MARAMEDIA AMONG FIRST RECIPIENTS OF SCREEN SCOTLAND'S BROADCAST CONTENT FUND

Wildlife TV specialists, Maramedia (Born to Be Wild, Hebrides–Islands on the Edge, Highlands-Scotland's Wild Heart) have received £118,500 to produce Stormborn (working title), a new three-part series exploring wildlife in the North Atlantic, to be broadcast on BBC Scotland. Stormborn will also be broadcast and distributed by Canadian-based Blue Ant Media. This award will enable Maramedia to continue their work to establish Scotland as a hub for natural history TV production and develop internationally renowned natural history talent.

Nigel Pope, Creative Director at Maramedia said,

“Stormborn brings together Blue Ant Media (a major player in the SVOD world through its Love Nature platforms) with BBC Scotland, Screen Scotland and Arte France in a really unique way. Its creative both in an editorial sense and as a new sort of financing model. The Broadcast Content Fund closed the final gap in the finance plan, so it was really important to us and I’m sure we’ll be working with the Screen Scotland team a lot in the future.”

Six independent Scottish production companies have received a total of £900,500 to create new TV content.

Happy Tramp North, Maramedia, Matchlight, Once Were Farmers, Pirate Productions and Very Nice are the first recipients of Screen Scotland’s £3million Broadcast Content Fund. The awards represent a range of new projects, enabling companies to elevate their creative and commercial ambition, through support of single project and slate development and production.

Isabel Davis, Executive Director at Screen Scotland said,

“Creating the right conditions for Scotland’s independent film and television producers and companies to grow is essential, if we are to help them achieve the recognition they deserve and drive their economic and creative success.

“We’ve been inspired by the quality and range of work coming to us for support, and encouraged that the fund is making a real difference: be it creating the opportunity for producers to acquire exciting intellectual property, increase the resources to develop content, or enable important Scottish stories of scale to get into production.”

Press Release: MARAMEDIA AND SKYLAND ANNOUCE CO-PRODUCTION VENTURE

Leading Scottish Indie Maramedia and fast-growing Vienna-based Skyland productions have announced an exciting collaboration on a slate of Natural History and documentary productions.

Maramedia MD Jackie Savery said:

“We love collaborating with like-minded companies in Europe. We’ve known Roman for 5 years and share similar aspirations and values in our approach to films about the Natural World. In a post-Brexit world, European collaboration is more important to us than ever before and we’re sure that our joint slate will be eye-catching, stimulating and commercially exciting.”

Skyland MD Roman Landauer said:

“We’re really proud to announce this cooperation with a highly renowned partner like Maramedia. It’s our passion to work at the highest level, and this makes Maramedia the perfect partner for Skyland Productions. This twinning joins our creative power and production synergies in order to achieve extraordinary results for international broadcasters and their audiences.”

About Maramedia

Maramedia create world-class Natural History content for broadcast across a variety of platforms for international clients, including the BBC, Blue Ant Media, ITVG, PBS, National Geographic, France Televisions, Arte and ORF, working with key talent like David Attenborough, Ewan McGregor and David Tennant.

Multi award-winning, Maramedia’s productions have a hallmark of quality – showcasing the natural world in a spectacular way, as well highlighting the issues it faces.

About Skyland

Skyland Productions is an Austrian independent company with its main focus on Natural History and History documentaries. Located in Vienna the young production company’s international broadcast partners are spread around the globe: from ORF’s Universum, Germany’s NDR and BR to ARTE and Smithsonian Channels.

Projects in Europe, USA and Central America, Asia, Russia and Africa reflect the company’s widespread network.

Vikings, remote islands, baby otters and hunting orca…

It’s been the busiest year ever for the team at Maramedia !

With 4 exciting projects completed this year we have spanned blue chip, specialist factual and children’s – its certainly been a year for everyone on the team!

Our blue chip 4K specials, Wild Shetland and Wild Way of the Vikings are being delivered as we speak. They have been a huge project for us over the past 2 years and we are thrilled with the finished films which will TX internationally next year. 

Shetland is such a special place to film and with dramatic scenes of orca hunts and otter families, tiny tern chicks and wild landscapes it promises to showcase these truly special wild islands.

Wild Way of the Vikings with its dramatic blue chip sequences of reindeer, Orca, whales and otters, blends blue chip wildlife with history in a fresh new take on the natural world.

These projects have brought us in contact with a whole world of amazing scientists, zooarchaeologists, historians and enthusiasts and we have discovered so much about the natural world through the eyes of the Vikings - these enduringly popular, ancient people and are so grateful to everyone for their interest and passion in creating these shows.

In fact we have become a bit of a specialist in the Vikings which originally spawned our Gudrun the Viking princess series of which we completed the second series of this year working with a range of talented young actors and animals! Encouraging young people to be inspired, interested in and care for the natural world is key to the team at Maramedia and we were thrilled to have the series acknowledged with an RTS Scotland award in May.

