Speaker

Huw began his career at Partridge Films, one of the leading independent natural history film companies in the '90s. After three years with Partridge, he went on to work with Mike Birkhead Associates, where he made two BBC Natural Worlds in the US. In 1995 he joined the BBC Natural History Unit where he worked on long-running series such as Wildlife on One and Big Cat Diary, as well as some of the Unit’s biggest blue-chip landmark series including Land of the Tiger, Andes to Amazon, and Sir David Attenborough’s Life of Mammals. In 2003, he became part of the Planet Earth team under Alastair Fothergill and produced three episodes for this hugely popular and multi-award-winning series. Following Planet Earth, he was appointed Series Producer of South Pacific, a six-part landmark series for BBC2. In 2009 he left the BBC to join Silverback Films where, under Keith Scholey, he was series producer on the landmark natural history series North America, Discovery Channel’s first foray into fully-funded blue-chip natural history programming. He was also series producer on the award-winning The Hunt, a major blue-chip series for BBC1 that transmitted in 2015 and focused on the complex relationship between predator and prey. He produced the Jungles episode for Netflix’s first natural history series Our Planet which transmitted in April 2019. He also was the producer/director for Netflix’s Dancing with the Birds, a one-off special about birds of paradise and bowerbirds which was released in October 2019. Recently, he was the series producer on A Perfect Planet, a blue-chip landmark series looking at Earth’s natural forces for BBC1 which transmitted in January 2021. He was also the producer/director of the opening episode on Volcanoes. Currently, he is the series producer of Our Planet 2 another major landmark project for Netflix and producer/director on a feature length documentary on Orangutans, also for Netflix.

Speaker

Elisabeth Oakham is a natural history producer / director. Over the last fifteen years she has worked on nature documentaries in Canada, the US, and the UK for a variety of broadcasters, including National Geographic, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the BBC and of course- Netflix, on their first natural history commission: ‘Our Planet’. Elisabeth has travelled the globe filming a range of plants and animals, from wolves and whales in the Arctic, to orchids and elephants in the tropics.

Before making films, she guided kayak tours, dabbled in theatre, and got a combined honours in the History of Science and Technology, and Biology at the University of King’s College, Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Speaker

An 8-times Emmy-nominated showrunner, Dan Tapster started out at the BBC Natural History Unit in the 1990s where he worked on series including Sir David Attenborough’s Life of Mammals. Following a varied career which included being kidnapped by Quichua Indians in Ecuador and firing cannonballs through houses by mistake, he became the showrunner for a TV show that went on to become the second most-watched factual TV series in history: the phenomenon that is MythBusters. After leading the show to 12 series renewals and over 18 billion views of content, Dan left MythBusters in 2016 and after more pop-science shows, he joined Silverback films in 2018. Combining visual flair with strong story-telling, Dan was the showrunner for the epic that is Life on Our Planet (Netflix). Executive produced by Steven Spielberg, LOOP uses stunning natural history and world-class VFX to reveal the story of life in a way that has never been attempted before

Speaker

Keith Scholey is the series producer for Netflix’s ‘Our Planet’ and Director of the cinema film ‘David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet’. Born and raised in East Africa, he qualified as a Zoologist with both a degree and PhD from Bristol University. He began working with the BBC Natural History Unit as a Researcher and subsequently became a producer making many films for the Natural World and Wildlife on One series as well as for special series including David Attenborough’s award winning ‘The Private Life of Plants’. As Head and Editor in Chief of the BBC Natural History Unit, he oversaw series including David Attenborough’s Life of Birds and The Life of Mammals, Blue Planet, Andes to Amazon, Cousins and Wild Africa. A veteran producer, editor and director of the natural history world, he left his job as Controller of Factual Production, responsible for all BBC ‘in house’ Factual content to join Silverback Films and continue the mission and aim of making content that makes a difference. Awards for productions he has been responsible for include Emmys, Baftas, RTS’s, Wildscreen pandas and Jackson Hole Awards. He was awarded a Doctor of Science degree from the University of Bristol.

Speaker

Emmy-award winning Producer/Director Sophie Lanfear first developed a passion for the natural world and the Polar Regions following her childhood in the Norwegian Arctic. She has earned a reputation for having the tenacity and resilience it takes to film in some of the most extreme and remote locations in the world. She produced and directed Frozen Worlds, part of the Netflix Our Planet series: winning an Emmy-award for her work. It is one of the most pressing stories of our time, that people understand the value of the polar regions and realise what the consequences of climate change are doing to them. Since Our Planet, Sophie has spent the last 5 years producing/directing 2 episodes of Life on Our Planet, where her arctic knowledge came to the fore once more in her season finale: Chapter 8 -Age of Ice and Fire. It was important to end the series with a greater understanding about the 6th mass extinction we are causing, as well as what the future might hold without us here.