About Us

Wildeye was born in the 1990s when founder Piers Warren realised the need for independent education and information for wildlife and conservation film-makers, whether professional, amateur or newcomers. An early project was the development of www.wildlife-film.com, and its associated monthly e-zine Wildlife Film News, which remains today the world's leading source of information about the wildlife film-making industry, Google's no. 1 ranking website for 'wildlife film' and many other related searches.

Wildeye's core activity, however, soon became the educational opportunities in the form of short specialist courses in Norfolk, UK, and longer overseas opportunites. We have now had many hundreds of students on our courses from all over the world and are thrilled to hear of those that are now accomplished in the industry, award-winners, or simply making better wildlife films for their own enjoyment. We have always had a strong focus on conservation and the desire to use film as a tool to help conserve our natural world.

Wildeye Tutors

We have had numerous tutors over the years, all experienced professionals with an enthusiasm for sharing their knowledge, often gained through many years of dedicated work in the wildlife film-making industry. Many of our tutors are multi-award winners who continue to work in production. We take on new specialists all the time, our current team of tutors is as follows:

Piers Warren - Principal of Wildeye - Piers is well known throughout the wildlife film-making industry as the founder of Wildlife Film News and producer of wildlife-film.com, which he created in the 1990s. With a strong background in biology, education and conservation, he has had a lifelong passion for wildlife films and has a wide knowledge of natural history. He cut his teeth in the industry as a sound engineer and multi-media producer, running a studio for many years. He is one of the founders of the international organisation Filmmakers for Conservation and was Vice President for the first three years. Piers is the author of many magazine features and several books including Careers in Wildlife Film-making and Go Wild with Your Camcorder - How to Make Wildlife Films.

Ever-keen for adventure, Piers leads wildlife tours and training expeditions around the world. Amongst other things he has walked the African plains with Maasai Warriors, tracked tigers in India on elephant-back, explored the Amazon rainforest, swum with sharks, trekked across Tanzanian deserts on a camel and filmed cheetahs hunting in Kenya.

Mike Linley - Camera and Production Tutor - Mike was a producer and scientific advisor to Survival the Internationally acclaimed wildlife programme making company from 1980 until its demise in 2001. During this time he filmed and produced over 60 documentaries, many of which won major International awards.

Mike also researched, wrote and produced over 200 wildlife programmes for children including the series Animals in Action. He then formed Hairy Frog Productions, an independent wildlife production company. Since then he has worked on productions for Granada, National Geographic and Discovery/Animal Planet.

Gavin Thurston - Camera Tutor - Gavin is a BAFTA and EMMY award winning wildlife cameraman and presenter. He started work for Oxford Scientific Films back in 1981 specialising in mainly macro filmmaking. He then joined the BBC where his experience grew before going freelance in 1989.

He has worked on nine of Sir David Attenboroughs series and four of the Big Cat Diary series. His more recent contributions include sequences for Planet Earth.

Check www.gavinthurston.com for more antics………

Chris Watson - Sound Recording Tutor - Chris is an experienced sound recordist specialising in wildlife - he also runs courses in wildlife sound recording and post production at the BBC Natural History Unit, and lectures internationally on location sound and sound design. He has worked closely with two of the most high-profile natural history presenters in the business, David Attenborough and Bill Oddie. He is Oddie's favourite sound man and the TV veteran says of Watson: "I don't know anyone who is so intense yet so splendidly frivolous."

Chris became a sound recordist in 1981 when he joined Tyne Tees Television and is now widely regarded as one of the most creative sound artists in the business. His recent credits include the hugely popular Springwatch and Autumnwatch, and he received the Wildlife Film Asia Award for the BBC's Galapagos: Born of Fire. Watson also creates for the radio, with credits including Soundscape: The Sea Swallow, Watersong and The Estuary all for BBC Radio 4. See www.chriswatson.net

Jez riley French is a composer, artist & audio specialist whose output involves elements of intuitive composition, field recording (using conventional & extended methods) photographic images (including their use in photographic scores) and improvisation. He has performed, exhibited and had his work published widely across the world and also lectures in both field recording and intuitive composition as a guest lecturer. Recently he has been artist in residence at organisations in Japan, Korea, Italy, Belgium, the Czech Republic & the UK.
Jez also makes & sells his own hydrophones and contact mics (http://hydrophones.blogspot.com/) + runs the ‘in place’ project with a website exploring various aspects of field recording & related work. In recent years Jez has been working closely with specific architectural spaces, capturing a sense of place that is both highly personal and yet offers the audience a fascinating opportunity to look and listen anew to the environments in which we spend our time. http://jezrileyfrench.blogspot.com/

Simon Beer - Camera Tutor - Simon runs Production Gear Ltd, a company specialising in the sales of broadcast and professional video production equipment. Simon has worked in the broadcast industry since leaving school in 1993, during this time he has been involved in varying capacities on numerous projects with roles including grip and camera operator. Simon has extensive technical knowledge of production technology and has in the past written articles on cameras and post production for magazines including DV User and IOV Focus.

Adrian Cale - Camera Tutor - is an independent wildlife filmmaker, writer and naturalist. As an accomplished producer and camera operator, he brings his own stories to life and has worked with wildlife both behind and in front of camera in a vast range of countries and capacities, his life-long passion affording him a broad knowledge and profound experience of the natural world. He set up Pupfish Productions in 2005: an umbrella group of like-minded independent filmmakers and has gone on to produce, film and write award winning content www.adriancale.co.uk/

Jonathan Jones - Camera Tutor - known by many as Jip, is a specialist lighting cameraman who has worked on award winning natural history programmes. He specialises in macro and high-speed photography, this has enabled him to work on projects like 'Swarm – Natures incredible invasions' and 'Smalltalk Diaries' 2 x Panda winner at Wildscreen. Prior to focusing on camerawork Jip was an editor working on an array of productions. He loves a challenge and is always looking to further his knowledge of new technology and filming techniques. www.emberfilms.co.uk

Alan Miller - Editing Tutor - Alan has been editing wildlife documentaries for almost twenty years. BBC trained, Alan started editing wildlife programmes at Partridge Films and worked on many of their Wildscreen Panda award winners.

