Kirk Watson films
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.
A super interesting time filming for Unreasonable Impact sponsored by Barclays.
Unreasonable Impact is well worth a look www.unreasonableimpact.com the people who run this and are attending on it are incredibly inspirational. I filmed with my GH5 and drone, Interviews, GV's and shots of workshops and talks. Worked with a great team, Rupert (filmmaker), Chad (photographer) and Jessy (sound person).
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.
Aviemore half marathon was on and www.badaguish.org asked myself to make a film of it. It was a very quick hit day running around trying to get shots during the race which doesn't last very long. Good exercise for me.
Here I joint the team run by Liam and Graeme who own www.mountainandwatersafety.co.uk to cover the safety mainly on the River Etive but also in other places. There were a good bunch of us and it involved quite a lot of technical water scenarios with ever changing water levels.
Few pics below showing the changing river, no revealing pics of the actual film set until after the film comes out:) The big crane in the water was when the river came up about 3-4 meters over night! We got the crane out safely and we had attached it to the rock using climbing protection which held well:)
Clickon the image to scroll through the slide show:)
For a weeks this month I headed up the safety on Mary Queen of Scots for www.mountainandwatersafety.co.uk with a team of around 16. We had some porters there and the rest were doing safety for a large battle scene that would take place in a river and steep banks with 40 stunt people.
Building a floating camera platform
Camera platform ready and easy to position anywhere on the river
Once the film is out I shall post some more reviewing images of the behind the scenes:)
Here I travelled to Majorca with Dickson Minto to make a short film on a cycling trip they organised. Later in the year some of this footage will be used in a film for new recruits, along with other footage I will collect back in Scotland.
I do quite a bit of drone filming for BBC ALBA and this time I headed to Islay to meet Les for a documentary on the American ships that were sunk and the sailors swam ashore here during WW1.
I was working for www.caledonia.tv for this shoot who make several programs in Gaelic for BBC ALBA
The program will air in April.
I headed out to Lewis and Harris for a week with a mate Rupert (www.rupertshanks.com) to make a promotional film for Natural Retreats. We had a great time going round filming the Islands and working with some actors/staff to produce the below film. I did the aerials and second camera and Rupert did camera produced the films to there final products.
The main film is below
This month I did quite a bit of recci work and some water safety for the Netflix film Outlaw King. Back to my old trade as a mountain and Canoe Instructor:) Always interesting to see how the big budget guys do things.
I do my film safety through a company called www.mountainandwatersafety.co.uk who are the folk to go to for Film and Television mountain and water safety as they do all the big budget films that come to Scotland.
On Skye looking into spots for Outlaw King
Water safety here for cameras and stunts to try the place out
I had a day up in Glen Feshie in the Cairngorms to carry out a drone recci for the DOP John Mathieson for the upcoming film Mary Queen of Scots. It was a good day out meeting all the crew that I would be working with later in the year during the actual shoot.
Drone set up for a wee flight
We had quite a few land rovers and they were needed:)
With the Glenmore Lodge instructors we headed to Reiff in the North West of Scotland to make several instructional films on Single Pitch Climbing. We lucked out with the weather and got many films made. This is where it helps when my past career was as a Mountain Instructor so I understand what is going on and can picture exactly how to put the films together. I was using my Mavic pro drone, GH5 and Oslo here for the filming of these clips. We also headed up in to the mountains one day too. A fun bunch of days with a good group of people.
Below is the first video of the playlist on Single Pitch climbing
I spent two weeks working with the Wall to Wall crew doing all the aerials for this five part living history series. It was a fun few weeks with a good crew and different flying for me each day. The best day by far for me was having the use of a steam train (www.strathspeyrailway.co.uk) for a morning to get as many interesting shots as possible in the time. The most exciting was flying straight towards it two feet above the tracks as it came full steam towards me and then rising up through its steam and over the top of the carriages. The shots of this day were used in the opening sequences to each episode.
Screen grab from the drone footage
I headed out for my second time filming from a moving boat with my drone. Always exciting especially with their return to home functions when the home point is now 4 km behind you:) I have gotten used to it now though and it was a fun day out
On this project I was working for Fergus Thom a local filmmaker www.cinestag.co. Fergus shot all the ground shots and edited the film. The film was for www.jacobite.co.uk.
An incredible three weeks filming with Flying for Freedom in flex-wing microlights. We did our first sea crossing over the Channel then flew the front lines of WW1 100 years to the day sometimes within an hour (and 100 years) of when Britain took the lines back from the Nazis.
I have done all of Flying for Freedoms filming since 2012 you can check out their films at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4VcFnKqTr-i2EsQrjVxvgA
Below is one of the ten films made during this trip all made on the laptop while camping:)