Emmy Arrives At Ammonite

We were very excited to receive this package at Ammonite HQ. This is an Emmy for Outstanding Cinematography on the National Geographic series Great Migrations

Leopard Battleground TX

Night Stalkers: Leopard Battleground is next on Nat GEO WILD in the UK this Friday 20th January at 4pm

Night Stalkers: Series Screening in the US

Night Stalkers, Ammonite's new series using it's full range of specially developed night-vision cameras will screen back to back in the USA this Sunday 18th and Thursday 22nd December: Episode details here

Jaguar Ambush On Nat Geo WILD

Big Cat Week starts on December 11th in the USA with a slew of great films including Ammonite's Jaguar Ambush filmed in Costa Rica earlier this year



Our blog recounted Ammonite's efforts to rig a pair of 500-metre cables above the forest canopy in order to send remote cameras along the lines seeking out jaguars and other elusive jungle cats of Santa Rosa.




more news from Ammonite on Twitter and on the Ammonite Films Facebook Page.


For more information about our films
email: hilary@ammonite.co.uk

Hunt for the Giant Squid: The Latest Film From Ammonite

After years spent developing Ammonite's unique Starlight cameras, this year we finally took them underwater, the result is Hunt For The Giant Squid and it is premiering in the US tomorrow night at 9pm, this is a clip about bioluminescence, a very important part of our journey:




and this is the blog post from one of those filming trips

Panasonic Cameras - Available To Hire from Ammonite

Panasonic Varicam 2700

Plus many lenses, more information here

Our Thermal cameras and the Panasonic 101 are also available

for a quote email: howard@ammonite.co.uk

NIght Stalkers: Crocodile Wars

The next episode of Night Stalkers on Nat Geo Wild is Crocodile Wars, starting at 8pm on Thursday with twice daily repeats. Ammonite's night vision technology is used to capture the contrasting habits of Crocodiles in Sri Lanka and Kenya.

Night Stalkers: New Series From Ammonite from Ammonite Films on Vimeo.

Some highlights from the Night Stalkers series

Great migrations Wins Emmy

National Geographic's series Great Migrations just won an Emmy for Outstanding Individual Acheivement In a Craft: CINEMATOGRAPHY in the News and Documentary section of the awards. Ammonite filmed key sequences of monarch butterflies and army ants for the series

Ammonite Wins In Japan - twice

Night of the Hunt and City of Ants are joint winners of the award for Technical Achievement in this year's Japan Wildlife Film Festival.

City of Ants is doing well at the festivals this year, at the IWFF in Missoula it picked up the award for Scientific Content.

Ammonite Night Cameras For Hire

Our cameras have been very busy for the last year because we have been making a series of films for National Geographic Channel using the Starlight, Thermal and Infra-red cameras developed at Ammonite HQ to give the best, most amazing HD images.

These cameras reveal a world that we can never see under normal circumstances - life in the twilight zone. The clip above was filmed on the Starlight Camera in a woodland near Bristol.

All of our kit plus the night vision cameras is now back in the workshop and available for hire.

For all kit enquiries please call our office on +44 (0)117 927 9778 or email howard@ammonite.

Night Vision From Ammonite

This month in BBC Wildlife Magazine Martin Dohrn's night images are featured in the Portfolio section. Beautiful photographs made with Ammonite's Infra-red, Thermal and Starlight Cameras.

Ammonite's cameras are available for hire, email howard@ammonite.co.uk with your enquiries

Ammonite Creates .... Guppycam

Just about to start trials in Mexico, read all about it here

Ammonite Wins At Missoula WWFF

Night Of The Hunt has picked up first prize for Sound Design plus merits for Animal Behavior, Technological Achievement and Narration at this years WWFF in Missoula .


Also at WWFF an upcoming Nat Geo film called Antzilla which was co-produced and filmed by Ammonite has won the award for scientific content, this film is now titled City of Ants

Here's one of the blog posts from when we were filming this show.

All New Camera - All New Ammonite Project

We have just returned from the first mini-test-shoot for a brand new project and Ammonite’s 8th version of the starlight camera is producing some very extraordinary images.

We'll be posting more information about the camera and the amazing bioluminescent project on the blog

An Awfully Big Adventure

It's finally ready and winging its way over the pond to star in a Hollywood feature film alongside a raft of Oscar winners... more

Ammonite Settles In

Still working out where to put everything but we're getting used to our new home...
more on the move here

Ammonite Is Very Moved

Ammonite has moved to glorious new premises

John Lynch Voices For Ammonite

John Lynch came to Bristol today to voiceover our latest project - read more here

Ammonite Wins At Jackson Hole

Smalltalk Diaries: Changelings won the Best Short Film Award at Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival this week. We were up against some stiff competition so we're delighted and honoured.

This latest award has come hot on the heels of the Children's Audience Award at the Green Screen International Wildlife Film Festival in Eckernförde, Germany.

More information about Smalltalk Diaries here and clips on the side bar.

Ammonite Goes Back to The Mara

We're thinking of getting a resident's permit, after the number of films Ammonite has made in Kenya's Masai Mara we still can't get enough of this magical place and we're heading back with our bright, shiny starlight camera to put our newest bit of kit through it's paces.

See the blog for updates

More Ants From Ammonite

Ammonite is filming ants in Arizona, Dr Alex Wild, our resident ant scientist has written about his experience of working with us and posted a photo-essay here












Photo: Dr Alex Wild

Starlight MKVII - Ammonite's New Baby

Checking out the very first images from the new MKVII Starlight camera - stunning footage to follow.

Ammonite In Botswana

Ammonite is using the full range of its night-filming technology to film lions at night in Botswana. Unusually cold Antarctic weather drove them out of the Kalahari and up near the Okavango delta. An account of this shoot can be followed on our notes from the field page.

