The way man is changing nature is causing dangerous viruses to slip into the human population. One of the underreported effects of expansion of human settlement and environmental destruction and general disruption of nature by human kind is an increase in the potential for unique devastating viruses to spill over into the world’s population. “Virus Hunters” tells the 100-year-old story of HIV, thousand-year old story of Rabies and the Hendra virus, a largely unknown virus that has only recently emerged in Australia, among others. David Quammen spent six years writing and researching his book, “Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic.” Weather Films saw an amazing opportunity to bring his words to life. We were able to convince Quammen, one of the most highly respected science and nature journalists in the world–who had never worked in the world of video before–to turn his book into a web video series to share with The Weather Channel audience. We traveled all over the United States, and as far as Australia, to meet scientists and researchers who are battling the elements in the field to uncover the mysteries of these zoonotic diseases. We continued to work with Quammen throughout our production process process. Together, we produced six web-only episodes. Each featured a different zoonotic disease, including HIV, Ebola, Hanta, Hendra, Marbug and Rabies. Many of the concepts and details about the diseases were difficult to explain on paper, let alone through a camera lens. With narrative storytelling, graphics and compelling interviews, we managed to communicate the facts effectively while maintaining editorial integrity and scientific rigor. The series has an extremely high production value for the resources we had. We produced it will extremely small crews, often with just one camera and one producer. It was shot on non-broadcast-quality cameras, but the quality of production was on par with broadcast documentary programming. Our mission was unique and quite complicated: take a scientific text and bring it to life on the screen. In an age where digital journalism is at its height, rarely is there a video that accompanies a written piece on research on virology that is exciting to watch. We believe we have broken that mold with “Virus Hunters.”
