcaster and natural historian shares a lifetime of wisdom and a hopeful vision for the future. See the world. Then make it better. I am 93. I've had an extraordinary life. It's only now that I appreciate how extraordinary. As a young man, I felt I was out there in the wild, experiencing the untouched natural world - but it was an illusion. The tragedy of our time has been happening all around us, barely noticeable from day to day -- the loss of our planet's wild places, its biodiversity. I have been witness to this decline. A Life on Our Planet is my witness statement, and my vision for the future. It is the story of how we came to make this, our greatest mistake -- and how, if we act now, we can yet put it right. We have one final chance to create the perfect home for ourselves and restore the wonderful world we inherited. All we need is the will to do so.

Black Shuck
Black Shuck

Author: Piers Warren

Publisher: Wildeye

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 299

ISBN-13: 1905843011

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

For centuries Black Shuck has patrolled the coastal paths of Norfolk, a spectral portent of death. But recent events have allowed the massive phantom dog to evolve, to metamorphose, into something altogether more horrifying. After wildlife filmmaker Harry Lambert stumbles into Black Shuck's territory, the fearsome beast finds what it was looking for.

Confessions of a Wildlife Filmmaker
Confessions of a Wildlife Filmmaker

Author: Chris Palmer

Publisher:

Published: 2015-02-17

Total Pages: 272

ISBN-13: 9781938954054

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

While working as a lobbyist for environmental conservation on Capitol Hill, Chris Palmer quickly discovered that Congressional hearings were bland events, poorly attended by the majority of Representatives and Senators and with far less impact than one would expect. So he turned, instead, to wildlife filmmaking, for the National Audubon Society and the National Wildlife Federation, with the hope of transforming mindsets and encouraging protection of wildlife. In the process, Palmer discovered both the magic--and the misgivings--of the industry. While Shamu looked beautiful captured on film breaching, was it right to keep killer whales captive? Was it okay to have sound engineers recording the sound of their hands splashing in water and pawning it off as the sound of bears splashing through a stream? And should reputable TV networks be accepted or called out for airing sensational shows that put wildlife in harm's way and present animal fiction like mermaids and monster sharks as fact? In this tell-all expose of the wildlife filmmaking industry, film producer and American University professor Chris Palmer shares his own journey as a filmmaker--with its highs and lows and challenging ethical dilemmas--in order to provide filmmakers, networks, and the public with an invitation to evolve the industry to the next level. Palmer uses his life story as a conservationist and filmmaker to convey his points, with an ultimate call to stop deceiving audiences, avoid harassing animals, and promote conservation. Read this book to find a path forward. "Chris Palmer's new book is a must read for all who care about the natural world and the future of our planet." -Ted Danson, Actor and Environmentalist "Chris Palmer has written a very important book." -Jane Goodal, PhD, DBE, Founder, The Jane Goodall Institute and UN Messenger of Peace "In a world where media holds enormous influence, Chris Palmer's book makes fascinating reading." -Jean-Michel Cousteau, President, Ocean Futures Society

Wildlife Films
Wildlife Films

Author: Derek Bousé

Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press

Published: 2011-11-29

Total Pages: 297

ISBN-13: 0812205847

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

If, as many argue, movies and television have become Western culture's premier storytelling media, so too have they become, for most members of society, the primary source of encounters with the natural world—particularly wild animals. The television fare offered nightly by national and cable networks such as PBS and the Discovery Channel provides millions of viewers with their only experience of the wilderness and its inhabitants. The very films that so many viewers take as accurate portrayals of wildlife, however, have evolved primarily as a form of entertainment, following the established codes and conventions of narrative exposition. The result has been not the representation of nature, but its wholesale reconstruction and reconfiguration according to film and television conventions, audience expectations, and the demands of competition in the media marketplace. Wildlife Films traces the genealogy of the nature film, from its origins as the "animal locomotion" studies that mark the very beginnings of motion pictures themselves, to the founding of the Animal Planet cable channel that boasts "all animals, all the time." The narrative and thematic elements that unite wildlife films as a genre have their roots not in the documentary film tradition, but in the older traditions of oral and written animal fables as reflections of human society. Derek Bousé contends that classic wildlife films often portray animal protagonists living in families modeled on an ideal of the human nuclear family and working in communities that resemble an ideal of bucolic human society. In these stories—presented as documentaries—animals are motivated by human emotions and conduct relationships according to human customs. This imposition of culturally satisfying narrative patterns upon the lives of animals has not only led to the misrepresentation of the natural world; it has promoted the notion that our values, our moral vision, our models of society and family structure derive from nature, rather than being cultural formations.

Film: A Very Short Introduction
Film: A Very Short Introduction

Author: Michael Wood

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2012-01-26

Total Pages: 153

ISBN-13: 0192803530

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Film is considered to be the dominant art form of the twentieth century. It can be considered many other things; a record of events, a modern mythology, a career, an industry, an art, a hobby, and much else. Michael Wood explores the history of film, its venture into the digital age, and its role and impact on modern society.

Film Music: A Very Short Introduction
Film Music: A Very Short Introduction

Author: Kathryn Kalinak

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2010-03-11

Total Pages: 162

ISBN-13: 0199707979

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Film music is as old as cinema itself. Years before synchronized sound became the norm, projected moving images were shown to musical accompaniment, whether performed by a lone piano player or a hundred-piece orchestra. Today film music has become its own industry, indispensable to the marketability of movies around the world. Film Music: A Very Short Introduction is a compact, lucid, and thoroughly engaging overview written by one of the leading authorities on the subject. After opening with a fascinating analysis of the music from a key sequence in Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs, Kathryn Kalinak introduces readers not only to important composers and musical styles but also to modern theoretical concepts about how and why film music works. Throughout the book she embraces a global perspective, examining film music in Asia and the Middle East as well as in Europe and the United States. Key collaborations between directors and composers--Alfred Hitchcock and Bernard Herrmann, Akira Kurosawa and Fumio Hayasaka, Federico Fellini and Nino Rota, to name only a few--come under scrutiny, as do the oft-neglected practices of the silent film era. She also explores differences between original film scores and compilation soundtracks that cull music from pre-existing sources. As Kalinak points out, film music can do many things, from establishing mood and setting to clarifying plot points and creating emotions that are only dimly realized in the images. This book illuminates the many ways it accomplishes those tasks and will have its readers thinking a bit more deeply and critically the next time they sit in a darkened movie theater and music suddenly swells as the action unfolds onscreen. About the Series: Combining authority with wit, accessibility, and style, Very Short Introductions offer an introduction to some of life's most interesting topics. Written by experts for the newcomer, they demonstrate the finest contemporary thinking about the central problems and issues in hundreds of key topics, from philosophy to Freud, quantum theory to Islam.