Jackson Hole, wy.: Four years ago, filmmakers Wolfgang Bayer and Barry Clark initiated the Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival. It has quickly attracted the world’s most respected producers of natural history films and many high-level executives representing major distributors and buyers.

The 1995 festival was held Sept. 18-23 at the Jackson Lake Lodge in the rugged splendor of Grand Teton National Park. Near Yellowstone, it is a setting with beautiful scenery and wildlife – motivating delegates to engage in outdoor activities and have fun.

Director Mary Ford, once a newscaster working in Atlanta, put together a stimulating event that focused on many important developments in the new era of the information highway.

Ford’s objective is to cater to ‘adventurers – any John Wayne of the television frontier – and all others willing to take chances’ as formats extend from 16mm to Super 16, and from Beta sp to digital imaging, wide screen and high-definition tv formats. It is ‘one of the first festivals to profile state-of-the-art advances in multimedia and post-production.’

Over 350 films were entered in competition. Today the categories of the awards are not only dedicated to wildlife, they are also oriented to current affairs and environmental issues.

The winner of the Grand Teton Award and the Best Limited Series Award was Life in the Freezer – The Big Freeze, The Bountiful Sea and The Door Closes – by the bbc and National Geographic Television.

National Geographic Television swept many other awards: the Best Behavior/Ecology Award for The New Chimpanzees, the Best Craft (Cinematography) Award for Arctic Kingdom: Life at the Edge, Best Investigative Film Award for Last of the Dancing Bears, Best Short Film Award for Lake of the Flies, and the Marion Zunz Newcomer Award for Ndoki Adventure.

The Newcomer Award was shared with The Call of Kakadu, produced by David Curl, wned/ Nature and the bbc. The Innovation Award was given to The Private Life of Plants: Growing, also by the bbc. The Best Conservation/ Environmental Award went to Cicada Films.

The Best Children’s Film Award was given to Once Upon Australia by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Best Multimedia Award was shared by CD ROM: How Animals Move and CD ROM: Nile-Passage to Egypt, both produced by Discovery Channel Multimedia.

A Special Jury Award was given to the limited series Lords of the Animals – He Dances for His Cormorants, Gatherers for the Sky and The Tsaatan, The Reindeer Riders – produced by Frederic Fougea, Boreales and Canal+. Fougea’s work received great attention.

Few Canadian films were entered in the festival, remarkable for a country with a rich natural history and respected for documentary filmmaking. The entrants were: The Nature of Things (cbc), Profiles in Nature (Keg Productions and Global), Safari: Ocean Adventures (White Bear Productions), Spirit Sands (Whiteway Films), Sulphur Passage (Bob Bossin and Nettie Wild), and Island of the Ghost Bear (Skyline Films with wnet/Nature and bbc).

Festival films were screened for delegates throughout the festival. Favorites were Colorado Adventure, Mountains of the Snow Leopard and In the Land of the Grizzlies.

This festival hosted a wide variety of interesting seminars. Panelists discussed rising production costs, licensing fees and coproduction values, new ways to present natural history topics, the use of high technology, and the involvement of human issues. Concerns were expressed about the difficulty of getting into the business, getting paid, creating international versions and lack of third world programming.

Panelists were from ABC Australia, Discovery Europe, Canal+, orf, the bbc, Discovery, National Geographic Television, wnet/ Nature, Turner Original Productions, Time-Life Television/Video, pbs, TV New Zealand, etc.

In the international television distribution seminar, Bernard MacLeod, past executive of acquisitions and coproductions with Time-Life Television/Video, emphasized the most important element of a project is the ‘story!’ It must also involve innovative production and promotion. MacLeod worked on Lost Civilizations, a success for nbc and a hit video. MacLeod said ‘one hour of world-class production is worth at least us$400,000 – $200,000 from the u.s. and $200,000 from Europe. Licence fees average about 10% of the coproduction value.’

u.s. producers are definitely pioneering a new era in natural history programming and challenging traditional documentary scripting.

These programs are emerging in new markets including animation, children’s, education, television series, feature films and imax.

First and foremost is the Turner organization – it has produced 500 hours of first-run environmental programming worth $150 million. A good example is the successful Captain Planet series. Now that Turner had just merged with the massive Time-Life Warner conglomerate, even more programming is expected.

Turner has initiated an exciting new environmental strand entitled Wild ! Life Adventures that directly tackles controversial human issues. Twelve primetime specials a year will be produced with the National Audubon Society, the National Wildlife Federation, the Cousteau Society and talented independent filmmakers.

This strand is dialogue-driven and hosted by celebrities on location. Production is now underway on Dolphin Dilemma starring Bridget Fonda, a gold-mining project with Mario Van Peebles, and a project about the illegal trade of birds with Alec Baldwin and Kim Bassinger.

The festival also hosted special presentations of productions under the heading ‘Anatomy of a Production.’ One of the most entertaining profiles was Dolphins with Robin Williams by Tigress Productions, part of a new pbs/Meridian series entitled In the Wild.

The most ambitious Anatomy of a Production was undoubtedly Jaguar: Year of the Cat, produced by Telenova, Thirteen/wnet, Japan’s nhk and Canal+. Filmed by Richard and Carol Foster in Super 35mm on a budget of us$1.4 million, the uncut negative was telecined to hdtv and then onlined in hd before down-versioning to ntsc/pal.

Demonstrations were conducted by technology suppliers from the film, video and computer industries. There was strong representation from Kodak, Sony Arriflex, Aaton and Avid.

Even though there were only a few Canadian delegates, they fared well and gained respect from their peers in the global market. On hand were Albert Karvonen of Karvonen Films, who recently undertook an exciting shoot in the far northwest; Robert and Erane Bockings of Keg Productions, who have started a new company, Interactive Multimedia; and White Bear Productions, which is creating a cd-rom of Safari: Ocean Adventures.

Adam Ravetch (California) and his wife Sarah (Ontario) are developing the international television special Arctic Ice Odyssey with Canal+. It will film amazing marine life underwater in the Canadian ice cap. Arctic Ice Odyssey is represented by Bernard MacLeod.

MacLeod is also working with Venturetainment Capital Corporation on Cougar Crisis, in development with cfcn-tv Calgary, cfrn-tv Edmonton, bctv Vancouver and others.

Venturetainment also represents Peak Media, a Canadian-owned company, now releasing the critically acclaimed Mount Everest as a cd-rom, tv and video production. Peak is also creating a new cd-rom entitled Elephant Odyssey with visuals and sounds from Africa and Asia, and developing Adventure Travelogue, a cd-rom magazine.

Other Canadians attending the festival were: Paul Black of Great North Releasing, known and liked by many of the international delegates, who represented several Canadian producers and was looking for new product; Jim Foley, consultant for Nature/Travel films and EcoTourism, chairman of the Canadian Wildlife Film Festival, and previously head of marketing for the Canadian Wildlife Service; and Don Iglesrud of Life Consultants.

In all, 27 countries were represented at the Jackson Hole festival.