Pollution Studios is excited to congratulate the team behind the eight-part Healthline series Science of Dreams for winning gold this year at the Telly Awards in the Health & Wellness category. Tim Nackashi, the director, spoke about his approach to the series:

“Dreams occupy nearly one third of our lives, yet most of us know so little about them. So my goal was to include as many facts and details about dreams as possible while confronting the uninformed notions most of us hold.”

To learn more about these scientific facts, the team consulted with Dr. Matthew Walker and other leading dream experts. Their immense knowledge also brought some challenges for Tim when it came to adapting this expertise to a digital content format.

“Each of the dream experts had basically built a profession and a life around something that is so mysterious. The challenge was that they have such a wealth of knowledge that I had to craftily speed right into the heart of the matter which meant omitting so much of what they know.”

Part of what makes Science of Dreams so memorable is its creative visual approach to conveying this knowledge using shadow puppets. “Since dreams are such an abstract thing for most of us–they’re fun, they’re mysterious, and they’re even scary–it felt like a chance to bring in a simultaneously childlike yet potentially creepy medium to explore some of our dream story submissions.” Tim had high praises for the artists who collaborated on crafting these visuals. “The shadow puppet team was so great at creating odd metaphorical imagery. It was a riveting experience to shoot those scenes.”

Tim has directed many interview series, but aside from the shadow puppets, Science of Dreams stands out in other regards as well: “Most of my documentary work has been focused on portraiture of people in their everyday. So it was pretty different for me to sit down with dream experts. The assignment became how to boil down their vast knowledge into bite-sized pieces.”

Reflecting on working together with Healthline, Tim recalled, “Stephanie and the team at Healthline were so great and so focused. It was a joy collaborating with them.”

You can watch Science of Dreams on Healthline.com.