April 2024 - Aerial Filming in Glencoe for a BBC ALBA Documentary

A nice few days with Solus Productions filming a revisit to a documentary from 8 years ago with a lady called Gladys. She was born in Ireland then adopted and brought to the west coast of Scotland and speaks Gaelic. She has been trying to find her original family all her life and some things come to light since the previous documentary.

Tony was directing, Phil on the main camera and Rowan producing. I was doing drone then some second camera during the interviews indoors.

Classic drone shot Glencoe

Speak Bridge

Great Grannie and Grandads house:)

MARCH 2024 - Interview with a Forensic Scientist for a crime documentary

An interesting day doing an interview with the countries leading expert on fibres. As in fibres from carpets clothes etc and matching them to other fibres. He was involved in a series killers case and created a large part of the evidence towards the killer. Pretty interesting although gruesome world to hear about. Tom the director was brilliant too and very well informed. Good having him there to ask the questions and as he is a camera operator too he could check the set up was the same as other interviews he had done surrounding this court case.

It was a three camera interview with very specific lighting and a window had to be in the back ground. But must also keep all the floweriness of these carpets and curtains out of shot as kind of didn’t fit our theme but was our only location lol.

Three camera interview

A Camera

B Camera

C Camera

MARCH 2024 - Filming Beluga Lagoon's concert in Stirling

What an awesome venue for a concert in the heart of Stirling. Great to be filming great mates as they sell out concerts. Andrew is keen to make a bit of a documentary of this year as Beluga lagoon start filling bigger venues. I pop along to enjoy the music and film a little bit of BTS as the band gets ready and then during the performance and them coming off stage.

Nerves within the band seemed less that Aviemore at this gig. Not that you’d notice from the audience:) Had a friend shooting some wides for me while I did a bit of steady cam and just hand held. Andrew wanted a bit more crowd in these shots so got in amongst the crowd. The crowd was a little more sober than Aviemore and most likely because Scotland had just won against England in the Rigby moments before the Aviemore concert lol.

Lovely interview with Iain ‘Fingers’ after the concert. Mainly unusable footage from Gregor and Willy after the concert lol:)

Very good vibe in this venue and a great night for all:)

Beluga Lagoon in Stirling

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MARCH 2024 - Drone operator for a train spotting travel show for BBC

A wild and fun day out filming Francis Bourgeois for a BBC travel show going from south off England right to the north. I was aerial filming for my local patch from Dunkeld up to Inverness and being the nice guy I am handing over some stock footage for their day to Thurso:)

The first thing Francis said to me was how well does it fly in these winds. I said its managing fine just now but as it got windier it was struggling a bit but it was getting very winding as the day went on.

Great crew and always fun filming trains as they do tend to get the adrenaline going as they only pass once and you have to catch it on film and make it look lovely at the same time!

A successful day though:)

Francis chatting to Tom’s camera near Kingussie.

Dalwhinnie

FEBRUARY 2024 - Filming Avalanche rescue film

A fun few days filming an avalanche rescue film with several mates. The film is a collaboration of several people including Scottish Mountain Rescue and Glenmore Lodge (National outdoor centre) plus others but I just met the ones involved in the filming bit on the mountain.

I was booked over a month ago and amazing that the day we come to film there is snow (tricky these days in the Highlands it seems) and sun and not to bad wind. We had a script pulled together from the different organisations and we went about filming it on the mountain. Always fun trying to get non actors to act but they did a pretty good job of it. Felt good to be out in the mountains too. Just working through the edit of it now.

Small team searching our man made Avalanche debris

Probing a grid over debris

FEBRUARY 2024 - Filming Beluga Lagoon Concert

Had a fun night filming Beluga Lagoon In Aviemore. There were 1100 tickets sold in 3 minutes!!! They also sold out the Barrowlands in 2 minutes.

Pretty fun to see behind the scenes of there first of a row of bigger concerts. As in previously they played to 250-350 audience so this was 4 times the size of crowd and Glasgow Barrowland will be 8 times the size I think.

Andrew is going to make a little documentary of this year as they do their gigs and asked if I’d film a bit of them BTS and on the stage as they played. Andrew had three songs he wanted recorded fully and the sound was being recorded on the decks at the back. Rupert Shanks a good mate who also lives in Aviemore was keen to help to. So Rupert was on a long lens at the back while I did wides on the gimbal from the stage and elsewhere.

The concert was brilliant and the whole band put on a great show:)

A chilled night as Andrew said to enjoy the night too. Hopefully myself and Rupert will be free to film the other venues throughout the year. Was a late finish as we all had a few beers after:)

Beluga Lagoon Band doing their thing:)

FEBRUARY 2024 - Filming instructional film with Dark Sky Media

A fun week filming Dave Macleod doing climbing coaching at his place in Roy Bridge. I was working for Chris Prescott here of Dark Sky Media ( www.darksky-media.com ) who does a lot of climbing filming. I was the second camera here and using his Sony kit. I have worked with Chris several times on a variety of projects so was fun to work with him again. The client was https://altitudeclimbing.com and the films we were making were for increasing your performance in rock climbing.

