Ava Karvonen
President and owner, Ava Karvonen,
created Reel Girls Media at the start of 1998 and
has never looked back. She’s the enthusiastic
producer and visionary behind wildfiles.tv.
Ava specializes in producing television and new media
that explores the human relationship with the natural
world, celebrates the arts and examines social issues.
Ava got her start in show business working with her
filmmaker father, Albert Karvonen, working on natural
history productions. Ava has produced several award-winning
television projects including Stories from the
7th Fire, Return of the Peregrine, How the Fiddle
Flows and award winning new media projects including
the Zoology Zone series. She has recently
directed several segments for the CBC kid’s series
Street Cents as well as directing/producing
the recent live TV and webcast virtual fieldtrip for
SciQ at the Royal Tyrrell Museum. When she is not
busy producing or volunteering, she is trying to break
her own record of traveling to over 30 countries.
If she weren’t a human, Ava says she would like
to be a Peregrine Falcon.
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Victor Bilodeau
Victor Bilodeau has been involved
in the amazing Alberta multimedia community for a number
of years. Highlights include running his own company,
Mountain Brook New Media Inc., teaching at Concordia
and NAIT, and being a board member of Alberta New Media.
Victor has participated in a Trade mission to Paris,
has done consulting work in Silicon Valley, developed
CD-ROM and web-based versions of the Job Safe Training
Program, and is currently working on an MBA in technology
commercialization. Amidst all this, he has found the
time to take on the role as our technical director and
web master for wildfiles.tv. Victor enjoys
most sports and competes in triathlons.
If he were an animal, he says he’d be a Maine Coon.
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Naomi Bock
As a director, writer and producer
of both TV documentary and drama, Naomi joins the wildfiles.tv
team as Content Editor. With a degree in journalism
from Carleton University, she has also produced and
directed educational children’s videos and worked
as a production manager, researcher, editor and videographer,
and assistant director on TV series, dramatic films
and music videos. Naomi is currently busy co-writing
the TV series WildFiles.TV, and in her spare
time she likes to ride her mountain bike, go camping,
travel and cook strange dishes from around the world.
When asked to tell us her favourite animal, Naomi told
us she loves birds of all feathers.
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Gabrielle Christopherson
For the past several years, Gabrielle
has worked as a researcher and writer on contract while
completing her degree in Elementary Education. On the
wildfiles.tv site, Gabrielle has an important
role in directing the Kids Advisory Group as well as
editing the hip and trendy kid-created e-Zine. Having
recently completed her degree, being involved with Reel
Girls Media and the wildfiles.tv project has
given Gabrielle the opportunity to apply her writing
skills by developing interactive content for children,
while applying many of the fun educational concepts
she has been studying. Gabrielle enjoys traveling, reading,
writing and spending time with her amazing son.
Gabrielle thinks that the creature she most identifies
with is the loon.
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Kim Clegg
Kim Clegg is a Multimedia Designer
at large in the Edmonton area, and the talented Creative
Director for wildfiles.tv. Kim started his
own company, Rat Creek Design in 1996, after 6 years
working in the infancy of Multimedia. Rat Creek is
a small design house specializing in on-screen creative,
interface design and digital compositing; working
in partnership with a number of other Edmonton based
media organizations. Kim is one of the founding members
of Digital North Studios, a multimedia cooperative
in the downtown core, of which Rat Creek is part of.
He also likes Spiderman and hates hiking.
Kim says if he were an animal, he’d be a Prehistoric
Sloth.
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Christi Erickson
Christi Erickson, a NAIT Television
Arts graduate, started out working in the hectic world
of television news as a video editor before making the
jump into independent production. She has worked for
Alliance Atlantis Communications as a Production Assistant/
Production Coordinator on various documentary productions,
and most recently worked as a Researcher/Writer on the
documentary television series The Things We Do for
Love on Life Network. Christi joined the wildfiles.tv
team in the fall of 2002 as a researcher and Producer’s
Assistant. Christi enjoys running, swimming, cycling
and traveling.
She feels a special bond to the Green Sea Turtle.
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Chris Fisher
Chris Fisher, the wildfiles.tv writer
(and one of the photographers), is the guy behind the
words…and the one to blame for most of the bad
jokes on the site (the other person you can blame is
Naomi!). Chris is also the amazing host and co-writer
of WildFiles.TV, the half-hour 13-part nature
TV series currently in production.
Since publishing his first book
in 1995, he has been making a living as a nature writer
– much to the amazement of his high school English
teachers. Chris has written numerous best-selling field
guides on birds, mammals, reptiles and amphibians, and
for the last few years has been writing for TV and film.
He has worked on the TV series Acorn, The Nature
Nut and the TV special, Return of the Peregrine.
Chris likes to play guitar, write
songs and do outdoorsy stuff, like wildlife watching,
photography and traveling.
Chris picks the Golden Plover as his alter ego animal.
This bird is always moving between the Arctic and the
tropics, it is fast, alert, musical, and looks great
on the beach.
