Authors — Marah Eakin
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Women in the Wilderness: How Nat Geo’s Queens Aims to Close the Gender Gap in Natural History Filmmaking
When National Geographic’s Janet Han Vissering and Wildstar Films’s Vanessa Berlowitz got the idea to make Queens, a six-part natural history series about female animals made by an all-woman production crew, they knew it would be a challenge. Only something like five percent of wildlife filmmakers are women, a number far short of the 20 to 30 percent average across the entertainment industry overall. They didn’t know how hard it would be, though. “On the camera side, before Queens there were probably about five women who’d had the opportunity to get to the ‘premium wildlife’ level of work,” Berlowitz explains. “There […]
by Marah Eakin on Mar 6, 2024 -
Endoscopes and Racing Drones: How a NatGeo Team Filmed A Real Bug’s Life
How do you film something that’s only about 2.5 millimeters long? What about thousands of those little somethings—pavement ants, in this case—all working together to dismantle a hot dog, perched amidst on a New York City sidewalk? That’s a question Bill Markham and his team had to figure out when putting together National Geographic’s A Real Bug’s Life, available now on Disney+. Ostensibly a sort of “real life” tribute to A Bug’s Life, which celebrated its 25th anniversary last year, A Real Bug’s Life follows different bugs in their natural habitats, all in service of teaching viewers how they live […]
by Marah Eakin on Jan 30, 2024 -
“Paying Rent in Winnipeg”: Guy Maddin’s AR Project Haunted Hotel
Just in time for Halloween, Guy Maddin is inviting London Film Festival attendees to his Haunted Hotel. The Canadian auteur behind films like The Saddest Music in the World, My Winnipeg and The Heart of the World has long explored both installation pieces and filmmaking as an expression of his worldview. With Haunted Hotel he’s managed to blend the two, creating what he calls “a melodrama in augmented reality” for LFF’s Expanded programming. The project, which allows visitors to use iPads to look into and beyond Maddin’s storyboard-like collage art, is set to audio by Magnus Fiennes, giving it a distinctly […]
by Marah Eakin on Oct 21, 2022
