World’s Shortest Scheduled Flight

The world’s shortest scheduled flight, from Westray to Papa Westray in the Orkney Islands is shorter than the runway at Heathrow, with a duration of less than 2 minutes. We made a short film about the flight as part of a package of documentary films for the renovated galleries at the National Museum of Flight, which opened earlier this year. Today the film has been picked up by media outlets around the world, including CNN in the US and Sky News in the UK. It goes to show that in a world hungry for content it’s so often museums that are telling the best stories. It also demonstrates the way in which digital media assets (videos, stills and even stories) that are designed so use in galleries, can have a real reach and enable museums to tell their stories beyond their physical limits.

33 Lions head home to Africa

At the end of a marathon 2-year project, ADI‘s ‘Spirit of Freedom’ reached its spectacular conclusion this month, with the arrival in South Africa of 33 lions rescued from the brutality of circuses in Colombia and Peru. We’ve been following the whole campaign and were in South Africa to film the lions taking their first steps on African soil.

We’ve had the privilege of working with ADI for just over 6 years, following their incredible work as they campaign for animal rights across the globe, and focusing in particular on animal rescues in Bolivia, Colombia and Peru. As part of an amazing international team we’ve documented the highs and lows, providing a steady stream of still images and video to help promote, publicise and fund-raise. As the stories have unfolded we’ve worked with ADI’s media team to share them with an international audience; short form videos content is uploaded to Youtube with individual videos receiving over 7 million views. The full story of the 2010 Bolivian rescue was told through ‘Lion Ark’ a feature-length documentary that has won 11 awards at international film festivals and is currently being distributed by ITV. Our footage of the ‘Spirit of Freedom’ campaign will be turned into a series for TV but in the meantime you can see some of it in this South African news piece or read a great account here on the Huffington Post. More importantly the 33 are now settling in to a well earned retirement under the African sun at the Emoya Big Cat Sanctuary in Limpopo, South Africa.

Rescued and relocated lions recovering in South Africa, after a tough life in the Peruvian Circus.
Rescued and relocated lions recovering in South Africa, after a tough life in the Peruvian Circus.

Lion Ark goes Global

Lion Ark – our award winning documentary about the rescue of 25 lions from Bolivian circuses by ADI – now has an exclusive worldwide distribution deal for television with ITV Studios Global Entertainment. We provided crew, equipment, data management and editing services to the film, which was made by Animal Defenders International. We hope this will take Lion Ark to the biggest worldwide audience possible and beyond traditional independent documentary outlets! Lion Ark will be showcased by ITV Studios Global Entertainment to TV buyers at MIPCOM in Cannes next week. The films is currently in movie theaters in Bolivia and opens next month in the UK, with more theatrical distribution to be announced.