Zoology student Wins Bafta
This year Alex Tate won a television Bafta for the ground-breaking specialist factual series ‘Inside Nature’s Giants’, which features dissections of some of the world’s biggest animals.
Alex, who was on the programme from its very inception, said: “’Inside Nature’s Giants’ uses animals to tell modern day, factual, ‘Just So’ stories. For instance — how did the elephant get its trunk? How did the lion get its roar? We wanted to show how animals work using a proper scientific approach and providing proper scientific answers.”
Alex Tate travelled the world after leaving Nottingham. Ten months later he got work-experience with the BBC’s Natural History Unit in Bristol on the series ‘Planet Earth’. He moved to the Natural History Museum, setting up a small independent production company in his spare time. After completing a Masters in Science Media Production at Imperial College Alex went to work for Windfall Films.
As a researcher at Windfall Alex worked on a couple of engineering shows for National Geographic - Monster Moves and Big, Bigger, Biggest — before going back to his zoology roots and developing the 'Inside Nature's Giants' format.
Alex said: “Cutting up animals is, on the face of it, a bit gory but it is what scientists do all the time. In making the series we had to find a balance between the science that we wanted to show to people and not making it too gory. Although we knew we had an innovative idea we were genuinely worried that seeing pictures of huge animals on a slab would actually turn people off. We needed to convince viewers that what they were watching had been done respectfully with the intention of educating as well as to entertain.”
When asked for his advice for students struggling to find their dream job he said: “I have never followed other people. The way to succeed is perhaps to do things your own way — to break the mould. You are never going to become a master of what you want to do unless you train properly or have mentors to guide you. You also have got to show initiative and try and do things other people haven’t done — that will get you noticed. There are so many people looking for the same job you have got to try and do something different and stand out.”
