Recently our Director, Simon, was crowned the winner of the ‘Eden Shorts’ short nature film competition. The competition was open to anyone, as advertised on the Sky/Virgin channel Eden.
The rules for the competition were simple – produce a 1 minute nature film about whatever you like, giving full creative freedom. Eden provided a selection of music tracks to choose from and then it was up to the filmmaker from there. The competition was judged by wildlife TV presenters Michaela Strachan and Nigel Marven, as well as the head of UKTV and Eden. The judges were unanimous in their decision as they all agreed that Simon’s film ‘Effortless Beauty’ was hands down the winner, beating off over 350 entries.
Simon’s film has since been broadcast on the Eden Channel a number of times and he received a tweet from Michaela Strachan herself expressing her admiration – a life highlight according to Simon! Unfortunately she was filming Autumnwatch when Simon’s film was screened at Wildscreen film festival and he picked up a trophy for his mantle piece, otherwise she would have presented it.
This is what our award-winning director had to say about the competition:
“I started filming wildlife about 2 years ago on weekends when I went out walking. It’s just a hobby, but built up quite a good library of footage. I didn’t really have a clear vision of what I wanted to do with the footage, but I enjoyed capturing wildlife and the natural world – even though some of the shots required A LOT of patience and practice. I began to go on specific filming trips to get certain shots and then when I saw the Eden Shorts competition advertised on TV, that gave me a focus to create something. I then set to work on a storyline, looking at poems etc. but nothing really worked for me so I ended up writing the script myself. It all seemed to come together quite nicely and at 3am on the date of the deadline I entered my film. I genuinely didn’t expect to win, but I’m very proud to have done so – just a shame I didn’t get to meet Michaela!”