FILMING IT WILD

Award-winning wildlife documentary filmmaker, Praveen Singh, has travelled all over India to highlight endangered animals in many types of terrain, for the second season of On the Brink.

Singh has a passion for animals and the natural world that reaches back to his boyhood. “My dad was in the Indian Forest Service, and I had plenty of opportunities to travel with him to many wild places in India. And then, when I was about 10, I saw some wildlife programs on TV and realised that’s what I want to do,” he said.

After earning a master’s degree in Science and Natural History film making at Montana State University, Singh launched his career with a bang: he took the first prize for documentary in the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences Foundation College TV Awards (also known as the ‘student Emmys’) for his very first film, The Indian Leopards: the Killing Fields.

Many more years, films, and accolades later, Singh has established himself as one of India’s most celebrated documentary filmmakers, spellbinding his audiences with tales of India’s magical and hidden places. “I always knew I wanted to come back to India to make wildlife documentaries. This land of a billion people has so many environmental and nature conservation challenges, and also success stories,” he noted.

EXPLORING THE HIDDEN

Together with his wife and co-producer, Akanksha Sood Singh, Singh just wrapped the second season of the acclaimed series, On the Brink. The program spans diverse landscapes and unique locations throughout India, with each episode highlighting an animal species, which is either endangered or vulnerable. Season two stars range from snow leopards, India’s iconic elephants, and Olive Ridley turtles to the croc-like gharials of the Chambal River, to the limestone caves of Meghalaya, India’s bat haven, and exotic pangolins – the only mammals with scales.