If you're reading this, you know that arthropod biodiversity is essential. You're also someone who is fighting for better bug futures. Thank you. I'd like to help!
I'm seeking collaborators—researchers, advocates, stewards, educators—whose good work I can support with storytelling. I have 15+ years of experience making media that helps raise critical funds, reach new communities, and educate + empower people. I mean to put this expertise to work for a biodiverse, equitable, and joyous future.
I hope the work samples here are a good starting point for a conversation about how we might collaborate. Feel free to share this page with other bug pals! Please reach out with any and all inquiries at michael@pisanofilms.com.
Macro Video
I've amassed several hundred hours of macro footage featuring tiny friends. Selections from this library are licensable as stock footage, and all of it is available for our prospective collaboration. I'm always looking for chances to record new footage, too.
bee roll. 2024. a lil love poem to bee diversity. 30ish species that i've encountered, almost all in the backyards of my previous and current homes in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA.
here's an ongoing effort to identify them all: inaturalist.org/projects/bee-roll-video-id
shot on z cam with laowa macro lenses. music by elise silvestri.
food + nature highlight reel. 2024. highlight footage from edible ecologies. i want my work to illuminate connections between life at small scales (think: arthropods, soil microbes, phytoplankton) and life at human scale. I hope to champion the tiny and slimy, and help improve our relationships with these seemingly alien, often maligned neighbors. I try to connect this discussion of tiny ecologies to a call to care for the most vulnerable people—often, maligned neighbors—in pursuit of intersectional environmental justice.
food system reform is an easy point of entry into conservation and intersectional justice conversations. regenerative and community farming models have great potential to not only benefit bug biodiversity, but also for climate change mitigation, resilience, and equity.
music by Amos Levy.
Photography
As with video, I have a large library of photos featuring terrestrial arthropods. This library is available as stock imagery or for use in any prospective collaboration.
Client Work Samples
We Are Nature | Carnegie Museum of Natural History
Selections from a series of videos and podcasts about climate resilience & biodiversity. Commissioned for an exhibition and as free educational resources.
The following audio excerpt is from the We Are Nature podcast, which I was hired to create and host. It's primarily an interview show, but this clip is a narrated section that I wrote.
That clip is from this full episode, which is about insect conservation and regenerative urban farming.
Research is for All | University of Pittsburgh
Undergraduate Biology students at the University of Pittsburgh get firsthand experience doing real research alongside leading scientists, contributing to data sets and getting hands-on experience in the lab.
Arthropod Illustration
While most of my science communication work is as a filmmaker, my background is in illustration and animation. I keep up with drawing in part by writing and illustrating fantasy tabletop roleplaying game content (as in, Dungeons & Dragons adventures). My independent TTRPG work features characters and creatures inspired by real-world arthropods.
Animation
These animation samples are excerpted from a 15-part documentary series for high school students about the history of social change. You can watch the full video about Rachel Carson here. To see more animation, check out this Animation Reel.