Adrian Warren is an award-winning producer, director and cinematographer of natural history films.
Growing up in Surrey, Adrian enjoyed exploring the countryside with his stills camera, and at the age of 17, used his photography skills to secure his place on several animal collecting expeditions to Guyana, South America.
In 1971, whilst studying for a degree in Zoology at the University of London, Adrian was awarded the Winston Churchill Fellowship to lead a British expedition to Mount Roraima, Guyana. He used this opportunity to film To Catch an Orchid, which was later purchased by the BBC and broadcast on the World About Us series.
Upon graduating in 1972 and also becoming a qualified aircraft pilot, Adrian began to combine expeditions with filming for Anglia Television's long running Survival series. In 1975, he began working as a researcher for BBC series Horizon and then in 1976 for Bellamy’s Europe. In 1977, Adrian joined the BBC Natural History Unit (NHU) to become the Studio Director for Animal Magic and went on to produce films for the Wildlife on One series, as well as film sequences.
For Life on Earth, Adrian filmed rare footage of Hoatzins nesting, and was subsequently asked by Richard Brock to produce two episodes of the BBC’s next major series, The Living Planet. One episode entitled, The Sky Above, featured David Attenborough simulating weightlessness to illustrate the effects of zero gravity at the NASA space station. This iconic sequence helped The Sky Above win an Emmy Award on behalf of the series.
After 12 years at the NHU Adrian felt ready for a new challenge and left the BBC to direct wildlife films for IMAX including Mountain Gorilla and Secrets of the Wild Panda. In 1992 he set up the independent film production and publishing company Last Refuge, and produced films for National Geographic, Discovery, the BBC, Disney and Partridge Films. Amongst these were Dance of the Sifaka which won the M.A. Partha Sarathy Award for Excellence at the 1997 Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival and The Gorillas of My Grandfather, which won 7 awards including the Best Environmental Film Award at the 2004 Graz Film Festival.
Adrian continued to work on wildlife and human interest films, stills photography and feature articles. He had Gorillas in the Midst of Man translated into KinyaRwandan and distributed as an educational resource within the local communities in Rwanda where it was filmed, and has done the same for films made in Madagascar and Tanzania.
Adrian died on the evening on June 5th 2011 after a long period of illness.
View the oral history of Adrian Neil Warren Animal Magic (1962-1984): Programme 407 (1979) | Production |
| Birds for all Seasons: Everlasting Heat (1986) | Producer |
| Gorillas in the Midst of Man (1989) | Writer, Producer |
| A Lemur's Tale (1997) | Producer, Photography |