Filming Monarchs In Wisconsin

Ammonite's crane is set up for action but the Monarchs are slow getting to Wisconsin. Meanwhile Jonathan Jones and Howard Bourne have set up a makeshift studio to get some close ups of early arrivals while they're waiting.



Photographs by Stephanie Atlas

Ammonite Filming Monarchs in Mexico

An Ammonite crew has been out in Mexico filming monarch butterflies for National Geographic. Cameras included the wonderful Phantom ultra slow motion camera and with our cable dolly sweeping through the trees we got some unique views of this beautiful phenomenon.

Nature's Great Events BBC1

See Frankencam in action on the telly this Wednesday, Nature's Great Events: The Great Flood (BBC1,Wednesday 9pm), featuring some incredible camerawork filmed by Ammonite's Martin Dohrn last year.

The Nature's Great Event Diary was filmed by Alex Verner who is currently working for Ammonite

Ammonite Gets Some New Toys

Ammonite has been designing a remote-controlled cable dolly.

It arrived today - Jonathan Hendrix-Jones demonstrates how it will be used...

... Actually It Works Like This

... once we'd wrestled the dolly from Jonathan's clutches we set it up in the garden and tried it out. It's going abroad next week where it will glide through the forest canopy, filming butterflies.

Night Filming With The Starlight Camera

Ammonite is passionate about developing technology that helps bring new insights into animal behaviour. This is the latest version of the Starlight Camera, an image-intensified camera that we have been developing for 16 years, an early version of the camera was used to make the award-winning film Mara Nights in 1996. Mara Nights is archived as one of the top 200 ground-breaking films in the 100-year history of wildlife film making.
full story here

Here is our Starlight Camera filming primates in Uganda recently

Smalltalk Diaries Trailer

Ammonite in the News for Innovative Approach

The current issue of The Engineer features Ammonite in an article about the technology used in the Okavango Delta for the upcoming BBC series Nature's Great Events.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK

'We call it ground-breaking equipment. That's because, quite often it hits the ground - and breaks
Martin Dohrn

And the Bristol Evening Post ran a piece on Ammonite's success at Wildscreen last month here.

There were so many great natural history shows, but none addressed the younger audience, which is why we came up with Smalltalk Diaries. We thought children were getting a bit short-changed. Ammonite

Ammonite Wins at Wildscreen and Chicago with Smalltalk Diaries

Ammonite scooped two Panda Awards at last night's Wildscreen Film Festival. Not only did Smalltalk Diaries win the prestigious Parthenon Entertainment Award for Innovation, it also took the Best Series Award, heading off David Attenborough's Life in Cold Blood and the BBC mega-series Earth: The Power of the Planet.
Smalltalk Diaries also won the Best Live Action television programme Award at the Chicago Children's Film Festival

Ammonite HD footage also to be found at SPL

Ammonite has an extensive library of HD film clips, a resource regularly used by other production companies. Science Photo Library is now preparing a High Definition film archive which will be launched early next year and has approached Ammonite to provide footage for the library. Ammonite has been selling science-related stills through SPL for many years and has agreed to provide footage for license by them.

Frankencam in Digital Arts Magazine

Martin Dohrn is the creator of several motion-control rigs, including the 'Antcam' used on the BBC's In Search of Killer Ants, and the Frankencam used for David Attenborough's Life in the Undergrowth. His latest rig was developed specifically for use with the Iconix HD-RH1F camera system in order to capture increasingly tiny and complex wildlife, and is the inspiration behind the Smalltalk Diaries translation lens.

This is an extract, read the full article Here

Frankencam's travels

For the last two years Frankencam or 'Frank' has been living in France and used extensively to make the multi-award nominated series 'Smalltalk Diaries'. Frank came back back to the UK to make an appearance on Blue Peter in March and has been on the go ever since.

April Ammonite took Frankencam to Monteverde in Costa Rica for National Geographic. Filming army ants rampaging across the forest floor. Frank’s unique set of motors and controllers enabled us to fly over the trails and into the thick of the action without disturbing the ants - or getting stung.

June Frankencam went to the Okavango Delta in Botswana to document to the annual arrival of flood waters in extraordinary close-up detail, for the BBC Series Nature's Great Events series, gliding millimetres above the slowly advancing waters.

July Frankncam went back to France to film more insects for Ammonite’s Smalltalk Diaries, in particular, the slave-making ants, and lunatic red bugs - in a broom.

Frankencam goes on Blue Peter

Children's TV programme, Blue Peter heard about Smalltalk Diaries and came to Ammonite HQ to meet Frankencam

Ant filming worldwide

Ammonite has been getting a name for filming insects, this year we are considering renaming ourselves 'The Ant Filming Company'. Among several ant-related projects, Ammonite has recently been filming Army ants in Costa Rica for National Geographic and in Tanzania filming Driver ants (see story below).

Ammonite in Tanzania

Ammonite sent a crew to film Driver ants in Tanzania for John Downer productions. On the slopes of Mount Meru the ants form long migration trails about an inch wide, leading to a nest where it is estimated that 20 million ants congregate and form a large ball to hold their young.

A motion control device has been designed and built by the Ammonite team to use with Iconix the worlds smallest HD camera, allowing us to track along side the migration trails and also take a look inside the nest and get a glimpse of the queen.

Uniquely designed optical scopes including the ‘mini scope’ which uses tiny lens with a very large depth of field to get an ‘ants eye view’ were also employed in the filming. This sequence will draw the audience in amongst the ants allowing the viewer a perspective rarely seen on television today.

The driver ant sequence will be part of an hour long feature called Superswarm due to TX 2009 on BBC1 and Discovery.

We have also been filming Leaf Cutter ants for the Granada Wild's Zoo Days