Tom Mustill

TOM MUSTILL runs a small documentary film production company. He can usually be found at work with a crew of one or two other people. He pretty much does a little bit of everything. Tom finds a story, looks people up, contacts them to see if they are interested, directs interviews, works with film crews, chooses equipment, and works with the director of photography. Because he’s really into wildlife photography himself, he can often be found behind the camera or recording sound.

Tom then spends a few months working with his long-time editor Sabrina cutting the film, then follows up with all the back-end stuff, including trying to get a lot of buzz around the film so it will make a big impact. He wants to make sure the issues and people in his films benefit from the attention in a good way.

Tom’s work makes it easy for people to learn about, get interested in, and if they care, get involved in supporting the various projects his films cover. When not working on his own projects, Tom can be found working as a freelance director on other people’s films.

That said, if an alien were to try to decipher what he does everyday, according to Tom, they’d say ‘email’. He goes on exciting expeditions from time to time then edits them, but the number one thing he does is write emails! It’s all about communicating with the crew and people who have allowed him into their lives to tell their stories.

Born and raised in London, Tom calls himself a Londoner, a city boy at heart, though he’s always loved the natural world and being outside. London continues to be his base as he travels to places with a lot more wildlife.

Tom first came to Monterey on holiday with a big bunch of friends. He had previously met Tierney Thys at a wildlife conference in Bristol, and she’d said if he was ever in town, he should come check out what she was doing. She was away during his first visit, but Tom met with her partner who is an engineer at MBARI and showed him the ROVs they were designing.  The two of them looked out the window and there, really close to shore, were humpbacks fluking and lunge feeding. Tierney’s partner said Tom should really go whale watching to fully appreciate the whales, and the best way would be by kayak.

So Tom phoned up Monterey Bay Kayaks. They had two more places, so he reserved them, and that’s where Tom’s dramatic story with a whale begins. It was slightly ironic that it happened when he was on holiday, because obviously, he says, his job is to go and film animals, and he’d had never had an encounter like that in his job.

Tom has always loved the sea, experiencing it as a surfer and free diver. He got a degree in Zoology at Cambridge University, where he studied marine ecology, and ancient, underwater systems in the pre-Cambrian period, looking at fossil assemblages from 500 million years ago. When he was between school and university, he had volunteered on a coral monitoring project in Fiji.

When he left Cambridge University, Tom was very determined to become a conservation biologist. He worked in habitat restoration and management for a year or so. But then he thought he could have a better impact on the world and looking after natural systems doing storytelling about conservation.

His next career move led him to making tea with a TV company as an apprentice, a runner as its called. From there Tom simply worked his way up. The first big program he worked on was Inside Nature’s Giants, which won a BAFTA and other awards.

That’s how he met Joy Reidenberg. Tom had a whale they were going to dissect, and was told by a lion anatomy expert that they should call this American lady, because she knew all there was to know about the anatomy of whales. So he phoned her up wanting just a few tips, but she was so engaging and so knowledgeable that she ended up jumping on a plane, and a few hours later going straight to Ireland, heading out to the beach, taking charge of the entire dissection, explaining everything incredibly well, and she became a permanent member of their team on the series.

Since then Tom’s been making films specifically in the area he’s most interested in, which is where humans and the natural world meet, where humans and animals meet. He says we’re living in this age of tremendous change and tremendous discovery, and he finds it the most interesting thing, the stories that come from that zone.

There are very few places you can go that don’t have people in them, as well as animals. And Tom thinks audiences really respond to seeing other people in those stories. Makes them feel like they’re part of that wonderful natural world they are seeing. As Tom says, if you show them stories about people who are doing impressive and inspiring things, and doing them well, then it gives people hope to make them feel things aren’t all screwed.

His latest film project is ‘Humpback Whales: A Detective Story’, a true story that sprang from his epic kayak encounter with the breaching humpback.

Tom will be taking a bit of time off from filmmaking as he’s now engaged in writing a book. While working on the humpback whale film, he became fascinated with people who are using new technologies to try and understand animal languages or communications. He has a book deal with Harper Collins in the UK, and will be working on that project for the next year.