Film by alum-owned media studio wins Webby Award

A woman-owned science media studio founded by two Cornell alumnae has produced an interactive film that won this year’s Webby Award for best science website.


Lost Cities poster

Provided

Poster for “Lost Cities.”

The documentary “Lost Cities: A Story of Coral,” about coral reefs and what scientists are doing to protect them, beat out entries from NASA and National Geographic to win the award.

“Lost Cities” uses the latest web technology to create a participatory experience.

“We wanted to push the boundaries of what defines a nature documentary, to transform that experience from being a passive one to one where we’re more active, where the viewer makes decisions to get deeper into the information and the unfolding of the narrative,” said Jennifer Moslemi, Ph.D. ’10, a co-founder with Marita Davison, M.S. ’06, of Caravan Lab media studio.

The producers worked with researchers from the Gates Coral Lab at the Hawaiʻi Institute of Marine Biology to tell the story, which is narrated by the late Ruth Gates, the former director of the institute.

“We’d love to get [our film] into more classrooms, to get educators to use this freely available resource, especially now that we’re all living online,” Moslemi said.

Caravan Lab, founded in 2011, does web design and mobile media development, film production, broadcast TV and writing, to communicate science to lay audiences.

– Krishna Ramanujan

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