Films
Sean served as Head of HHMI’s Tangled Bank Studios until late 2023 and was the architect of HHMI’s film initiatives. Born out of the conviction that film remains the most powerful medium for bringing the awe and wonder of nature and the passion of exploration and science to life, these endeavors aimed to bring great stories about science and scientists to both general audiences and students in the classroom.
Sean in the North Dakota Badlands with Duck-billed dinosaur skeleton (from The Day the Mesozoic Died).
Sean has served as executive producer of more than thirty feature films or series for theatrical, streaming, television or giant screen audiences including: the the Oscar- and BAFTA-nominated, and Sundance Grand Jury- Cannes L’Oeil d’Or- and Peabody-Award winning All That Breathes (2022), the Emmy-winning The Serengeti Rules (2019; based on Sean’s book) and the Emmy-winning The Farthest (2017), as well as the Emmy-nominated The Battle to Beat Malaria (2023), the Emmy-nominated and Golden Panda-winning My Garden of a Thousand Bees (2021), Emmy-nominated Nature’s Fear Factor (2020), and the Emmy-nominated three-part PBS special Your Inner Fish (2014) based on Neil Shubin’s best-selling book . He has also been co-executive producer of three giant screen films Amazon Adventure (2017). Backyard Wilderness (2018), and Blue Whales: Return of the Giants (2023) that each earned Best Film Awards from the Giant Screen Cinema Association.
Sean has also served and executive producer and/or on-screen presenter of approximately twenty short educational films that tell engaging stories while presenting content central to science curricula. The films are distributed for free for downloading and streaming on Biointeractive, as are teacher resources for each scientific story. These films and supporting educational materials are now being used by tens of thousands of science teachers and have been viewed by millions of students at the high school, middle school, and college levels.
To watch the short films, visit the HHMI Biointeractive website.
Sean on location in the Galapagos Islands with film producer John Rubin (in blue hat).
Sean has also been involved in the making of a number of earlier documentary films, including the 2009 NOVA special to mark Darwin's anniversary, "What Darwin Never Knew" that was based on Sean's books "Endless Forms Most Beautiful" and "The Making of the Fittest".
A two-hour special program that marked the 150th anniversary of the publication of The Origin of Species and the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth, the film explores the new evolutionary science that is revealing how evolution works at the most fundamental level. Sean served as scientific consulting producer.