Salford Uni wildlife documentary production graduate Ishan Vaidya is headed for to Hollywood after scooping a nomination in the prestigious Sony Future Filmmaker Awards.
His short film, Puffin Island, which follows thousands of Puffins descending on a Welsh island was nominated from among 3,000 filmmakers in 140 countries.
Nominated for the Non-Fiction Student Filmmaker Award, Vaidya will take part in a three-day event on Sony Pictures’ Culver City lot including workshops to gain insight into the industry and a black-tie awards ceremony at the Cary Grant Theatre on Wednesday, February 22.
Puffin Island was shot on the island of Skokholm off the Pembrokeshire coast over the course of a week in the summer of 2022 and showcases the interactions of one of the world’s largest breeding colonies of Atlantic Puffins, who descend on the island for a short time every year.
The film, which was also Ishan’s MA final course project, has already been viewed over 80,000 times on YouTube.
Vaidya said: “This is such an incredible opportunity and I am going to make the most of it. I’m going to have the chance to meet a lot of other filmmakers and discuss film and I’m really excited. It was a great surprise to be nominated. I found it quite hard in the moment to believe whether it was true or not.”
Ishan has always held a keen interest in wildlife photography and worked with the firm Go Wild Travel and Photography in his native India while following his undergraduate studies in Media and Communication before he moved to Salford to undertake his Master’s.
He enlisted course mate Tim Harden to accompany him to Skokholm to shoot the film, and Harden also undertook the narration for the 12-minute film.
Having graduated in December 2022 Ishan is now eyeing up a career in wildlife documentary filmmaking and is hoping his shortlisting will open more doors in the industry for him. If he wins his category next month, he will receive a range of state-of-the-art Sony camera equipment to take home with him.
