NOVEMBER 2025 - Filming in Qatar with John Torode – Dunes, Dishes & Deadlines
Behind the scenes filming travel films in Qatar with John Torode, capturing desert adventures, Doha skylines and cultural locations for Qatar Travel.
Read MoreDrone Operator & Camera Operator | Scotland
I am a freelance filmmaker, based in Scotland. I can self shoot promotional, documentary, educational and narrative content and edit into a final film. I am also a fully licensed, CAA approved drone pilot and cinematographer. Perfect View Productions has all their own equipment to complete a project.
Whatever your story be it commercial, documentary or fictional we can help you get your message across in a high quality and professional manner.
Behind the scenes filming travel films in Qatar with John Torode, capturing desert adventures, Doha skylines and cultural locations for Qatar Travel.
Read MoreAn interesting project that I’ve been working on in conjunction with Glenmore Lodge (National Outdoor Centre) and Scottish Mountain Rescue.
This was making a film about Group Avalanche rescue when no one has a transceiver. It is not all that common for people in the UK to walk or climb in the mountains while wearing transceivers. Ski-mountaineers tend to more as they head to where more snow is. There was no videos out there that cover the scenario of when people do not carry transceivers so it was decided that one should be put together as an educational guide for anyone venturing into the mountains.
We filmed this a while back and I went on the mountain as the camera operator for a couple of days. I then started the edit process and then handed it over to a large group of people who all decide on what should go in it and what shouldn’t go in it. At one point the video was also shown to clients on some winter courses and their feedback was very interesting and they also loved the info. This all lead to a few edits for me hahaha. Then an old school mate Rachel did the voice over for it for us.
Here is the finished video below:
A few days filming a Gin advert for Walter at Inshriach. We had some fun here making a drinks advert using the Anamorphic cinema lenses and a drone for our opening aerial scenes.
The natural ingredients all from within the national park look super nice and obviously taste good once made into the Gin.
We had a finishing film scene with the shot below. We were going for a festive vibe without any of the Christmas decorations, and an axe obviously? haha. Have to see the advert once I edit it to find out why that is in there. You can see the still in the the Distillery in the background.
Buy some Inshriach gin here: www.inshriachgin.com
The past week I have been working on a new set of films for The Cairngorms National Park ( https://cairngorms.co.uk ). These have been to welcome people back and also to hopefully in a positive way let people learn a bit about being a responsible visitor to this very special environment.
We have had a spate of irresponsible visitors all over Britain since the escape from lockdown. Basically like never seen before, some people (a small number but greater than I’ve ever seen) are destroying our wild places and I was super happy to get involved in a small way to help tackle this for the good of all of us:)
A tour of some of Scotland distilleries on a tasting tour. Fun day out filming and got to see a barrel of whisky worth £1.2m! It was only a third full as the rest had evaporated! Also got to visit a cooperage where they make whisky barrels. My grandad did this all his life so it was pretty interesting to see. They fairly graft!
The 1953 barrel is worth £1.2m and is only a third full as the rest evaporated:)
A few days ago Glenmore Lodge released the Surf Champs 2018 film. This was a great fun day up in Thurso on the North Coast of Scotland filming teenagers to folk in their fifties surf Kayaking. Great atmosphere and fun to watch and to film. Pretty fun drone flying too. Trying to get close but not get wave spray on my drones:) I used my DJI Inspire 2 with X7 Camera and the Mavic 2 pro. And used all of the combined 27 batteries haha.
A few days filming with Plant Life in the Cairngorms. Was super interesting meeting the different people here and learning several new plants and flowers. One of the rare ones below, the Twin Flower which the guys are helping to protect and become more spread out before it goes extinct!
Filmed with GH5 and Cosmo pocket on the ground and the Mavic 2 pro for the aerial footage:) Down to the editing bit now, although one day out with a mountain leader who hs had training from Plant Life.
