Wildscreen CEO Lucie Muir.
Wildscreen will be giving lower budget productions and emerging talent a better chance to win one of its coveted Panda Awards when the world’s biggest festival of natural history film and television storytelling returns this October.
Launching the festival’s latest call for entries, CEO of the charity which runs the biennial event Lucie Muir said:
“Approaches to natural world storytelling are constantly evolving and Wildscreen seeks to reflect this when celebrating and honouring the best. So our 2016 Panda Awards competition will offer two Cinematography prizes, distinguishing between lower budget shoots involving three camera operators or fewer and those employing bigger camera teams, while our Innovation Award will expand to introduce separate prizes for creative and technological innovation".
"We will also do more to encourage and celebrate industry newcomers by offering an Emerging Talent Award – open to individuals doing exceptional new work in any area of natural history production, be it for a single project or a series.”
The changes mean that the next Wildscreen Panda Awards ceremony, to be held at the Colston Hall in Bristol on Thursday 13 October, will witness the presentation of 22 Pandas – widely acknowledged as the Oscars of the wildlife film and TV industry.
Entry deadline is March 23. Submissions are welcome from anywhere in the world, and can be submitted via www.wildscreen.org/panda-awards.
“This is an exciting time for Wildscreen", Muir said. "Many new attractions are being planned for the Festival week, an impressive jury is being convened to judge the 2016 Panda Awards; there are plans afoot for an exciting public programme; useful and uplifting partnerships already emerging from our Exchange initiative and several other positive announcements still to come. “
The Wildscreen Festival is a not-for-profit initiative by the UK-based charity Wildscreen, which also operates Arkive, a free-to-access online encyclopaedia about the natural world, and Wildscreen Exchange, a global hub giving conservation organisations access to film, TV and photography expertise.