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.
Great day out filming for ‘This Morning’ ITV with Simon (ex Blue Peter presenter) and Will Thomas the director and Ross the sound man:) We filmed in Glen Tilt part of Atholl Estates with several Teenagers. Super interesting hearing everyones stories.
A day out filming with Lee and Jenny. I even had to get on my bike for over 20 miles. Trying to keep up with ex British mountain bike champion and the women who holds the around the world female record!
Was a fun day out to make an advert. Tiny clip of a few shots below:)
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:)
It has not been the snowiest winter this year. Saying this for our intention of filming Winter Navigation for the Glenmore Lodge youtube channel, we seemed to be blessed with lovely weather………....for navigation:) Very challenging to film in though, mainly for the number lens cloths I had to use:)
I have been making youtube films for Glenmore Lodge for a few years now, making over 200 films so far some 15 minutes and some 90 seconds. They have almost 20K subscribers and 3.5 million views so far:)
I headed to Sweden for a few weeks with ‘Flying for Freedom’. This is a group who work with wounded, injured and sick military folk. I have been doing bits and bobs for them since 2012. Here we were with the old crowd of them doing some winter training and preparations of Aircraft for a future Antarctic trip in a few years time.
The pilots here are now getting quite experienced and our pilot tutors are hugely experienced. Still the chance of a few bumps though as people get used to landing on ski’s in the snow.
I filmed and made a film each day although we had a few days where the weather was to bad to do anything so I didn’t film these days:) These are the two last films I made on the trip where there was a little drama but all ended well and lessons were learnt:)
Headed back to Val d'Isere this year to continue with our instructional films. This time with Level 4 alpine skiing. Slightly better than I can ski hahaha.
I even lost half a stone skiing this week and trying to keep up:)
The skiers are Lynn Mill, Giles Lewis and Roy Henderson. All part of the British association of Ski Instructors:)
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:)
So Winterwatch and the rest of the watches come to the Cairngorms for the year and I am lucky enough to get the aerial filming contract for the series:)
This was a great week as the crew and presenters are all superb people and a good crack.
Me taking the place of the Welshman on the presenter line up:)
Heres just a wee clip I filmed on my TV of the last in 5 video clips from This Morning on ITV which I filmed, did sound, drone and lighting, Anthony Brown Directed and did second camera. Natalie Bloxham produced and generally sorted all the cooking stuff ready for John Torode to do his magic with actually cooking. My first cook show and I thought it would be sort of pretend cooking. But no it was incredibly great tasting food every time:)
We filmed at the beautiful Alladale Estate which was awesome and covered in snow. I did my first live broadcast through the Inspire 2 with X7 camera. The Cendance controller with its SDI output worked perfectly for it. Got an Adrenline rush there:) Next stop Sardinia with ITV and Gino D'Acampo for my second cooking show:)
A great fun time spent filming with the Scottish Mountain Rescue teams as they had their annual training weekend where all the teams get together.
I was doing a bit of everything film wise here, Drone operator, Cameraman, Sound, Lighting and editing final films. One film of the weekend for sponsors, two safety notice films for public, a few interviews and an internal training film. They are always a fun bunch to work with and a helicopter landed for us too. Got to do a bit of drone to drone filming too with the Drone rescue team.
I was asked to take part as a drone operator to film a bit in Scotland for ‘This Morning’ ITV. This grew to me filming everything with Drone and ground cameras and doing the sound and lighting. A very busy but fun day filming about ‘The art of the Coorie’ A word I just heard about at the the time. West coast word I believe.
We filmed in several local locations around Aviemore and with many locals I knew. River, loch, swimmers, hills, forest and indoor scenes and finishing with a pub scene:)
Today I spent a day taking part in some in house safety training with www.mountainandwatersafety.co.uk. This is the company I do a bit of work for doing the safety on the big film sets like Mary Queen of Scots, Outlaw King ($100m budget) and Pokemon ($130m budget) this past year.
We headed out into the sea to do some sea rescues and coasteering. A few of the team are specialists in this and many of us are more mountain and river based so great to get some gems of info from them. Also to get hands on swimming with a casualty back to shore through the waves. Pretty hard work!
A few days spent with a great bunch of guys and girls filming the new Pheonix kayak to make an advert and a few Instagram short pieces for its launch. River levels were low the first day but we still managed some good angles that made it look better. The second day filming we had much larger water levels on the Falloch that worked brilliantly in-between the rain:) Ed Smith a brilliant kayaker himself was out getting the inspiring stills for the launch too.
A bit of drone filming for my fourth Japanese job this year. This time a TV Series on British Aristocrats. A couple of stills from the day. The trees did look cool as the long shadows of this time of year stay with us on the sunny days.
Several films I made with local timber company Russwood went live this month.
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:)
Ended up getting some exercise while testing them out. 36km with the Mavic 2 Pro and the Gopro Hero 7 Black. Was a fun day out and I definitely found I was glad that ND Filters had arrived for my drone on my arrival home as they are needed.
It even snowed on me for several hours!
A while since I have bought one of these! Hero 4 black was the last one when 4K and slow motion came to play and the Gopro 1, 2 and 3 before that.
The Gopro hero 7 Black looks like the best advance in these in a long time. I had noticed filming on a boat this summer in rough seas on the way to St Kilda that my mate with the Gopro hero 6 black was getting much better footage than me with the little stabiliser inside the 6. My hero 4 was just bouncy, jerky and poor as the boat slammed the waves.
Obviously gimbals like my DJI Osmo wouldn't like salt water at all and waves occasionally came over and there was constant spray.
This new Gopro 7 black seems to have very advanced stabilisation inside so I thought I'd give it a go:) I will see how it does, I do have high hopes.
It was great to film some fly fishing on the River Tay and spend some time with the Gillies and fishermen. Filming from the air here was great and the drone always works well with the fly cast.
The film will be up soon on the website: https://www.salmon-fishing-scotland.com
Great review from Jock Monteith who runs the company:
“Having vast experience of some of Scotland's brilliant TV producers on the riverbanks of Scotland it was a true breath of fresh air to gain the professional eye and experience of Kirk Watson who is indeed a 'true' master of drone flight and has 'real' flair for creating true masterpieces at a reasonable cost. Any of my future salmon river filming requirements will be directed only to him and I cannot recommend Kirk highly enough.”
I spent a few Days with Steven and Lisa who run Mink Camper Scotland. We had a brilliant time travelling about the west coast of Scotland in these cool little campers. The job was to get a large variety of landscapes and different situations for the campers to be in over a few days and obviously make it all look beautiful and interesting:) We involved, kayaks, mountain bikes, beaches, mountains, bridges, swimming, ferries…….The film will be out later in the year and some short clips for instagram too.
A few clips from the film above:) The Ferry Captain, Q, said personally he hated drones. But my drone and my paperwork and flight planning which took into account, licence, insurance, RAF, Sea Eagles, power lines, buildings, boats, airports etc made him love mine. Always good to change folks opinions on these craft.
