Extreme sports and adventure production company. Documentary, brand film, and photography by Brian Carlin, Marc Bow, and the 16°S team.
Sixteen Degrees South is an extreme sports and adventure production company. We deliver documentaries, brand films, social, and photography for the world's most renowned brands and events.
Our work has aired on Sky and Discovery, graced magazine covers, and built reach across the social platforms of recognised global brands. We've partnered with the Volvo Ocean Race, the Dakar Rally, FIFA World Cup, SailGP, Le Mans 24 Hour Race, and the Clipper Round the World Race.
We collaborate with communications directors, brand marketers, social media managers, and TV commissioning editors. We understand what's being asked of us. And why. Every brand and its story are unique. Every project stays on budget.
Founded in 2023 by Brian Carlin and Marc Bow. Built on 35+ years of combined experience behind the camera.
As story tellers, the story of Sixteen Degrees South is our greatest story of all.
Many ask us, why the name?
During the 2014-15 Volvo Ocean Race around the world, the founding partners of Sixteen Degrees South, Brian Carlin and Marc Bow, were working in different areas of the race and had never met in person.
Brian was embedded as an onboard reporter on Team Vestas Wind competing in the race, while Marc was working from land on the production team, creating the TV show and other video outputs the race is so well known for.
Whilst competing on Leg 2 from Cape Town, South Africa to Abu Dhabi in the UAE, Team Vestas Wind would be involved in one of the most dramatic and well documented maritime accidents in professional sailing, making headline news across the globe.
The telling of this story brought Marc and Brian together in what would be not only one of the most dramatic stories of their careers but also a fateful meeting that would ultimately trigger the creation and naming of Sixteen Degrees South Content Factory.
Two weeks into the second leg of the race towards the Middle East, the race fleet was navigating around a dangerous weather system developing in the Indian Ocean near Mauritius. With damaging cyclone strength winds forecast, the teams were given a mandatory change to the race course. What Team Vestas Wind didn't know at the time, was this change of heading put them on a collision course that would find them fighting for their lives in the middle of the ocean.
Just after sunset on the tenth day of racing, Team Vestas Wind became aware of a shoal that according to the information they had onboard was at a depth of forty meters, six times more draft than a VO65 race boat requires. The information they had was incorrect, something they realised with shock when their boat came to a devastating and crashing halt in the dark. They had struck the Cargados Carajos Shoals, at sixteen degrees south of the equator.
The Volvo Ocean Race management team kicked into crisis mode and deployed a small team to Mauritius, the closest island to the reef some 300 miles away. Amongst the team was Marc, who was tasked with documenting the search & rescue that would follow over the next few days.
The life threatening drama that unfolded was captured in detail by Brian onboard and has been the subject of several films and TV shows since, one of which is on this page. It is widely considered one of the best documentations of a critical life threatening incident at sea.
But ultimately, this incredibly dramatic and dangerous incident allowed Marc and Brian to meet in Mauritius when their rescued team arrived in Port Louis. Working closely together they were part of the team that released the footage and story to the world and would ultimately lead to Marc and Brian working together on many more projects in the future.
Almost a decade after the accident in 2023, they finally decided the time was right to start a production company together, the name of which is inspired by the southerly coordinates of the reef that became so fateful in the crossing of their careers.
Sixteen Degrees South Content Factory is recognised as one of the world's premium creators of offshore sailing content and their documentary work has appeared the world over including streaming giant Amazon Prime Video.
We have offices in London and Madrid. We rarely shoot from them.
Our work happens on location, anywhere a client needs us. Most of it remote, most of it abroad. The Atlantic, the Sahara, the Pacific, the Pyrenees. The deck of a yacht, the start line of a rally, the floor of a studio in any city in the world.
If the story is somewhere, that's where we go.
