Meet Tawana, one of our brilliant team at Studio Silverback working on Open Planet, and 2024 Grierson DocLab trainee!

Tawana’s path into the TV industry started at Silverback Films as part of our collaboration with Babbasa on their mentorship programme. She then joined our work experience initiative, alongside other natural history production companies in Bristol, before launching her promising career and returning to Silverback last year.

Tawana has been selected to take part in this year’s Grierson DocLab Training Programme – one of the most prestigious schemes to help young people to thrive in the world of factual TV and documentary filmmaking. It takes just 12 people on board each year for a series of workshops, placements, and mentoring schemes to help their career progression.

We asked Tawana to tell us about her career to-date and share her advice for others aspiring to join the industry:

Hi, I’m Tawana and I’m a Logger at Studio Silverback. I started here in December 2023 and my role as involves working as part of a small team to select and organise footage from a large archive library to upload on ‘Open Planet’. This is a completely free tool for users to create their own impact stories about the climate and nature crises. It’s a very fun and varied job which I love, and even greater knowing that I am contributing to such an amazing platform.

Growing up, I became heavily inspired by my Zimbabwean heritage, knowing the country holds some of the world’s most spectacular wildlife, and seeing these animals feature in cleverly crafted stories on TV. I remember dreaming of finding a way to be involved creating such shows, but never in my wildest dreams did I think I could somehow make it a reality!

During my second year of my Zoology degree (2022), I reached out to Babassa, an amazing charity dedicated to helping young people from ethnically diverse backgrounds to gain confidence experience and confidence in traditionally inaccessible career avenues. Having zero clue what a job in the filmmaking industry would entail, they decided that I’d be suited to their mentorship programme and paired me with Silverback Films Director, Barny Revill

This truly was an invaluable opportunity for me to learn about the wildlife filmmaking industry and begin to think about the sorts of roles I would enjoy. I gained the confidence to contact production companies in Bristol, and I successfully lined up my first work experience with Silverback Films that summer. This alongside my degree put me in a great position to apply for jobs the following year. For that, I couldn’t be more grateful to Babassa!

Shortly after graduating, I completed a 6-week internship with Wildscreen as Video Creator. During this, I learned how to edit and create short form content for their social media platforms. Seeing the end results, from having never edited anything before, was a very proud moment for me and I hope to be involved in creating similar projects for impact on a bigger scale one day.

I also love being a part of Studio Silverback! The fact that I am working for the company I first did my work experience with feels very full circle. I joined at arguably the best time – right in the middle of the Christmas festivities. I had the pleasure of having the Christmas party, the all-staff screening and tree decorating all within my first few weeks.

My piece of advice for anyone just starting out would be to be persistent and put yourself out there. Go for every opportunity and embrace new things with an open mind and open arms as this will get you noticed and set you apart. I found this incredibly daunting at first, especially in an industry like this that on paper seems like an incredibly far-fetched career-goal. Without this resilient mindset, I definitely would not be where I am now.

I am so excited about now also being a Grierson DocLab: New Entrant trainee. I hope that through this programme I can learn about valuable assets to other genres of factual documentaries outside of natural history to build upon my knowledge, increase my confidence in my own ideas and learn from my cohort who will challenge my creative thinking.