He has worked for many companies, including Granada, BBC, NHK Japan and Nature Conservation Films for whom he edited two wildlife feature films. He has also written and directed many documentaries but remains passionately interested in editing. He is experienced in both Avid and Final Cut Pro systems. Alan is a recent Wildscreen Panda award-winner.

Caroline Brett - Production Tutor - Caroline, known to most as Brettie, is a highly experienced and award-winning producer/ director. Caroline worked for twenty one years for the prestigious Survival series making programmes in numerous locations including out on the ice in Arctic Canada, in the rainforests of Sierra Leone, high on the tundra in Alaska and on a remote Vietnamese island in the South China Sea.

She produced the highly successful ‘Predators with Gaby Roslin' and directed some of the ‘Wild about Essex with Tony Robinson’. She is now employed by the Save Our Seas Foundation as their film director/producer for which she has won several awards including Wildscreen Pandas.

Julian Wheeler - Editing Tutor - Julian is a Media Resources Officer and lecturer in Media and Video Production at Thanet College in Broadstairs. He also works freelance as a video cameraman, editor and web designer.

Ha has worked extensively for many years with a variety of media-based programs, including Photoshop, Quark Xpress, InDesign, Avid, Final Cut Pro and After Effects. He regularly run classes in Photoshop, Final Cut Pro and After Effects. Julian is an Apple Accredited Trainer on Final Cut Pro.

Mike Powles - Photography Tutor - Mike is a full time photographer and tour leader living on Norfolk’s north coast. The majority of his year is spent pursuing wildlife in the UK for clients and stock. Recent commissions have included the following: recording the restoration of wildlife habitats, capturing images of resident wildlife and important landscapes within large estates, conservation grade farming projects and a number of species reintroduction programmes.

In 2000 Mike was a winner in the British Gas Wildlife Photographer of the Year Competition in the category “The World in our Hands” and in 2003 he won the “Travel” category in the Royal Geographical Society Photographer of the Year Competition. Mike’s work has been exhibited at London’s Heathrow Airport and has been used by the BBC, RSPB, National Geographic and British Petroleum amongst others. In addition his images appear in books, greeting cards, calendars and fine art posters.

Laura Turner - an editor and camera operator with a passion for wildlife. After completing her degree in Media and Video Production, Laura trained at MATV regional news, and began freelance video work on live events, documentaries and corporate video.

She has worked on wildlife film in Scotland and was the in-house editor for CTV Perth, Australia, where a documentary she edited won a WA Screen Award. Laura is Apple certified in Final Cut Pro, as well as an experienced Adobe Premiere Pro user. www.antfarmfilms.net

Claire Thompson is an experienced natural history researcher and brings a wealth of conservation and zoology experience into her work. After years spent living in Indonesian rainforests studying the behaviour of gibbons and orangutans for her Masters, she has also habituated chimps in Africa and searched for extinct rodents in the Caribbean. After joining Wildscreen's ARKive project where she worked as a Media Researcher, she progressed onto working at Aardman on a BBC1 series with Wallace and Gromit. Claire now works for ITV Studios Anglia specialising in wildlife development research and currently has one of her own wildlife ideas in development with an independent production company. Having started her TV career making endless cups of tea as a runner, Claire understands the difficulties and dedication involved in succeeding in the industry.

Other Staff

Jason Peters - Wildeye Course Co-ordinator, Editor of Wildlife Film News, Producer of www.wildlife-film.com (jason@wildeye.co.uk) - Jason has been fascinated by wildlife ever since growing up on a farm in Sussex. Very early on he developed a deep respect for all that was around him but soon discovered that the natural world was in deep trouble. He studied biological sciences at university in London and then became involved in various conservation projects around the world, including working in the rain forests of northern Vietnam and with cheetah in Southern Africa. He then went on to study wildlife film-making in Cape Town and has since worked mainly as a researcher.

Jason is passionate about finding solutions to conservation and development issues and believes visual media to be the most effective tool for prompting change. He is also the project co-ordinator on the Films That Make A Difference database and is thrilled to be involved in this initiative to catalogue films that have already made a difference in the hope of inspiring others to do the same! www.jasonpeters.co.uk

Jonathan Betz - Host/Producer of the WildFilmCast (jon@wildeye.co.uk) - Jon is an aspiring wildlife filmmaker and host and producer of the WildFilmCast. In 2009, Jon graduated with a degree in Biology from Skidmore College, where he pursued both evolutionary ecology and filmmaking. Jon has extensive fieldwork experience gained while working on field ornithology studies and completing his own independent research on the evolutionary and ecological implications of Common Yellowthroat song variability. Jon has also produced short student documentaries, and completed a grant-funded 30-minute film titled "Living with Water" about the Saratoga Lake watershed in Upstate New York.

Jon is passionate about wildlife and the outdoors, and is an avid birder and supporter of the local food movement. Along with producing and hosting the WildFilmCast, Jon works as a volunteer for his local community access TV station and is pursuing opportunities working as an assistant on wildlife film productions. As an aspiring filmmaker, Jon is interested in all aspects of production and is excited to take part in producing, filming, and editing natural history films and documentaries.