I’ve known Dave and Claire Macleod since university days so was good to catch up with them again. The last time I actually filmed Dave was in 1999 at Dunbarton rock on a Nick Tarmey film ‘Cutting Loose’ :)

Chris and myself had quite a bit of standing on crash mats not being able to move incase we wobble our tripods. Probably some form of torture standing still like this. Not sure how the Buckingham Palace guards manage it lol. But we battled through it. Hopefully be some great videos from the edit. Certainly Dave is massively knowledgeable and amazing at breaking down the tiniest bits of climbing to produce advancements for his students:)

Dave describing his different boots. Although one of the pairs he uses 90% of the time.

Chris Prescott and myself filming Dave doing his stuff.

JANUARY 2024 - My most viewed film I've made from start to finish to date.

This was fun film to make. I made it with Warren from Casio Watches. He had some ideas and was looking for a drone pilot here in Aviemore but after chatting for 30 minutes on the phone or so he decided that maybe we could make the film together.

So we came up with a storyboard and script. He mainly wrote the words as he knows the watch and will have to speak the words himself. I decided on locations and how we could shoot it and make a story out of an instructional film. Trying to keep the editing interesting and flowing.

Warren then arrived in Aviemore and we started filming the different bits which started with a walk up Sgor Gaoith (1118m) a munro nearby, The weather was nice and cloudy allowing us to film the navigation parts with the watch. But I desperately wanted a view too. It didn’t seem to be happening. Then we reached the top in the cloud doh. We were just starting a sandwich when the cloud started dropping down. Sandwiches stuffed away and a mad rush as we started getting our filming done in one of the most stunning days I’ve ever seen above the cloud in the Cairngorms. We got some great drone shots and speaking to drone shots too. A theme of this film. Means trying to match lines afterwards which is tricky but fortunately Warren repeated the words back exactly to the ground camera mic after. We got our bits and the cloud came back in and was gone. It gave us 30-40mins. I heard from friends who are Mountain and Ski guides that day that they unfortunately never saw a view so we were so lucky!!

The comments on Youtube here about all the crew that must be on the summit behind the camera is hilarious, worth a read lol. It was just me carrying the camera and drone and my winter kit and Warren carrying his winter kit and our lunches:)

We then headed down to film the next bits the day after. We had three locations for the cliff. The top of the cliff was Uath Lochains, the cliff was Farletter crag a couple of miles away and the frozen loch at the bottom of the cliff was Loch Morlich, 6 miles away haha. And yes Warren did actually throw the watch off the cliff from 10m up, a few times. And he had to post that watch to Milan for a high end budget advert (not watched as much as this one lol) straight after our shooting as only two in the world at that time.

Filming the mud fall was interesting only had one go at it and also had to try our best to stop it from looking totally cheesy which it had high potential for! I think we got away with mild cheese lol

The final bit was in front of the fire in my house. Pretty good to have all these varied locations on my doorstep.

Then I went at it editing it together and matching swipe pan edits etc. Then a colour grade and sounds added in and sent over to casio who were very pleased. Its got some nice views too, 1.6 million.

JANUARY 2024 - Live drone from Scotland

A fun day and adrenaline fulled as normal with a live drone. Today I was experimenting with the Mavic 3 Pro CINE for the live drone and a bit of use of the Inspire 2 with x7 Camera. Wildly the image for the £5k drone is better than the £21k drone lol.

We were filming Carol Smillie for the ITV Competitions that run over ITV This Morning, Lorraine etc. Hadn’t filmed Carol Smillie since covid and she said she hadn’t been filmed since then either lol.

Jordan Summers was on ground camera and Rich on sound and Athene directing. Great team for the day. We also got to stay in Cameron house always a bonus.

I’ve done live drone a dozen times now or so and it still remains exciting work as you know a lot of folk are watching if you did anything wrong. Also making sure the drone is in the right spot and flying perfectly as no second take chances:) So much fun.

Inspire 2 with LiveU ready for filming

Experimenting with the Mavic 3 pro CINE live. Image is way better.

JANUARY 2024 - Filming at Walkers Shortbread for ITV This Morning

A fun day out seeing round the factory where they make the famous shortbread. Donal MacIntyre was the presenter who is a great laugh and Will Thomas was directing.

The factory is in Aberlour so a job pretty close to home. The smell all day was amazing. Made you so hungry.

Aberlour

Donal, Will and myself outside Walkers shop on Aberlour high st.

