We’ve set aside this section to acknowledge some of the fine artists and craftsmen who we have had the pleasure of collaborating with in recent years. We think of them as part of The Really Interesting Picture Company's extended family, and heatily reccomend them to producers everywhere.
Cathe Neukum
Executive Producer
Cathe was my indispensable producing/writing partner on Nature's Greatest Defender, and never lost faith in the project through 27 months of "development" and a year and a half in production. We have been festival panelists, confidants, and friends since her days at Turner Broadcasting. She knows everyone worth knowing in the business, and is a great world traveler, with a hearty laugh and a suitcase full of Trader Joe's "boil'n bag" Indian Cuisine.
click for a link to NeukumPictures
click picture for a link to Aaron
Aaron Symonds - Composer
Aaron Symonds did the score for "Nature's Greatest Defender". Aaron is a highly adaptable composer - which is important if you're going to work with us here at TRIPCo. For our score, he took a simple three note motif and adapted it to the local culture of every country featured in the film, with impressive results.
Click picture for a link to Mike
Michael Gordon Shapiro - Composer
Mike provided music for our National Audubon Sage Grouse project. His interpretation of a Shoshone "Chicken Dance" using orchestral strings and jingle bells was spot-on perfect. I really enjoy his "Cue of the Week" blog every Friday.
Ian Kellett
I have known Ian since his days as a grad student in Montana, when I sent him to Bolivia to be the first camerman to photograph a newly discovered species of monkey. He embodies a unique combination of technological savvy and imaginative artistic vision, and has traveled with TRIPCo to Alaska, Wyoming, India and Brazil. Ian's work includes some of the most innovative use of media in the service of conservation, of which his most recent effort is Marine Conservation Expeditions.
Big Squid is a design firm with an unlikely name and a gracious attitude.
Headed by the irrepressable Richard Higgs, Big Squid's work in grounded in a tactile sense of the real world - which can be seen in the titles and maps they have done for us, as well as in their charming and fanciful new children's project, Clifton Village - based on the look and feel of their quaint neighborhood in Bristol, UK.
click for a link to Big Squid
I have saved this last section for some very special friends -
Adrian Warren 1949 - 2011
click for link to Last Refuge, Ltd.
Having known Adrian at various film festivals and symposia for nearly 20 years, it was a great thrill for me to finally get to work in the field with him. In January 2009 he shot the mountain gorilla segment of “Nature’s Greatest Defender.”
It was amazing to be in Rwanda with Adrian – he seemed to know everyone, and was greeted with such joy and enthusiasm by so many people that you’d think they were discovering a long-lost relative.
His intense dedication and high standards have always been an inspiration to me, and the opportunity to work with him on a species with which he has been associated for so many years was an illuminating experience.
photo: Pam Thys
Barry Paine 1937 - 2011
click for link to Film History of Barry Paine
Barry was a close friend and colleague for nearly two decades, a regular roomate at various film festivals, and a role model for the highest standards in narration writing.
In 1994 we spent a memorable late evening in my studio at the Bronx Zoo swapping rhyming couplets of doggerel verse about the Naked Mole-Rat - that most improbable of rodents.
Two days later Barry recorded this charming narration - a script done entirely in verse, written by Barry and me in alternating couplets.
Barry was a true artist, a "bon vivant," and a generous spirit.
He will be greatly missed.
The Really Interesting Picture Company, Ltd. New York City (646) 797-3171
