RECENT ASSIGNMENTS

Navy Divers This exciting new four part series follows a group of tough navy recruits training to become the navy's elite "Clearance Divers". Thirty or so applicants face around the clock diving, ruthless fitness sessions, debilitating sleep deprivation tests and endless swimming and diving assessments in a bid to make the course. From a brutal initial weeding out period, appropriately named "Hell Week", to the end of their year long training, the series follows the group as one by one each contender either makes the grade or quits the team. In the last stages of training, the surviving candidates travel to Queensland where the remaining squad members complete their final explosives training at a bush camp on Triangular Island. Enduring very basic conditions, they handle and detonate tons of heavy duty military explosives with the additional burden of endless mud and biting insects, which helps keep up the pressure during the last phase of the course. Arming 500lb bombs while diving in near zero visibility is just one of the challenges, made even more demanding with Mal filming their every move. The "Navy Divers" series blasts onto the ABC screen this year.

GIANT CUTTLEFISH In this exciting new documentary we join Australia's cephalopod expert Dr. Mark Norman in his quest to examine cuttlefish species from the cold waters of Southern Australia, to the tropical seas of Indonesia. We follow these beautiful creatures going about their business, and discover some of them have a deadly secret. This documentary Film is due for release later this year, so keep your feelers out for when it's showing near you.

SHIPWRECK DETECTIVES

One of the High Definition television projects we are currently working on is a second series of the award winning programme, "Shipwreck Detectives". In December 2004 we joined up with a team of Maritime Archaeologists working in Sri Lanka's Galle harbour, to film some of the documentation and preservation work being undertaken on the "Avondster", a seventeenth century Dutch owned shipwreck.

The Avondster project team work under extremely difficult conditions, as the vessel, wrecked in 1659, lies close to the shore in the swell line, where visibility is often less than half a meter. We filmed the archeologists as they dredged up artifacts and accurately logged their positions on the wreck site. We had just returned to Australia when the December 26th 2004 Tsunami hit Sri Lanka, devastating the population living along the coastline. The city of Galle was one of the worst hit and the Maritime Archaeological Unit was badly affected, wiping away ten years of work. We immediately returned to Sri Lanka to film the devastation and to document the archeologists as they tried to locate and salvage the precious artifacts scattered around the remains of their building.

Traveling by Gulet along the southern coast of Turkey, we also spent several weeks filming on another international Maritime Archaeologists expedition for the series. This time we joined Jeremy Green, a Maritime Archaeologist from the Western Australian Maritime Museum, as the team from Turkey searched for the remains of a wreck, from which a local fisherman had dredged a bronze figure. Look out for the films in this exciting series later in the year.

NIGEL MARVEN

Discovery channels wildlife host Nigel Marven, risks life and limb once again in an endeavor to help viewers realize the benefits of studying venomous creatures. Working with Nigel on his latest documentary, "Venom Hunters", we filmed some amazing creatures, like the beautiful but deadly cone shell, the tiny poisonous Pyjama squid, the awesome funnel web spider and many of Australia's deadliest snakes. This film looks at some of the ways scientists conduct research to develop new drugs from some of the world's deadly venoms. On another film, "Crime scene creatures", we again worked with Nigel Marven as he explores some of the ways animals are used in forensic science to help track down criminals.