A freebie from our day out:)

DECEMBER 2023 - Filming Edinburgh Christmas markets and Edinburgh Castle light show

Filming the Christmas Markets and Castle light show with ITV ‘This Morning’. Was a date night for Roger and Janey from ‘My Mum your Dad’ TV program. Was fun going round the markets and seeing everything and going on the big wheel, and Ice skating. The highlight for me was flying my drone at the Castle to film the amazing light show. The Castle is very hard to fly from as in the centre of the city and an active military building too. But it was closed off for our exclusive use for two hours and with all the permissions there we could film the stunning light show. Just a couple of shots below for you to see:)

NOVEMBER 2023 - Aerial filming in the Western Isles, Scotland. Filming Highland Cows for National geographic.

A lovely day out filming Highland cows on north Uist with a great bunch of people. Carriane MacDonald and her mate and Angus MacDonald and his wife.

The plan was to film the cows going over to a tidal island for the winter. They’d walk a few kilometres down the road then head onto the sand and make the 3km crossing over the tidal sand at low tide. This all needed to be done at low tide. I’d got a friend of a friend Archie to drive for me so on the drive I could fly from the car and keep up. As the cows wouldn’t stop for us. Angus would lead the cows while Carriane and her mate would push from behind.

The day went very smoothly once I swapped the inspire 2 drone for the Mavic 3 Pro CINE so I could fly in the winds gusting 40 mph at times. I even had to rush off the island as the wind got worse and worse they cancelled all the ferries for the following days. Great to see these lovely looking cows doing the crossing though.

This will be shown on next years ‘Europe from the Air’ on Nat Geo channel or Disney Channel.

NOVEMBER 2023 - Aerial filming in Industry, Nigg Bay, Queensferry crossing, Orkney, Glasgow.

A collection of some of the engineering works I've been filming from the air over the last year. Making the Industrial stuff look as beautiful as possible:) Had some awesome inversions at Nigg Bay to make things look awesome:)

Filming the guys cleaning the cables on the Queensferry crossing for Nat Geo was a highlight. I'm good with natural heights in the mountains but always makes me shiver seeing folk working on man made structures for some reason:)

Few shots of renewables too and flying from boats, Glasgow City and the Kelpies. All the footage is from different projects

OCTOBER 2023 - Aerial filming in the Lake District for a Light Show

A fun weekend with CC-Lab and a few film buddies. Rupert and Andrew from Scotland and Fred from England along with Amy and Olly from CC-Lab:) We were filming a wolf made of lights plus a bunch of other pieces during the day. Was pretty different and fun.

Rupert (director), Andrew (ground Camera), Me (aerial filming)

OCTOBER 2023 - Filming with Helly Hanson and Arrochar Mountain rescue

Today was filming a training day with Helly Hanson and AKA presented by Arrochar mountain Rescue team. Was all about breaking down the barriers in the outdoors. It was a fun day meeting all these people. Ed Smith was doing the photography on the day too, always good to work with Ed.

OCTOBER 2023 - Aerial filming on a action feature film in Aberdeen-shire

Of filming for Director Dave as he makes his new feature film. I previously worked on other features with him. Was great weather and a good day out with a few of the Action actors. Several shots of cars moving and establishing shots and films opening:)

Inspire 2 drone still working well on features

Day 1 of filming team:)

Drone and pilot:)

OCTOBER 2023 - Aerial filming Mountain biking near Aviemore

A fun day out with locals filming for the Capercaillie project about different groups working together for the benefit of these big birds. I was filming some mountain bikers with the drone to go with Katrina’s ground footage she had filmed before. Was fun filming and a bit of exercise.

OCTOBER 2023 - Aerial Filming the floods in Scotland

I spent a couple of days filming the River Spey in flood as often documentary makers are looking for shots of the Spey in flood so I thought I should catch some of it and plus it is very interesting to see it from the air but also devastating seeing what it has done to peoples properties too.

SEPTEMBER 2023 - Aerial filming in Scotland a drone showreel

Been a while since I made a drone show reel. A new drone showreel of a selection of work I have been up to over the past while.  The clips were all shot for actual jobs I was working on for several different companies.  'Scotland from the Air' was my title then I realised one shot is not from Scotland but heyho.  I was thinking Holy Island is north of Hadrians wall but on googling Hadrians wall I learnt (seemingly a common misconception, was for me lol) has always been entirely within England:).  But I filmed at Holy Island twice this year on two different jobs so wanted at least one shot in there:)

The showreel has been all filmed by drone using the DJI Inspire 2 with X7 Camera, the DJI Mavic 3 pro CINE and the DJI Mavic 2 pro. Hope you enjoy:)

SEPTEMBER 2023 - Aerial filming Scotland for Nat Geo on TV Now

So a bit of my filming was on last night for this TV Show on the National Geographic program. Was working with Nathan Budd on the Isle of Orkney flying from a boat for the day over the old WWII sunken ships, with the Inspire 2 drone with X7 Camera. Amazingly we got great weather for this as the day I arrived on Orkney to was horrible and the day after the shoot it was also horrible lol. So we were very lucky.Can probably see it on the Disney channel now:)