Hugh Pearson Director & Producer

Hugh Pearson is an Emmy® and BAFTA award winning filmmaker who specialises in making wildlife films at sea, telling new and engaging stories from above and beneath the waves.

Most recently Hugh produced and directed and Coastal Seas and High Seas episodes on the landmark Netflix series Our Planet, which has won multiple prestigious awards including the 2019 Emmy for “Outstanding Documentary/Nonfiction Series”. Hugh worked at the world-renowned BBC Natural History Unit for twenty years on blockbuster series such as The Blue Planet, Africa and Nature’s Great Events before joining Silverback Films to work on The Hunt for BBC Worldwide.

With a First-Class degree in Marine Biology and two decades of filming at sea, Hugh is a world leader at producing and directing ocean wildlife films. He has spent more time with blue whales than any other filmmaker.

Myles Connolly Senior Producer

Myles has filmed in more than forty countries during his 35-year career and has filled many different roles including producer, writer, director and picture editor. Collaborative partners include National Geographic, BBC Earth, The Walt Disney Studios, Imax Corporation, Terra Mater Factual and HHMI Tangled Bank Studios.

He is known for his work on feature docs and in the IMAX genre on high-profile projects like Samsara, Everest, The Living Sea, Flight of the Butterflies, Oceans: Our Blue Planet, Earth: One Amazing Day, The Arctic:  Our Last Great Wilderness, Amazon Adventure, The Elephant Queen, Antarctica and many more. 

Myles has been at the forefront of stereoscopic 3D for the giant screen and has more experience in 2D-3D conversion in this format than any other filmmaker in the business. He has been active in developing the audio side as well and has long been a proponent of fully-immersive audio for the giant screen format working with artists, technicians and service providers to ensure the very best soundtracks for these films. 

Working alongside some of the best talent in the film business, his efforts have helped garner numerous awards, including the Cine Golden Eagle, multiple Lumiere Awards for 3D, the Grand Prix du Festival at the Theater du La Geode in Paris, the “Best 3D/Immersive” award at the Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival, and two Academy Award nominations in the Short Documentary category. 

He is a member of the Producer’s Guild of America and lives in Ojai, California with his wife Jeanette. 
 

Andy Serkis Narrator

ANDY SERKIS is an award-winning actor who has earned acclaim from both critics and audiences for his work in a range of memorable roles.  He gained legions of fans around the globe for his performance as Gollum in the Academy Award®-winning The Lord of the Rings trilogy, directed by Peter Jackson.  Serkis won an Empire Award for his role, in addition to sharing in several Outstanding Ensemble Cast Awards, including a Screen Actors Guild Award®.  He reunited with Jackson in the director’s epic retelling of King Kong, taking performance capture to another level as the title character of Kong.

In February of 2020, Serkis was honored by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) at the 73rd EE British Academy Film Awards with one the organization’s highest honor, the Outstanding British Contribution to Cinema Award.  

Steven Price Composer

Steven Price is an Academy Award, Emmy and Bafta winning composer. In 2014, his groundbreaking score for Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity garnered wins in the Best Original Score category for the Academy Awards, BAFTAs, and Critics’ Choice Awards, along with ASCAP’s first-ever Film Composer of the Year award. Other prominent projects include Edgar Wright’s Last Night In Soho, Baby Driver, and The World’s End, Tom Harper’s The Aeronauts, Warner Bros.’ blockbuster hit Suicide Squad, and the WWII epic Fury, written and directed by David Ayer, and starring Brad Pitt.

Television credits include the BBC’s The Hunt, a landmark natural history documentary series for which Price won his second BAFTA Award, and Our Planet (Netflix), which earned two Emmy score nominations for the composer in 2019. Price also scored David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet (Netflix) for which he won an Emmy and an ASCAP Composers' Choice Award for Documentary Score of the Year in 2020.  That year also saw Price venture into animation with Glen Keane’s Academy Award-nominated animated feature Over the Moon (Netflix) for which he received an Annie nomination for Best Music –Feature. Recent projects include Beast (Universal), directed by Baltasar Kormákur and starring Idris Elba, The Swimmers (Working Title/Netflix) and Michael Grandage’s My Policeman (Amazon Studios).

Sean B. Carroll Executive Producer

As Head of Studio, Sean B. Carroll directs HHMI Tangled Bank Studios’ mission, strategy, and editorial focus, and oversees both the documentary and dramatic film slates.

An internationally recognized scientist, award-winning author, and Emmy-winning executive producer, Carroll is the architect of HHMI’s filmmaking initiative to bring great stories about science and scientists to broad audiences. He has served as executive producer on a wide variety of feature documentaries, IMAX, and short films. As leader of HHMI’s Department of Science and Educational Media Group, Carroll also oversees the largest portfolio of privately supported science education activities in the United States.

