Kenya's Wildlife Film
Production Company
A few words about us and what we do...
We started off in 2020, where innovative and experienced wildlife film makers decided to found “Africa Wildlife Productions Ltd.”. With more than 15 years of knowledge in wildlife filmmaking, we wanted to offer more to international production crews. Our camera crew and drone pilots have years of experience in the field and can assist your production team on the ground on any camera system (RED, Sony, zCam etc.). We have special built 4×4 film cars with camera doors, sliders, mounting options for tripods and gimbal systems. As a Kenyan company, we know our country in and out. We offer scouting services and pre production research within the whole of Kenya. Africa Wildlife Productions Ltd is a registered film agent under the Kenya Film Classification Board.
Nira Shah
Knausenberger
Director / Executive Producer
Andreas
Knausenberger
Director / Producer / DoP / Drone
Craig
Cleave
FPV Pilot / Drone Licensing
Fareed
Khimani
Voice Artist / Narrator / Actor / Producer
Saiba
Sehmi
Photographer / DoP
Joan
Poggio
DoP / Editor / Colorist
Lee
Smith C.A.S
Production Sound Recordist
Charlotte
D'Olier
Fixer / RedEarth Fixers
Justus Indira
Kidaha
DIT / Data Wrangler
Amima
Mwongela
Voice Artist / Narrator
Our History
For the first time ever, the Wildscreen Festival was held in Nairobi, Kenya. It is one of the most important festivals in the natural history filmmaking industry. The festival allows young, local film makers to network and get into contact with the decision makers of the industry. As we believe in the importance of supporting local talents, we came along as one of the festival supporters, sponsored five student tickets, did two mentoring sessions during the festival and also took part in the RED workshop in the Nairobi National Park, teaching young Kenyan and Tanzanian film makers the use of the RED V-Raptor.
In April 2023 we expanded in our Drone Services here in Kenya. We now have additional KCAA Kenyan Commercial Drone Licensed Pilots in our team. We also added more drones into our pool like the DJI Mavic 3 Classic, DJI Mavic 3 Cine and some FPV Drones. Now we have a full network for Drone Licenses, Kenya Wildlife Service permissions and can assist you with your productions on the ground.
In June 2022 we have been contacted by Oxford Scientific Films to take over parts of a new Disney+ and National Geographic production. We provided camera operators, sound recordists, camera equipment and logistical support for several different locations in Kenya.
We have invested in a brand new RED V-Raptor VV in April 2022. The kit includes the camera itself, the whole RED production pack with batteries and a wide variaty of lenses ranging from 12mm to 600mm. We have also invested in a Sachtler Video 18 S2 head with the brand new Sachtler Flowtech 100 tripod. With the purchase of the Zacuto Kameleon Pro OLED EVF our wildlife camera kit is now complete.
Due to the Covid-19 pandemic and the travel ban from the UK to Kenya, we were able to realize some scouting and filming projects for BBC Natural History Unit, BBC Science and Oxford Scientific Films. Our task was to scout for a future production and provide a production crew including camera operators, sound technicians, guides and film cars.
Nira, Andreas and Lee decided to open “Africa Wildlife Productions Ltd.”, a Kenya based production company for wildlife and CSR productions. We are now looking forward to a productive year ahead and are ready to provide our film crew skills, insider knowledge and network for international productions which may need our help on the ground for high quality natural history documentary production.
Our year 2020 kicked off quite strong. We had another fishing production in Gabon, Peru and the Maldives before CORONA shut everything down! All productions cancelled. No travelling anymore. Lock-down in Kenya… With no tourists in Kenya anymore, the communities and the wildlife suffered tremendously. We decided to produce our first documentary “The Unfathomable Virus”, showing the world the problems, the wildlife and the communities are facing due to the travel restriction. The documentary was produced with a one-man-production set up as the country was still under lock-down. The documentary was aired on Aljazeera, NTV (Kenyan Channel), DSTV and some online documentary channels.
This year was a great success for us as a production company. We got our fishing productions into Amazon Prime Videos! In 2019 we spent most of the time in the bush, filming and guiding photography groups in Africa.
We did another image film production for a safari camp in the Masai Mara, Kenya. Our inhouse team was responsible for the filming on the ground as well as the post editing, colour correction, story line and sound design. In March we produced a short film about the flamingo photography at Lake Magadi, south of Nairobi. The rest of the year we produced more fishing documentaries in Panama, Colombia, Peru, Botswana, Vanuatu and other remote places.
After we had spent the last couple of years with increasing our expedition and photography programs, we started filming more wildlife. As Kenya offers one of the best destinations in Africa for wildlife filmmakers, we didn’t have to travel far to film the Big Five. We started investing in super tele zooms, field recorders and external monitor screens. Finally got our first commercial film projects. We produced the first image films for a helicopter company in Kenya and did the fixing in Suriname for a Japanese Fishing TV Show. Our drone footage was also featured in this Japanese production.
Over the next couple of years, we extended our expeditions to far away places. We also invested more in filming equipment as our own standard grew to provide the highest quality possible. It didn’t take long to own our first drone. We learned about video editing and improved our colour grading skills and opened our first marketing agency in Kenya: Commune! Marketing Agency.
We always loved to travel the world and see remote places, far away from the normal, touristic areas. Giving other people the opportunities to visit exact those places, we opened a travel agency in early 2011. To be different and special is the key to a unique travel experience. That’s why we focused our programs on fishing and photography trips all over the world. As we have been always interested in photography and film making, one of our services to our clients is producing a complete travel documentary of their live time experience.