The Sonnett Media Group was honored to be asked by award-winning filmmaker David Grubin to help promote his film The Buddha, which premiered on PBS nationwide on April 7, 2010. We first worked with David in 2000 to help create the companion website for his film Napoleon and worked with him again in 2003 for Young Dr. Freud. For The Buddha, we created a dynamic website featuring PBS’s COVE video player, integrated Facebook and Flickr feeds, and a series of compelling essays edited by the Center for Comtemplative Mind in Society.

We also were responsible for creating and maintaining the program’s Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and Flickr accounts, working closely with David and the PBS staff to grow a substantial fan base for The Buddha prior to broadcast.

The website for The Buddha was honored with the winner of the People’s Voice and Webby Award for in the Religion and Spirituality website category in the 15th Annual Webby Awards.

Visit the website at http://www.pbs.org/thebuddha/

Watch the full episode. See more The Buddha.

Divers with Whale Shark.

The eleven programs in the series Journey to Planet Earth explore the fragile relationship between people and the world they inhabit. A common thread runs throughout all eleven of the programs — the necessity to achieve a balance between the needs of people and the needs of the environment. The programs explore a range of conservation issues, including the impact of the loss of farmland to urban development, the pollution of the Earth’s rivers, and how inadequate housing and water resources effect those living in the world’s mega-cities.

The Journey to Planet Earth companion Web site provides educators and the general public with a powerful resource to help continue the journey. Stories of Hope showcase the efforts of people from across the globe to combat the negative effects of global environmental change. Profiles of the countries visited in the programs and background information on ecosystems help broaden visitor’s perspective of the challenges facing nations across the globe.

“State of the Planet’s Oceans” premiered on PBS on Wednesday, March 18th, 2009 and continues to be rebroadcast on local public television stations. Sonnett Media Group continues to support the series through our innovative work in online communities and viral video outreach, we hope to continue to expand the audience for this innovative and thought-provoking series with new stories that will take a hard look at global warming, over-fishing and hunting, and habitat destruction.

Visit the Journey to Planet Earth site at http://www.pbs.org/journeytoplanetearth.

Dr. Doug Owlsey and Kari Bruwelheide in their lab.

We’ve followed Dr. Owlsey through flooded underground crypts, colonial-era grave sites, during examinations of human remains, and his bone-stocked laboratory at the museum, capturing video of amazing discoveries along the way. We are honored to be trusted to document and showcase his incredible work exploring the lives and times of both historical figures and contemporary forensic cases.

Our video footage was used to compile several short videos to support educational and fundrasing objectives tied to the exhibition and was also incorporated into a History Channel documentary and several of the audio visual presentations within the exhibition. We look forward to continue to work with Dr. Owsley for years to come and continue to learn some of the fascinating stories that are hidden within bones.

The elephant in the rotunda of the National Museum of Natural History

The Smithsonian Institution’s Office of Facilities Engineering and Operations (OFEO) needed a eye-catching video to showcase the wide range of services the unit provides to the Smithsonian’s vast complex and museums, research centers, and other facilities. The resulting High Definition video, written, produced, and directed by Dan Sonnett, combines the cinematic feel and humorous touches of the Night at the Museum movies with a focused message illustrating OFEO’s critical role within the Smithsonian. Featuring interviews with engineers, designers, custodians, an “industrial hygienist”, and, naturally, a security officer, the video was shoot in the National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Museum Resource Center, the Smithsonian Castle, and the National Museum of Natural History.

We had the pleasure of shooting after hours in the Natural History Museum’s vast rotunda, which, as you might expect, is a little spooky. The security officers who helped us that night shared some eerie ghost stories, which were set mainly in the corridors of the museum’s Physical Anthropology Department, home to a vast study collection of human skeletons.

The resulting video — entitled A Day at the Smithsonian — premiered at the museum in March 2010 as part of a staff appreciation event and was enthusiastically received by the audience. It was a pleasure to push the creative boundaries for this type of video and be able to entertain and inform at the same time!