WhereNext Live: The Joy of Birding from Home
Episode 2 of our WhereNext Live Series of interviews, "The Joy of Birding from Home," a conversation hosted by Francisco Santos, the Colombian Ambassador to the United States, featuring Matthew Jeffery, the National Audubon Society's Deputy Director of International Alliances Program, and Chris Bell, our in-house Content Manager and birding expert.
How Our Post-production House Edited This Video
Webinars are often a bit long and open-ended for our modern digital appetites, so our goal was to edit the hour-plus webinar down and repackage it as a more easily consumable, sub-20-minute video. Our Colombian postproduction team added B-roll, animation, and graphics to enhance its visual and educational impact. We hope you enjoy this exploration of Colombia’s magnificent avian species and the incredible ecosystems they live in and pass through.
Marketing: A Campaign for Colombia and the Birds
As the creators of The Birders campaign, our global storytelling agency’s Bogotá-based Colombia production company is deeply involved in the Colombian birding industry, as well as the greater international birdwatching scene. Our integrated multichannel birding-tourism campaign for Colombia’s tourism, investment, and trade promotion agency, PROCOLOMBIA, successfully positioned Colombia as the world’s top birding destination. In the process, we developed creative and professional partnerships with eBird, Aubudon, and many other national and international birding agencies, as well as tour operators and guides.
Our Resident Expert: Birding in the Blood
WhereNext content manager Chris Bell is also our resident bird expert. Chris has been birding since he was five years old and has explored all 32 Colombian departments searching for new and exciting species. So far, his bird list stands at more than 1,250 species in Colombia alone! So when our friends at the National Audubon Society invited us to appear in a webinar with the Colombian Embassy in Washington, D.C., about the joy of birding in Colombia, we of course asked Chris to represent WhereNext.
WhereNext’s resident bird expert, Chris Bell, birding in Colombia’s Montes de Maria region.
Colombia’s Goal: Generate International Interest
The webinar was hosted by Francisco Santos, the Colombian Ambassador to the United States, and also featured Matthew Jeffrey, the Deputy Director of Audubon’s International Alliances Program. Matthew’s work in Colombia has included the creation of regional Colombia birding trails and the training of new local guides in remote areas of the country. The Northern Colombia Birding Trail, where our feature-length documentary The Birders was shot, is a marquee route in this new system.
Sharing the Passion for Birding
Matthew spoke first, discussing Audubon’s valuable work in rural Colombia, the migrant bird species that connect Colombia and the U.S., and how viewers watching in the States could bird from home during the pandemic period. Chris’s talk focused on The Birders and how we successfully pivoted the films into an interactive bird-from-home experience. He also looked at the reasons for Colombia’s exceptional bird diversity and the massive growth in birding in Colombia over the past five years.
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More WhereNext Live
Our first WhereNext Live episode features the world’s best ultra-endurance cyclist, Lael Wilcox.