Terra Mater's Producer Talks About Webby-Nominated YouTube Video

Exciting news! Our YouTube videos have officially made it to this year’s The Webby Awards Awards!

We are proud to announce that ‘Why the Great Salt Lake is an Environmental Time Bomb’ has been nominated for the Sustainability & Environment category, while 'How this AI is Trained to Translate Whale Language' has been recognized as a Webby Honoree in the Science & Education category.

Vote for us until tomorrow! https://bit.ly/WebbySaltLake?

Curious about what this recognition entails? We sat down with Philip Jaime del Alcázar , the executive producer behind both videos, to gain more insights. You can watch the interview or read the transcripts below it.

Philip works as Executive Producer in the Digital & Communications department, developing and producing the video content for our YouTube channel. He started his career in the theatrical feature film production and joined us in 2012. From there, he found his way from the big screen to online and mobile content. With his deep proficiency in several languages, his experience in film and media production and his strong business acumen,?Philip is doing his best to serve?Terra Mater’s digital unit.

TMS: What inspired you to create the video "Why the Great Salt Lake is an Environmental Time Bomb"?

PMA: Funny story is because as you might know this video is mainly about the Great Salt Lake in Utah, but it started off as a completely different story. I realized that a lake very close to Vienna only half an hour drive is drying up right now, and it's one of the biggest lakes in Austria, which is a very water-rich country. But then I looked deeper into it and I found out that there are so many lakes like the Neusiedlersee, so many terminal lakes across the globe drying up right now, and I wanted to find out what is happening here. I went deeper and deeper, and then I ended up with this main story the Great Salt Lake and this is incredible because the consequences of the lake there in Utah drying up are so much heavier even. And this is how I ended up doing a story about that.

TMS: How do you feel about the video being nominated for a Webby Award in the Sustainability & Environment category?

PMA: Really humbling, and it's an honour to be nominated not only for the Webby as the award in itself because the Webby obviously is one of the major online media awards out there, maybe the biggest. But there's this new category, Sustainability & Environment, and this is exactly what we do and what we live for and what we are focused on. And now there's this new category, and we're nominated. So, this is really great. It's an honour.

TMS: How do you this nomination would impact the work of your team and future videos?

PMA: It's a sign that what we're doing is the right thing. That's the path that we want to go, and we're going on the right path, and it pushes us to go even further and do what we do, loving what we do.

TMS: Are there any upcoming videos that you are excited about?

PMA: There is another video that I'm right now in the midst of producing. It's a really interesting topic. It's about the Soviet Transformation of Nature. So the Soviet Union, back in the day, tried to change nature to its will with some really maniac projects and what they did had a lot of pretty bad results as well. But very interesting side notes. It's actually a follow-up on the Great Salt Lake on the Environmental Time Bomb but looking at another lake in the former Soviet Union in Uzbekistan, the Aral Sea, which dried up because of all of these incredible projects that the Stalin and the Soviet Union had. We're publishing it very soon. So stay tuned.

TMS: What advice would you give to aspiring video producers who want to create impactful and informative content?

PMA: Do what you love. Stick to it and never give up. It's worth it.

Don't forget to vote for us! https://bit.ly/WebbySaltLake?

Watch the video: