THE ART OF DOCUMENTARY
We make award-winning independent cinema to move your heart and agitate your mind.
"An exquisitely photographed, breathtaking examination of tradition, survival, and toxic oceans in the far north."
"A stunning, complex documentary... Mike Day captures the stark, dramatic beauty of northern communities with painterly precision."
"Visually magnificent with groundbreaking acoustic realism. A vital and poetic testament to human life on the remote edge."
"A triumph of environmental cinema and immersive sound design. Rarely has non-fiction filmmaking felt this immediate and powerful."
OUR FILMS
The Islands and the Whales
The pilot whale hunters of the Faroe Islands believe that hunting is vital to their way of life, but when a local professor makes a grim discovery about the effects of marine pollution, and the seabirds populations collapse, environmental changes threaten to change the community and their way of life forever.
The Guga Hunters of Ness
A Gaelic island community in Scotland embark on their epic annual seabird hunt in the treacherous North Atlantic, but can the tradition survive as the community changes.
Cowboy Poets
As cowboys meet at the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering, they confront myths, old and new, to try and save the land they love as they recite their heartfelt poems.
Untitled Greenlandic Project
Sea-born christian missionaries try to save souls, while a local hiphop crew tour the same coast.
900 miles from Somalia
62 Somali pirates find themselves jailed on a mountaintop jail in the tropical paradise of the Seychelles. Returning home and a life after piracy comes with its own challenges.
Isla and Isla
A newly born Highland cow, named Isla, and seven-year-old human child, also named Isla, go on an adventure, getting ready together to take part in a show.
BEHIND THE SCENES
Chronicles from the far corners, from the Arctic to piracy in the Indian Ocean, a look at life making Intrepid Cinema's films .
REVOLUTIONISING SOUND DESIGN: AMBISONICS, SKYWALKER SOUND & DOLBY ATMOS
For Intrepid Cinema, sound is never an afterthought or mere accompaniment to image; it is an uncompromising narrative dimension. With The Islands and the Whales, director Mike Day and Intrepid Cinema made cinema history by creating the very first documentary film to achieve a full, native Ambisonic-to-Dolby Atmos workflow at George Lucas' legendary Skywalker Sound in Marin County, California.
Live Code at Skywalker Sound
Because no standard pipeline existed to translate raw higher-order Ambisonics directly into discrete Dolby Atmos spatial audio objects and overhead beds, Norwegian mathematician and audio visionary Svein Berge—creator of the benchmark Harpex Ambisonic decoding algorithm—joined the team directly on the mix stage, writing, recompiling, and refining custom conversion code live in real-time on the mixing console at Skywalker Sound.
What is Ambisonics? Unlike traditional channel-based stereo or surround (5.1/7.1) which locks audio to fixed speaker positions, Ambisonics captures the complete 360-degree acoustic sphere—height, width, and depth (Z, X, Y planes plus omnidirectional sound pressure W)—as coincident, phase-coherent audio information. This complete soundfield recording preserves every micro-acoustic detail of the physical environment.
Through this approach, audiences in Atmos-equipped theaters do not just listen to a movie; they are suspended in the visceral reality of the North Atlantic: towering 400-meter bird cliffs swarming with fulmars overhead, howling gale-force squalls tearing across open water, and subterranean sea caves echoing with resonant ocean swells.
Intrepid Cinema has championed and deployed custom Ambisonic multi-channel field recording on every single production continuously since 2011, starting with the perilous sea stack recording sessions on The Guga Hunters of Ness.
BEHIND THE SCENES: FIELD EXPEDITION & SOUND RECORDING
Go on location with director Mike Day to witness the demanding physical realities of cliff-face cinematography, North Atlantic weather squalls, and pioneering Ambisonic acoustic capture.
ABOUT
Founded in 2009, in Scotland, Intrepid Cinema is an Emmy and BAFTA nominated production company making creative documentaries for cinema and broadcast. Delivering to the BBC, PBS, and broadcasters worldwide, Intrepid Cinema's films have been supported by partners including the Sundance Institute, SFFilm, Creative Scotland, Danish Film Institute and Wellcome Trust. We strive to bring audiences thought provoking discoveries in the art of non-fiction.
SHOP MERCHANDISE
Official apparel, director's cuts on physical media, collector posters, and field catering recipe books. All prices in GBP (£).
Jens-Kjeld's Puffin T-Shirt
£30.00
Intrepid Cinema T-Shirt
£30.00
Intrepid Cinema Hoodie
£80.00
The Islands and the Whales, Poster
£50.00
The Guga Hunters of Ness DVD
£20.00
The Islands and the Whales DVD
£20.00
Intrepid Cinema Recipe Book
£29.00
START A CONVERSATION
Have an inquiry regarding film sales, theatrical & educational licensing, prospective co-productions, festival invitations, or press screener requests? Reach out directly to our production headquarters.
