ROCK SPRINGS — Burning Torch Productions, a film production company based in Rock Springs, had an exciting week winning three Heartland Emmy awards and being awarded $25,000 from the Wyoming Innovation Partnership (WIP) Creative Economy Start Up Challenge.

Mark Pedri, writer, director and founder of Burning Torch Productions, and Carrie McCarthy, producer, scientist and creative executive, attended the Heartland Emmy Awards Gala over the weekend and came away with three awards for writing, editing and photography for their film “Dear Sirs“.

“Dear Sirs” is a documentary film that follows Pedri as he retraces his grandfather Silvio’s journey through World War II as a Prisoner of War. The film previously won Best Documentary Feature at the GI Film Festival in San Diego in 2022, and now it is the recipient of three regional Emmy awards. The Heartland Emmy Awards are a division of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences that recognize excellence in television and media in Wyoming, Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska and Oklahoma.

“Burning Torch Productions is a Rock Springs-based film production company dedicated to finding and sharing the untold narratives of Wyoming through the lens of non-fiction storytelling,” McCarthy told SweetwaterNOW. “Our team is composed of myself, and Mark Pedri who founded the company and has been making films in Wyoming for 20 years.”

With their small team, it has become increasingly important to them to increase the size of their team to better support and promote their projects to get more Wyoming stories out into the public. That’s where the $25,000 they were awarded will come in handy. McCarthy entered the WIP Creative Economy Startup competition, along with 100 other creatives around Wyoming, in hopes of being one of 10 creative startup efforts around Wyoming, ranging from film production and music to literary and visual arts, to be awarded $25,000.

McCarthy said there was an initial application to participate in a 1-day workshop that focused on creating and sustaining a creative enterprise.

“Five of these workshops were held around the state, and I participated in the one that was held in Rock Springs along with about 20 other very talented local artists,” she said. “After all the workshops were complete, all of the 100 people who participated state-wide were invited to submit a letter of intent to enter the competition. The program judges narrowed it down to 30 finalists to move on to the next stage which was a 10-minute pitch to the judges, followed by submission of a full business plan.”

From those 30 finalists, the judges selected the top 10 from their pitches and business plans. “Throughout the process, all of the participants were able to meet virtually with mentors who helped us refine and develop our creative enterprise pitches. The whole process took about three months,” McCarthy said.

The awarded funding will allow Burning Torch Productions to hire three additional team members to help share and promote their films.

“We’re a small team and there are so many great Wyoming stories we want to share, so we plan to put the award funds toward hiring an assistant editor to support Mark with our current slate, an outreach/audience engagement specialist to help us promote our films in Wyoming and beyond, and an event coordinator to plan and implement screening events where we can share our films with communities across the state,” McCarthy said.

While still seeing success with “Dear Sirs”, Burning Torch Productions is currently working on three other film projects that highlight Wyoming stories.

“Our current projects include a feature-length documentary for Wyoming PBS about the trona miners here in Sweetwater County, a short film about a trail runner, and a 30-minute documentary co-production with Wyoming PBS about a young mountain climber from Wyoming and her grandpa going to their ancestorial village to learn about their heritage in the Alps and climb a mountain,” McCarthy said.