Aerial cameraman / Director / Producer / Cameraman

With two degrees in zoology and in film, photography and television, Richard Matthews, is a world-renowned filmmaker with over thirty years of film experience in wildlife production, camerawork and directing. He has garnered many awards for excellence in productions, including five International Emmys.

Richard began his career with the internationally recognized BBC Natural History Unit working on Sir David Attenborough’s Emmy award winning series, The Living Planet, and produced one of the programmes “Seas of Grass”.

Constrained within the corporate world of the BBC Richard left in 1985 to start his own company and make programmes independently as producer and camera operator. Richard has filmed all over the world for numerous broadcasters including the BBC, Survival Anglia, National Geographic Television, Channel 4, ABC Australia, The Discovery Channel, PBS,  ZDF, NHK, the Smithsonian Networks and Terra Mater.

Richard’s passion is great story telling, but most of all he gets his kicks out of creating beautiful and telling still and moving images. He started his career in the days of 16mm film but is now a firm believer in video and the creativity that it can provide with today’s technology. He’s worked with infra-red, thermal imaging, night vision, long lens and macro technology. Anyone who knows Richard understands he is only content when immersed in some challenging project. Twenty five years ago whilst filming in the Serengeti Richard developed the balcony car door mount now a standard fixture for anyone filming from vehicles.

It was whilst making a major series on Indonesia for the BBC that Richard became acutely aware of the lack of good aerial mounts for filming from light aircraft. So he set about developing a unique pan and tilt gyro stabilized aerial camera platform – a project that would cost him much more money than ever anticipated and have a profound impact on his filming career.  The end result of that development was a new aerial camera mount, Wing Cam One, for use on fixed wing aircraft. But no sooner was this mount built than Richard used the knowledge acquired to embark on building a whole new aerial mount – the Cinegimbal, which has vastly improved stabilization and remote control. The Cinegimbal is approved for use, not just on fixed wing aircraft, but also helicopters.

Richard holds a UK and South African Pilots’ License and is a qualified media sub-aqua diver. Richard’s still and moving images are represented by Getty Images and Robert Harding.