The Twin Flower:)
A few days of Filming with Gordon of WOW Scotland. One to get the new bus into a previous film linked below and to show the new corporate image of this family business and the other day round Loch Ness, Culloden Battlefield etc to cover a separate tour. Great fun and lucky on the weather front for these:)
So myself and Warren (Casio man) collaborated on our second Casio film. Also pulled into the fold was a pregnant Jess Creber (now a mother) and Joe Kirk (has a great second name) who would help out with some riding and Joe with some Kayaking and stunts.
The film below which I was very worried would not get many views as Casio popped a 9 second title at the beginning which is always going to reduce your views on youtube as people often switch off when given titles straight away much better to get straight into the story (those first 3 seconds are important:). Anyway it seems to be doing alright on youtube now with 82K views.
We shot over 5 days and had pretty long days and often had to change locations the night before and sometimes on the morning due to the weather being very fickle during the week. But we pulled it off and achieved everything that was on our storyboard we’d prepped in the previous months.
Always great fun making these films as there is such a variety to them, enjoy.
Below is the first Film that Warren and myself collaborated on. It has done very well with 795K views so far:)
This past summer I was invited onboard 'Ocean Swift'. A boat entirely built by a mate JT (John Taylor) and his Dad. As in he even built an oven to ben the glass windows to fit!!
It is now probably the fastest Catamaran for its type there is:) To find out more about the boat goto: epoxycraft.com/ocean-swift-a-self-build-like-n…/ and ocean-swift.net
During this week at see every single place I saw was new to me, even where we left from on the main land:)
Joining us onboard was the Wildlife filmmaker Andrew O'Donnell Of Beluga Lagoon (who filmed this wee trailer with myself) and his mate Mark and then Zoe who is an Antarctic person like myself and JT. We traveled out to St Kilda on his Catamaran via, corrievreckan whirlpools, Mull, Staffa, Uist, Monarch Isles, etc. On St Kilda we had three mates working there so it was good to see them and see the spectacular island:)
Longer film to come when I get a moment to my own projects:)
Had a great week working on a Casio online advert with Warren from Casio and several other mates:). Warren outlined his story and then we bounced it back and forward between us to fill it in with locations extra ideas transitions etc.
We were challenged by the weather this time after doing an advert back in march where we had perfect weather. This time we chased round the country with some long days out and about and winds up to 60mph and rain, sleet, snow, hail and fortunately some sun to keep us thinking. We got there though:)
Selection of behind the scenes pics above by Iain Rudkin (out with us to capture the mountain biking on Monday www.iainrudkin.com), Will Copestake (Out with us to capture the kayaking on Wednesday www.willcopestakemedia.com) and a couple from my iPhone and one from the drone:)
Thanks to Jess Creber for biking abilities while carrying a wee one inside and Joe Kirk for a bit of biking and lapping big waterfalls in his kayak for the camera:)
Wave sport Kayaks are bringing out a new Touring Kayak and wanted myself to make an advert for them. So over two days we filmed it using a variety of locations. I used the Lumix GH5, go pro, steady cam rig and the DJI Mavic Pro.
A mate Nash opens a shop in Boat of Garden called Ride Cairngorm so I go along to make a couple of wee films for the opening and his webpage. Danny MacAskill and the Drop and Roll team were there to put on a show. Was a great day with over 4000 people there throughout the day.
This little project came about back in January as myself and the Casio Northern UK Rep Warren Halliwell started putting together a story to film about the new CASIO Rangeman for www.casio.co.uk. It's tricky planning days for filming when you want to get up onto the Cairngorm plateau at almost 4000ft with a drone and other cameras especially so far in advance.
The day we filmed the tops of the hills only cleared for 30minutes after several hours walking in the mist on the hill. Those 30 minutes gave us our spectacular opening shots, these would be hard to repeat. (friends were out skiing on the tops all day and said that was the only time it cleared for them too. My drone filming, story telling, camera and mountain/ropework skills all came into play to bring this film to completion.
It has done well with over 434K views so far:)
I spent a few weeks piecing together the footage from a few different people who worked on this project to try and come out with a professional looking film. Always tricky when you weren't there to film it yourself. Interesting to see the build on a remote place.
I first started doing some films for Galiford Try after working with them in Antarctica on the Halley VI project which I think finished in 2012. A short snippet below of this for your interest.