Terra Mater Factual Studios’ (TMFS) commitment to the highest production values results in premium factual programming for TV and theatre release. Our core genres are wildlife and nature, science and history. We bring together a wide array of genres and styles to create exciting new straight factual and ‘docutainment’ formats. The borders between fiction and ‘faction’ become seamless and sometimes dissolve in our large cinematic projects. TMFS collaborates with the best producers, cameramen and directors worldwide and uses the latest cutting-edge equipment to realise our cinematic dreams. There are three key ingredients which make TMFS productions a unique viewing experience:

• Visual Excellence: Images are more powerful than words in conveying powerful emotions and surprising insights. Fascinating camera shots and unconventional editing set us apart.
• Innovative Technology: TMFS embraces state-of-the art recording technologies, from super-slow motion to super-time-lapse, to reveal nano-second events and processes so slow their evolution is invisible to the naked eye. Images generated by electron microscopes and computer animation give insight into the microcosm. Special cameras turn night into day. Endoscopes and medical scanners provide an inside view of living organisms. And HDTV is enhanced by a new dimension – 3D TV at its best.
• Amazing Storytelling: TMFS uses the dramatic narration dynamics of the feature film to represent reality while upholding the principles of factuality. TERRA MATER presents people who understand our world and tells us stories written by real life.

Terra Mater Factual Studios is based in Vienna and is the new home of the internationally acclaimed production team of UNIVERSUM. Formerly the natural history unit of ORF, one of Austria’s leading nationwide broadcasters, the team of UNIVERSUM became part of Red Bull Media House on 1 January 2011.

You might also be interested in: Terra Mater Magazine (print), Terra Mater content licensing

Harnas is a large farm in southern Africa which offers shelter to abandoned wild animals. The van der Merwe family who own the farm take on volunteers from all over the world to help run their animal orphanage: they come to meet exotic animals and to get a taste of the "real" Africa. This is the story of the animals living at Harnas and some amazing people who do all they can to help them.

This is the story of how hummingbirds became the greatest aerial acrobats on earth. Plants ‘created’ hummingbirds as their messengers, carrying pollen from flower to flower. The film follows the evolution of the birds, as they are shaped by their role as ‘go-betweens’. Hummingbirds have the highest metabolism of any vertebrate. They can hover, fly backwards and even backwards and upside down. They have the smallest warm-blooded creature on earth in their number. These glittering birds live on the edge of what is possible, even going into a kind of hibernation each night, and all because of plants.

Welcome to the weird and wonderful world of the human ecosystem. Everyone of us is a world of its own - a human habitat with the most amazing landscapes and environments: You are like a planet with 100 trillion inhabitants. These alien creatures control everything we do. In fact we couldn’t live without them. 90 Percent of the cells in our body are not of human origin. But science is still far from knowing all the members of this incredibly complex biological community. Only if we do we will really know what makes us human.