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.
Roaming in the Wild returns to BBC Scotland and iplayer for everyones viewing pleasure. Was great fun making these films with Andrew and Mark. Doing fun trips with two good mates, what is not to like:)
A fun and busy day in Edinburgh filming at the Edinburgh Carnival Festival in Princess St Gardens. Here there are folk from all over the world living in the UK and showing off their cultures to the public. Such amazing traditional clothing and costumes all bright and amazing looking. Great atmospherehere with music and dancing etc.
We were filming a particular group of young teenagers and mainly one person. I will share the video when it is aired later in the year on the Children in Need webpage:)
I was working with the lovely Vicci who I worked with on a Comic Relief gig a few years ago (with Rylan, Oti, and Emma). She is pictured below getting a few shots with my Ronin, with the lady who headed up the group we were filming. A few screen grabs of some of the other people in the parade from the film:)
A few great days with amazing weather filming the new advert for Wavesport Hydra 12’ kayak (a shorter touring boat) and some shorter clips of the tandem kayak and Ethos river kayak. Working with Ed Smith on this. He is a great photographer who has a gallery in Kingussie and we often do jobs together with myself doing the moving images:)
Matt from Wavesport is brilliant to work with and super chilled. We had Alex and Joe as models for the first day then Josh and Bronagh the second day of filming:)
just got a few days editing now to pull the footage together into something lovely hopefully:)
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:)
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
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.
Warren stood on the summit of Sgor Gaoith (1118m) in the Cairngorms National Park during our brief spell of clear weather whilst filming:)
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.
A fun couple of days doing a makeover for the first time. Funny things to film as big rush at the start then steady filming all day then a mad rush of filming the painting etc etc at the end. Good bunch of people here which made for a fun day and Margaret the person who was getting the makeover on the budget of a £100. Is hopefully happy but you’ll need to watch in the autumn to see:)
Callum, Banjo, Rhian and Me out filming the intros at the Kelpies nearby while the work continues in the house.
Before
Another day filming for a BBC TV Show’ Paramedics on Scene’. This time filming in a room in the fire station as its bigger than ambulance station in Banff:) Was a good crack and had some pretty good weather to get some drone shots of the area too.
On this shoot the interview was done through my laptop and hotspot on the phone while I did the 3 cameras, 3 lights, sound and after the drone:)
A super windy day up here in Thurso but managed a bunch of drone shots early morning. Then had a laugh meeting the Ambulance teams and setting up for an interview. The interview was about previous incidents that had been filmed and the interviewer was on my laptop hot spotted from my phone:)
Involved setting up in a small living room type area and moving chairs and getting 3 lights up then three cameras and sound:) A fun day out.
So John is back on the road on his bike as we tour a few spots in Northumberland and cook several lovely dishes. John is always great and easy to work with and so are the ITV This Morning crew. Will Thomas, directing, Natalie managing the cooking and Ian on Sound.
Was a fun week and weather amazingly held for us for November:)
Bamburgh Castle, the amazing spot for one of the cooks:)
John on Holy Island for a cook:)
Here working with Martin (Producer director with ITV This Morning who I have done many shoots with) and Dr Scott an Aussie vet presenter and my first time with.
We had a great week filming about rewinding and travelling about areas, planting trees, feeding squirrels and swimming in a freezing river. Great to be back up at Alladale too.
Our great team at Alladale:)
Fun night filming the zip park with G2 Outdoor for their new website. Hoping to film it again once there is snow as looks so much better!
Me filming with the GH5s for low light.
Great few days with Derek and Vicky plus a few other filming rock climbing movement techniques. These are creating tutorials for their YouTube channel. Now made maybe 150 films for the channel 😁
Always fun filming with BBC Countryfile. Here we filmed a piece about the making of a Children in need hat in a Kilmarnock factory and also interviewed a Ukrainian farmer online. Then we came to Aviemore to film with Fiona’s ponies on a piece about the Queen for the Jubilee. Great to finish on my own patch and meet another local too.
I have the pleasure of filming on all 6 episodes of ‘Roaming in the Wild’ Andrew and Marks TV show that is now on prime time 8pm slot on BBC Scotland. Great fun working on these episodes and this one takes us sea kayaking down Loch Sheil from the Harry Potter viaduct down onto the sea and round to Arisaig. We start in the mist and midges and finish in calm 25 degree sunny weather. Was a superb trip and lots of lovely filming. Andrew films all the wildlife in these episodes and often chat between the guys if I am away getting ahead to set up a drone shot or the likes. I look forward to these trips each time.
Sunset on the second night near Eilean Shona
Me and the guys. Carrying all our kit for 5 days in our Sea Kayaks:)