A frequent public speaker and prominent storyteller in print, in film, and on radio, Carroll is the author of several books including “Remarkable Creatures,” which was a finalist for the 2009 National Book Award (non-fiction); “The Making of the Fittest;” “Endless Forms Most Beautiful;” “The Serengeti Rules;” and “Brave Genius.” His first two books were the basis for a two-hour NOVA special in December 2009 on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of Darwin’s “On the Origin of Species,” and his “The Serengeti Rules” was the basis for the recent, highly honored feature documentary. Carroll also authored a regular feature, “Remarkable Creatures,” for the New York Times' Science Times. He received the 2016 Lewis Thomas Prize for Writing about Science.

Carroll is a pioneer in the field of evolutionary developmental biology or “evo-devo,” the study of the genes that control animal body patterns and play major roles in the evolution of animal diversity. In recognition of his scientific contributions, Carroll has received the Benjamin Franklin Medal in Life Sciences, been elected to the National Academy of Sciences and the American Philosophical Society, and been named a Fellow of both the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Jared Lipworth Executive Producer

As executive producer, Jared Lipworth oversees development and editorial on select films and series for HHMI Tangled Bank Studios, focusing on the power of storytelling to inspire interest in science. As head of outreach and impact, Lipworth develops and executes high-profile, long-term outreach initiatives, building strategic collaborations with mission-aligned partners to maximize the reach and impact of the studio’s projects. Lipworth is an Emmy-winning executive producer who has overseen hundreds of hours of science, history and natural history programs. He has deep industry experience as an editorially-focused production executive, writer, commissioning editor, and co-production partner.

Prior to joining HHMI Tangled Bank Studios, Lipworth was vice president of specials at National Geographic Studios, where he developed and ran the production of films for National Geographic Channel, Nat Geo WILD, PBS, NOVA and international broadcasters. Standouts include “Jane,” the award-winning feature documentary about Jane Goodall directed by Brett Morgen, and the Emmy-nominated “NOVA: Dawn of Humanity” and “Explorer: Warlords of Ivory.” Before National Geographic, Lipworth was director of science programs at WNET, New York’s flagship public media provider, where he ran the science unit and oversaw award-winning science, technology and history series and specials. Titles include “Secrets of the Dead,” “Innovation,” “The Human Spark with Alan Alda”—a AAAS Kavli Science Journalism Award-winner, and the Emmy-winning “The Mysterious Human Heart.” Lipworth has also served on steering committees and advisory boards for numerous industry conferences, including the World Congress of Science and Factual Producers, Jackson Wild, the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry Advisory Council and the Chinese International Conference of Science & History Producers.

Wendy MacKeigan Executive Producer

With a successful and dynamic career in the film and television industry spanning more than three decades, SK Films is fortunate to have Wendy as its CEO. She has produced, executive-produced and written several multiple award-winning films including Flight of the Butterflies, Amazon Adventure and Backyard Wilderness for which SK is the worldwide distributor.

Wendy has a passion for understanding how the natural world works and she is dedicated to bringing interesting stories about our planet, its incredible wildlife and ecosystems and the people who study them to audiences around the globe. She feels privileged to be a filmmaker and storyteller in the Giant Screen medium and to work with world renowned scientists, other advisors and prestigious scientific organizations dedicated to science literacy.

Wendy’s achievements include the only ever “clean sweep” of all Giant Screen Cinema Association (GSCA) industry film awards for Flight of the Butterflies. She also led the script writing/research team behind Amazon Adventure, produced in partnership between SK and HHMI/TBS, which was praised in Variety as being “a large-screen triumph” with “such a high level of writing, acting and production polish.” Wendy was also Executive Producer and Co-Writer for Backyard Wilderness. Both films received five major GSCA Achievement Awards.

Wendy was an Executive Producer, Co-Writer, and she led the distribution team for Volcanoes: The Fires of Creation, which was awarded the 2019 Advanced Imaging Society’s Lumiere Award for Best 3D Documentary.

Prior to joining SK Films, Wendy spent 10 years as Chair/CEO of the feature film development/TV production investment arm of Astral Media (Bell Media). She was a founding executive of Ontario Creates, served on various committees of the GSCA and was Chair of Women in Film and Television. Other boards and committees include the Toronto International Film Festival, the Directors Guild of Canada, the Banff Television Festival, Cinematheque Ontario, the Canadian Film Centre and the Toronto Film Advisory Board.

Most recently, Wendy was a script consultant for BBC Earth’s latest IMAX®/ Giant Screen film, Antarctica, narrated by academy award nominee Benedict Cumberbatch. Wendy has also co-written Wings Over Water, narrated by academy award nominee Michael Keaton, for which SK Films is the global distributor.

James Taggart Editor

James Taggart is a multi award winning Film Editor. James’s love of editing and story telling began at just 15 years of age. He has since forged a career, specializing in both Natural History and Drama genres. He has worked on a whole array of films featuring tiny bugs through to the Giant Blue Whales.  He has worked on several high profile projects including David Attenboroughs The Green Planet and Prehistoric Planet. James thrives and excels embracing new technology and visualizations to help tell familiar stories in new and groundbreaking ways.