A Greek adventure with Rupert Shanks

A few months ago I found myself swapping the sideways Scottish rain for the golden cliffs of Meteora, all thanks to my neighbour and long-time collaborator Rupert Shanks. Rupert lives about 150 metres from my front door, and a few times each year we team up on projects. This one was very much Rupert’s job. He was directing and shooting the main camera, and he brought me in to handle second camera, Steadicam on the Ronin, and all the drone work.

If you’ve never seen Meteora, it’s one of those places that feels invented rather than built. Immense stone pillars rise out of the valley floor with ancient monasteries balanced improbably on their summits. The landscape even featured in the Roger Moore Bond film For Your Eyes Only, with that famous twisting mountain road cutting through the rocks. Everywhere you point a lens, it looks ready for a cinema screen.

The film was for a new tourism project being developed with George and a well-known local family from the town of Kastraki. They’ve run a bicycle and motorbike shop for years, the kind of place almost everyone in the area has bought a bike from at some point. Now they’re expanding into off-road buggy tours, encouraging visitors to explore beyond the busy monastery routes and discover the wider countryside around Meteora.

We arrived in late autumn, a risky time for weather but perfect for colour. Scotland by then had already slipped into its leafless, post-harvest mood, yet Greece was still glowing with reds, browns, and oranges. We stayed in a small hotel tucked beneath the rock pillars, waking each morning to views that felt more painted than real.

Our team minus myself and Rupert who are taking pictures:)

On the first day we met George and the rest of the team. Six sturdy four-wheel-drive buggies were lined up waiting for us. The last time I’d been in something similar was filming Alison Hammond in Portugal, so I knew we were in for a lively few days.

Over four days we covered a few hundred kilometres, threading across valleys, climbing dusty tracks, and bouncing between villages. One moment summed it up: we were sitting in these buggies, warm air rushing past, a convoy of brilliant Greek characters laughing over the radios, and Rupert and I just looked at each other thinking, yesterday we were in Scotland under grey rain, and now we’re here.

From a filming point of view it was a cracking challenge. Rupert led the shoot on main camera while I floated between the Ronin for Steadicam work and the drone for the aerial side. We chased the buggies through mountain roads, grabbed big classic landscapes, and then switched to close, intimate shots inside the vehicles. Rupert had brought a clever little lighting rig to lift the faces of the drivers, which transformed the look. Without it, everyone would have been lost in shadow, but suddenly it felt like a proper cinematic production.

By the final day we’d captured plenty of wide spectacle, so we hunted for the details: hands gripping steering wheels, dust on tyres, laughter between the family who run the tours. Those small moments are the glue of any edit. They might not feel as glamorous as launching a drone over a sideways-drifting four-by-four buggy on a misty morning with the sun rising behind it and dust hanging in the air, but they’re what make a film breathe.

Between shoots we ate heroic amounts of Greek food, spent evenings downloading footage, and got to know a truly lovely family who were so proud of what they were building. My only gripe was missing a Scotland match while we were there, but only as we didn’t know it was playing in the busy-ness of our work. I don’t watch much football, but apparently it was one of those once-in-a-generation games. The Greek crew had all seen it and were buzzing the next day, Fortunately I had seen the highlights so I did know where the enthusiasm was coming from and lovely to see they were genuinely happy we made it into the world cup especially from such an amazing game.

This is us over the back from Meteora, a place well off the beaten tourist track

A huge thank you to Rupert of www.rupertschanks.com. Check out his site if you want to see more of his work. It was brilliant of him to invite me along and to trust me with the aerial and Steadicam side of his project, while he steered the whole production with such calm energy. He later shaped everything into a beautiful edit with music and polish, and the final film looks fantastic. Here you can see the webpage they created around the trips and nicely Ruperts films and pics are mixed in there to make the page come alive:) https://meteoraoffroad.com

Below are a few photos from our time in Meteora. If you ever get the chance to visit, go. Take a camera, take an appetite, and maybe a buggy.