The Coneflower Team

It is our hope that our films will not only educate viewers about nature and the environment but that our films will also encourage viewers to take action towards preserving the diversity of our planet.

Ann Johnson Prum

Founder, Producer, & Cinematographer

Ann Johnson Prum is an award-winning wildlife television executive, producer and cinematographer, and founder of Coneflower Studios. Ann combines her deep knowledge of the natural world with her skills as an expedition leader to bring immersive, surprising, deeply researched, and beautiful shows to her audiences. Ann recently Co-Executive Produced Born Wild: The Next Generation for National Geographic. Before that Ann oversaw the landmark National Science Foundation funded three-part series, American Spring Live,  the PBS series Nature. Over the last 10 years, Ann has produced numerous award winning wildlife shows including Sex, Lies and Butterflies,  Super Hummingbirds, which won an Emmy for Best Cinematography,  Animal Homes, a three part series that was nominated for 4 Emmys including  Best Nature Program, An Original Duckumentary, which won an Emmy for Best Nature Program, and Magic in the Air, which was nominated for 2 Emmys including  Best Nature Program. These programs have also received numerous international awards and festival prizes.  

Richard O. Prum

Scientific Advisor

Rick Prum is the William Robertson Coe Professor of Ornithology at Yale University and Scientific Advisor for Coneflower Studios. When Rick was a third grader, he got glasses for the first time. With his world was finally in focus, he became enamored of birds - animals which he had never before been able to see. Soon 8-year old Rick was heading out into the woods of his Manchester, Vermont home with his elderly female birding buddies equipped with his bird book, life list, and binos. Amazingly, that passion never subsided: Rick graduated from Harvard in 1982, and completed his Ph.D at University of Michigan in 1989. Rick has received the Fulbright (2001-2), Guggenheim (2007-8) and MacArthur (2010-2014) Fellowships, and has published more than 100 scientific articles covering topics such as our understanding the evolutionary origin of feathers, the physics of structural coloration, dinosaur feathers, fossil coloration, and the phylogenetic evolution of behavior. In addition to the sciences, Rick enjoys spending time in the kitchen cooking for his wife and sons (his most current culinary obsession being the art of fine bread-making.) 

Robin Klein

Executive Producer

As Vice President of Films at ABKCO Music & Records for the last 25 years, Robin Klein’s vision of film and music has led her company to two Grammy awards. Her restoration work has been presented at MoMA, PS1, The Tate, Le Cinémathèque Française, among others, featured on PBS, BBC and shown theatrically worldwide to critical acclaim. She brings over 30 years of post-production expertise, employing a cutting edge, state-of-the-art technologies to film restoration. Ms. Klein began as an assistant editor, working with delicate and fragile film assets and archives.  She became a pioneer of digital filmmaking, bringing the first non-linear editing system to New York in the early 1990s, which resulted in The Rolling Stones Rock & Roll Circus, which she edited and co-produced.  It premiered at the NY Film Festival and has been called the ‘holy grail of lost rock films’. This was followed by Sam Cooke: Legend, the first documentary of the iconic artist, which won her first Grammy.  Rolling Stones: Charlie Is My Darling: Ireland ’65 continues to receive a 100% rotten tomatoes rating and earned a second Grammy. Klein’s work restoring Alejandro Jodorowsky’s early films brought international recognition and help resurrect the auteur’s' career, leading to three new films, which ABKCO is distributing.

Russell Kaye

Photographer

Russell has spent the last 33 years creating images for some of the world’s leading magazines and brands. Russell began working with Ann and Coneflower Studios on Sex, Lies, & Butterflies in February of 2017. 

Gus Prum

Associate Producer

Gus has grown up within Coneflower Studios, assisting on shoots since he could walk. He has worked as an assistant producer on films like A DUCKumentary, Hummingbirds: Magic in the Air, and Sex, Lies & Butterflies. Gus lives in Brooklyn.

The Coneflower (or Echinacea) grows wild in the tall-grass prairie of North America and is revered by healers because of its extensive medicinal abilities. To our company, the Coneflower is the perfect wild analog of what we hope our films to be: cinematically beautiful, while working to promote, help, and progress our planet. Our mission is to share inspiring stories from the natural, scientific and art world with our audience. We travel the far reaches globe and continually immerse ourselves in the lives of the animals, people and landscapes we encounter in order to capture footage to create our awe-inspiring narratives. We are privileged to work with some of the world’s leading thinkers, natural historians, and artists, and we draw constant inspiration from their work. We see ourselves as translators: making films that bring the natural world into the homes and lives of people across the world.

Coneflower Studios

151 Everit Street, New Haven, CT 06511
203.393.5272 | ann@coneflowerstudios.com