Alumni |
Laura Sams |
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"I enjoyed bouncing ideas off other environmental storytellers. It was a great catalyst for my future projects." |
While I was working on my master’s degree in natural resources education, I took a class about environmental filmmaking through the Knight Center for Environmental Journalism. It was great fun, and we produced a short (and very rough) video called “The Wild Turkey: Our Almost National Bird.” I’m not sure that video was the turning point that launched my career as a filmmaker, but it offered great experience and a chance to network with other people interested in sharing environmental stories with the world. (It also offered a chance to film my brother dressed as Benjamin Franklin, as well as write a song about turkeys.) Now I own Sisbro Studios with my brother. Our mission is to use nature, art and humor as a springboard for learning through wildlife films and educational products. We have made three movies for children: “Stranger in the Woods: The Movie” (about winter animals and a snowman, “Bearly Alike” (about grizzly bears) and “Lost in the Woods: The Movie” (about a newborn fawn in the springtime). My brother and I write the stories, film the animals, write the music and perform many of the voices in our movies. We feel very honored to have won several international awards, including the 2006 Wildscreen Panda Award in the Children’s Choice category, which is like winning an Oscar in the wildlife-filmmaking industry. My brother and I also travel around the country performing educational assemblies for about 25,000 children every year. If you ever come see us, you might just hear me sing like a deer, talk like an oak leaf or mimic a sleeping grizzly bear. My brother and I hope to continue to partner with other environmental storytellers to creatively help people discover the world around them, to begin to understand how issues affect them and ultimately take action. We create a lot of programs for young children, in the hope that we can cater to their world of imagination, curiosity and possibility… so they may have a chance to love the natural world long before they are put in the position where they must save it. Please check us out at www.sisbro.com, and do check out the Failed Slogans page, where you can enter horrible slogans for our business. |
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