Christopher A. Brown and his wife Kathleen founded ATELIER Kathleen Brown in 2003, a privately owned strategic advisory firm based near his birthplace, San Francisco, California. Chris was born in the Presidio, now the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, and raised in Okinawa, Japan and Maryland. Upon receiving his education at St. John’s College in Annapolis, he worked in the food and beverage industry until joining the film profession as a cinematographer in 1976. In 1981 Chris became an independent media producer (DOCENT FILMS), creating educational, marketing and public relations materials, entertainment and advertising media, broadcast documentaries, and museum and park exhibit components. For over 25 years he has served as a producer and consultant for his own and Kathleen’s clients: non-profits of all kinds, retailers, manufacturers, adventure and travel industries, news services, researchers in environment and technology, universities, archives, and conservation organizations.

Okinawa, Japan

Chris’ self-packing parachute

A longtime producer, researcher, and environmental activist, the principles and rigors Chris learned from years of skydiving and underwater cave exploration inform the unique strategy, and design concepts that characterize his work. Specializations in underwater research and production with life-support equipment designers and training organizations, conservation, and educational institutions led to international publishing and public speaking roles.

US Parachute Assoc. 10 yr. Membership

Mixologist

In the 80’s he covered Washington DC as a news camera journalist for Medill News Service. Next, as an indy cinematographer/producer, Chris’ film and video clients included: Walt Disney Theme Park Productions, National Geographic Society Specials and Educational Films, WNET’s “NATURE”; the New York Zoological Society, American Movie Classics, Rescue 911; The Museum of the American Royal (Kansas City, MO); the Kansas Film Commission, the International Museum of Cartoon Art (FL); the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (State Parks; Aquatic Plants; and Bureau of Geology); the Florida State Archives; the Museum of Florida History; the Tallahassee Museum of Science and History.

He handled cameras, sound, and many slithery animals for a National Geographic Society Special on the Okeefenokee Swamp, “Realm of the Alligator,” which won an Emmy for sound recording. He was a cinematographer for a NGS Educational Film for children about those wonderful dogs, and co-cinematographer for an episode of the WNET series “NATURE,” also about man’s best friend. Filming Florida State University’s Windover Archaeological Project, Chris provided footage of that event to WQED’s “Infinite Voyage”, Australian Broadcasting’s “Quantum” Series, and The Learning Channel’s “Archaeology” series.

Okefenokee, NGS Special

Chris’ roles for United States Deep Caving Team in the 1987 Wakulla Project were cine-sound recordist and safety/support diver, opening the world of hydro-geological exploration to him. Subsequently, while Kathleen served as the first Marketing Director for the Florida State Park System, they were diving and documenting Mexican and Bahamian cave systems, and Chris was a diving consultant on water resource related projects for state agencies and private land owners (FL Department of Environmental Protection; FL Game and Freshwater Fish Commission). His children’s underwater video “What in the World is a Manatee?” was co-produced with the Suncoast Seabird Sanctuary and won the FMPTA Bronze Certificate for Documentaries.

Two significant productions of Chris’ played pivotal roles in protecting the nation’s largest freshwater supply, the Floridan Aquifer. “The Mystery Continues” which he wrote, shot, and directed for Wakulla Springs State Park, was the first documentary to demonstrate the immediate, real-time link between surficial human activities and the pollution of the state’s direct-recharge aquifers. The program won two Crystal Reel Awards in 1989 from the Florida Motion Picture and Television Association for Best Videography. In 1990 Chris’ self-produced underwater documentary, “Bird Sink: Our Water at Risk”, successfully defended the state’s freshwater resources once again through the discovery, mapping, and filming of a previously inaccessible giant re-charge opening
into the ground, definitively revealing the region’s vulnerability to liquid petroleum pipelines.

Crystal Reel Award

Duckweed? Here be cave!

He produced another exploration documentary that year of the Eagle’s Nest Cave System and subsequently was responsible for the discovery and continuing exploration of five virgin cave systems in the aquifers of North Florida’s vast Woodville Karst Plain. The United States Deep Caving Team returned to Florida in 1999 for the Wakulla 2 Expedition, where Chris’ responsibilities included daily public relations presentations to hundreds of park visitors, mission control infrastructure, diving, filming, and decompression technology (aired on National Geographic Explorer in July, 1999).

Chris headed a consulting team conducting a sound stage feasibility study for the Kansas State Film Commission. He was the archivist, under a Federal Grant, of over 200 hours of Florida Development Commission Films (1940-1975), working at the Florida Bureau of Archives and Records Management, viewing, describing, and conserving the collection and authoring the catalog. He served the same role as archivist for the Beadle Film Archive (1920-1960) at Tall Timbers Research Station in Tallahassee. As Sci-Graphica Public Relations, Chris was an early e-business (’94-’99) global distributor of diving videos about safety, and cave and wreck diving exploration, The Technical Diving Video Library. Chris’ articles on scuba technology, cave diving technique, and cave biology have been published nationally and internationally in Sport Diver, Scuba Times, DeepTech (now Advanced Diver), aquaCorps, Asian Diver (Singapore), DiveLog New Zealand, and the Journal of the National Association for Cave Diving, for which he served on the Board of Directors in Public Relations.

Wakulla 2 Expedition

A popular lecturer, he has spoken for Florida State University’s Academic Diving Program, FSU’s Oceanography Program and The Center for Professional Development, aquaCorps’ international Tek Diving conferences, the Houston Dive Show (SeaSpace), and annual conventions of the National Association for Cave Diving where he often served as organizer, master of ceremonies, and presenter. In San Francisco he has presented for the Academy of Art College, the Western Museums Association, and numerous local institutions including elementary school level. He exhibits and markets his original furnishings and found-object constructions as ReCombinant Design.com.

Chris and elementary class