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Larissa Lazarowich
As part of the Reel Girls Media
production team, Larissa worked on contract as our cool
and collected Development Coordinator on wildfiles.tv,
a job that included successfully securing the funding
needed to produce the site and the associated TV series.
As an Honours graduate of the NAIT Television Arts program,
Larissa enjoys writing, producing, editing and videography.
During her two years with Reel Girls, she had the opportunity
to work on several new productions ranging from research
and development to post-production and production. Larissa
is also an accomplished cellist who, in her spare time,
enjoys fun stuff like snowboarding, traveling, acting
and dancing.
Her alter-ego-animal is the dragonfly, feminine with
a bit of attitude!
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Cathy McMillan
Funky Edmonton artist/illustrator
Cathy McMillan is thrilled to be part of the wildfiles.tv
team, and you can see her fabulous illustrations throughout
the site. With an art career that began in 1984, Cathy
spent a number of years traveling the world as a caricature
artist, drawing in countries like Israel, New Zealand
and Australia. Cathy now has her own art company called
The Quirky Art Café and enjoys doing a variety
of art and illustration projects. She also loves the
colour green and hates short-pronged forks.
Cathy’s favourite animal is the Asian Elephant.
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Cindy Mitchell
Cindy has been doing contract work
for Reel Girls Media and the funky wildfiles.tv
team as our hard-working and organized Project Coordinator.
Her other contributions include creative design and
illustrative content for the site, layout and design
of the kid-created e-Zine, site narration, as well as
planning and implementing a Usability Analysis. An Honours
graduate of the Alberta College Multimedia Program,
Cindy brings over 18 years of computer experience on
both PC and Macintosh platforms. She also enjoys editing
and videography and while attending Alberta College,
she was Project Manager of the Video and Editing team.
Cindy enjoys spending time with her family and exploring
planet Earth.
If Cindy were an animal, she’d probably be a Red
Squirrel.
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Dan Stevenson
Dan worked with the Reel Girls Production
team as Visual Effects and Flash Animator on the Children’s
Television series WildFiles under an internship
program sponsored by the Canadian Film and Television
Producer’s Association. Dan was also part of the
crazy team of flash animators and graphic designers
behind wildfiles.tv. A recent graduate of the
Vancouver Film School’s Visual Effects and 3D Animation
Program, Dan had previously contributed to the children’s
animated cartoon pilot Night of the Snow People.
Dan continues to develop his skills, taking courses
in life drawing, sculpting, and 3D modeling. When he’s
not working, he likes to take it easy and travel to
places like Australia.
If Dan were an animal he’d be a Polar Bear.
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Christine Weidlich
Christine is currently working as
a member of the Reel Girls Production team and lends
her creative edge and artistic abilities to the wildfiles.tv
project. Her contributions include creative design and
illustrative content for the site, as well as layout
and design of the snazzy kid-created e-Zine. A recent
graduate of the Digital Arts and Media Program at Grant
MacEwan College, Christine enjoys writing, editing,
and loves photography and spending time in a darkroom.
She also loves to travel and, in her free time, likes
to escape to the mountains for some snowboarding.
If Christine were an animal she’d be a tropical
fish so she could live in the ocean.
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Darren Yuhar
Darren Yuhar is the lead Flash developer
behind the madness that is wildfiles.tv. Darren
has been involved with Flash Development since its debut
as Flash 1 when he started a small multimedia company
7 years ago. Since then he has been involved in countless
Flash applications and really cool fun stuff like Activbax
Desktops, online learning applications and teaching
at both N.A.I.T and the University of Alberta. Darren
is now the president and an action script developer
at Yuhar Interactive. In his spare time (which isn’t
much) he enjoys spending time camping and being outdoors with his family and wonderful mutt, Keeko.
Darren told us if he was an animal, he’d be a groundhog – hidden
from the elements working underground, sticking his head out once or twice
to see if he should come out or not.
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Other Contributors:
Nicole Auser - HTML and Flash programming
Lisa Stewart - Illustration and Design
Taylor E. and Taylor Y. - narration (Write a Story)
Teresa L., Sarah M. and Matthew D. - narration (Wildlife)
Brant Coghlan - Usability Analysis
Lance Evans - Flash Programmer
Ammar Alasfoor - Flash Programmer
Campbell Furnish - Animation
Evaggelos Liotsakis - Flash Programmer
Peca Rajkovic - Illustrator, Animator
Scientific Consultants:
Kris Kendell, Biologist
Douglas L. Skinner, M.Sc., P.Biol.
Anne Gunn, Ph.D.
Anne Forshner, M.Sc.
Gordon Court, Ph.D.
R.J. Christopherson, Ph.D (University of Alberta)
Sandra McDougall, B.Sc., M.E.Des.
Renee Franken, M.Sc.
Wayne Roberts, B.Sc. , M.Sc.
Robin Leech, Ph.D., P.Biol.
Tara Szkorupa, Species at Risk Biologist
C. Elaine Gordon, MSc.
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