This year also saw us enter a whole new genre creating and complete a brand new series – Born to Be Wild for BBC Scotland. The 10 hour series follows the amazing and heart warming stories of injured or orphaned wild animals, who, through the care and dedication of the Scottish SPCA wildlife staff, are nursed back to health and then released into the stunning landscape of Scotland. We look forward to sharing this with you in 2019.

Our projects wouldn’t have been possible without the amazing collaboration between such a range of international broadcasters from BBC Scotland, CBeebies, ORF Austria, PBS in the USA and France 5 and ITVG – not to mention the support of the EU media fund. We are also pleased to have worked with such a range of brilliant craft team from post houses in Glasgow and Bristol, amazing composers and musicians, camera team, editors, all the esteemed narrators from Ewan McGregor to Siobhan Redmond, Denis Lawson, and of course our own brilliant Maramedia team and freelancers.

Innovation, collaboration and respect for the natural world are key to driving our quest for the highest quality production values, which we aim to inspire, educate and entertain all about our natural world. 

We are looking forward to 2019 and working with old friends and a suite of new teams to deliver more exciting projects!

To keep up to date on our projects filming and plans follow us on social channels below.

#Wildwayofthevikings

#Borntobewild

#Wildshetland

#Vikingprincess

And if you want to catch some of our work in your Christmas viewing – many series are currently available on BBC iplayer; Gudrun the Viking Princess, Highlands and Hotel Armadillo.

Thank you for all your support over 2018 and we wish everyone a very happy and peaceful Christmas holiday and a very Happy New Year for 2019 ! 

The team at Maramedia

PRESS RELEASE

Born to be Wild…..  

A brand new ten-part series by Maramedia for BBC Scotland

Life at the Scottish SPCA – the biggest and most advanced wildlife rehab centre in Britain where thousands of wild animals from otters and seals to robins, to Pine martens and eagles make the journey from centre admission back to the wild and stunning landscapes of Scotland.

Maramedia has secured an exciting new ten-part series from BBC Scotland. 

The Scottish SPCA National Wildlife Rescue Centre in Alloa, Fife is the biggest and most advanced wildlife rehab centre in the UK. Last year more than 9,600 wild animals passed through its doors and the number continues to rise with each year. But what happens when the patients are discharged? 

In this landmark series, cameras will go behind the scenes for the first time as injured and sick animals make their heart warming journey to recovery and eventually back to the wild landscape in which they were born.

Scotland’s landscapes are some of the most stunning and diverse in Britain – home to our most iconic and most loved animals. This exciting new series will feature a host of loveable characters from otters to orphaned baby fox cubs, badgers to eagles, white baby seals to hundreds of hungry hedgehogs. It’s a race against time to asses, treat and cure each unique case before ensuring they are fit to face the rigours of the wild.

Beautifully filmed in stunning Scottish surroundings, it’s a heart warming watch as Britain’s best loved animals make a tear jerking journey back to their wild home..
A staggering five thousand animals were returned to the wild successfully last year, after bespoke and careful treatment and a re-wilding programme.

Many are still babies and without a wild family it’s the centre staff who must use their warmth, expertise and dedication to bring up these young wild orphans before ensuring that they forget all about their human surrogate parents and return to their true wild behavior. 

Produced by Maramedia, Scotland’s leading producers of natural history documentaries, the series showcases the stunning scenery and wildlife of Scotland and uses top-end natural history filming techniques. The series is a BBC Scotland commission with ITVG as international distributor. 

The series is currently in production and will be delivered to the BBC towards the end of 2018.

 To follow behind the scenes stories of the production, follow Maramedia and Scottish SPCA social channels ..

#borntobewild
@scottishSPCA
@mara_media

Quotes

 “It’s shaping up to be a thrilling series – the access to animals you’d only ever see from the end of a telescope, is incredible and the resilience and brilliance of the skilled Scottish SPCA staff really shines through as doe their passion for giving ever single animal they receive absolutely the best care possible.” -  Tom Cara, Series Producer Maramedia.

 “We are thrilled with this new commission from BBC Scotland and to be working with the dedicated wildlife team at the Scottish SPCA. Seeing these wild animals at close quarters is a real privilege offering viewers a chance to learn much more about Scotland’s amazing wildlife.” - Nigel Pope, Creative Director Maramedia.

‘This is an exciting new project which will offer the viewer a real insight into the work done to release animals back into the wild in the Scottish countryside and also provide many emotional and moving moments.  I am sure it will resonate with audiences in Scotland.’- David Harron Commissioning Executive, Factual, BBC Scotland

Scottish SPCA Chief Executive Kirsteen Campbell said, “We are delighted to be part of this exciting new programme with Maramedia which will showcase the incredible work done by the team at our National Wildlife Rescue Centre at Fishcross.“Our wildlife centre is rarely seen so this is a great opportunity for the public to view first-hand the wild animals we rescue, rehabilitate and release, while fully respecting the needs of all the animals in our care.” - Kirsteen Campbell, CEO Scottish SPCA