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:)
Had a fun night filming Beluga Lagoon In Aviemore. There were 1100 tickets sold in 3 minutes!!! They also sold out the Barrowlands in 2 minutes.
Pretty fun to see behind the scenes of there first of a row of bigger concerts. As in previously they played to 250-350 audience so this was 4 times the size of crowd and Glasgow Barrowland will be 8 times the size I think.
Andrew is going to make a little documentary of this year as they do their gigs and asked if I’d film a bit of them BTS and on the stage as they played. Andrew had three songs he wanted recorded fully and the sound was being recorded on the decks at the back. Rupert Shanks a good mate who also lives in Aviemore was keen to help to. So Rupert was on a long lens at the back while I did wides on the gimbal from the stage and elsewhere.
The concert was brilliant and the whole band put on a great show:)
A chilled night as Andrew said to enjoy the night too. Hopefully myself and Rupert will be free to film the other venues throughout the year. Was a late finish as we all had a few beers after:)
Beluga Lagoon Band doing their thing:)
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.
A day filming 3 films to make some Kayak rolling films as part of Glenmore lodges youtube channel. A channel which I have made over 100 films for and has several million views.
So these months just got so busy I just couldn’t fill in my blog or take on anymore work. Which was great. This year became my busiest year yet even though it started slow after covid lockdowns. I think winning a BAFTA for Aerial Cinematography under factual Photography was the reason for this.
As I’ve been busy this year too I’ve decided just to skip the rest of 2021 and try and catch up with 2022 lol.
Heres a few pics from some jobs:)
Glasgow University standing tall:)
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:)
A fun few days filming river kayaking with Giles from Glenmore Lodge. looking air people returning to the water after lockdowns and ways to get back into it.
On the River Garry
Fun putting this together with a few talking heads, narration and a bunch of my stock footage of drone shots within the park, a few family clips by JEGS Media and wildlife shots by Beluga Lagoon Films. I also went out with the drone for some new aerial shots.
The chat about this film started with the Cairngorms National Park before Christmas and we just finished last week. Such is the way with all these lockdowns and folk on furlough etc. Hopefully looks like everything is getting busier again now:) Looking forward to a bumper summer of filmmaking:) Enjoy:)
Here we headed into the wild with humungous rucksacks to go snow holing for several days in what would be (very lucky for Beluga Lagoon filming) four of the best weather days in the Cairngorms this winter, and there have been a few!!
It took a while getting landowner permissions and general covid go ahead etc so most of the lower snow had gone but luckily there is so much snow up top it didn’t matter.
The guys, Andrew and Mark would dig and live in a snow hole for three nights while I stayed in my tent as they are a shared household (Mark does a good bit of baby sitting in the O’Donnell household). I have to say it was absolutely amazing to be out of my house for longer than a day trip and with zero wind and sun each day life was great.
Here we would document our time up high and even I had to pop in front of the screen as snow holing is not the best activity to do without some guidance as depending on the conditions it can be a bit dangerous. Plus there are avalanches, weather, navigation, route choice etc to add to the winter experience. So luckily being a cameraman and MIC (now called WMCI) (Highest national qualification in summer/winter walking, climbing and mountaineering) and having spent many winters working and training people in the Cairngorms it was useful for this trip.
We got in some lengthy ski tours once we dumped the big bags at our base camp/hole. I leave those stories for when the episode airs though.
A few pics from the trip below.
Andrew returns from a toilet break:)
The snow hole and tent area from the drone:)
The second GCN Job (Global cycling network) this summer again working with Stephan as director (morrocomedia). Myself as 2nd camera and Drone extraordinaire:) A fun day in the Kingdom of Fife with these guys and learning about this WW1 military unit. Mark also found a bike from a friend from this era which was great.
Been working with Douglas Roulston ( www.douglasroulston.com ), an artist from Dundee on a film about his art. This has been great fun and we have been around a fair bit. I’ll keep most of it a secret for when we get the film out. Couple of shots below. Little bit of filming in July, August and September. I am shooting it on Anamorphic lenses and aerial shots are just drone camera that will be cropped to match the anamorphic lens:)
Douglas painting on Suilven
Me
Studio filming in Dundee
Well it seems apt that my first few days of work since the 16th of March on “The Crown” is a promotional film called “ We miss you!! We are preparing to welcome you back” all about welcoming people back to the Cairngorms National Park, where I live:)
The film was organised by www.visitcairngorms.com and I had two days to shoot it and get round 18 businesses spread over the large park. I came up with a script giving each business one line to say from the message Visit Cairngorms had. This would allow me hopefully quicker filming at each place as I wanted some action shots with the drone also. Mark at Visit Cairngorms luckily did all the logistics and timings on a spread sheet so I could just travel round to people who knew I was coming and knew their line:) We wanted to keep the message positive with a brief mention of COVID as everyone gets plenty of the rules through the media and press to educate everyone on the best practices, and it keeps changing depending on where the country is at while fighting it.
Enjoy:)
Headed out filming with Ground Level Up ( www.groundlevelup.com check out their site ) a great film production company from Glasgow. I was lucky that their own drone operators were busy so I got the opportunity to head to a new country for me, Albania. A great country and a beautiful place to film. We had a lot of fun filming here over several days and met some great folk in a remote area of the country.
The Inspire 2 with X7 Camera doing its thing:)
Gerry and Pia Moffat of the Thunderdragon fund who I worked for in Scotland, Nepal and Bhutan last year started a fundraiser for the 11th step film and it hit its target of $25000 plus a few extra thousand which is great. Now the project and hundreds of hours of footage from myself and a few other DOP’s (Ben Figueiredo and Tyler Allyn) will go into post production to produce a finished film for around easter time, where it has its opening night at a festival near New York.
To follow how the film is going goto: https://thunderdragonfund.org
Trailer for the upcoming film is below, with music from Beluga Lagoon:)
After a week of filming in Nepal we left the super busy Kathmandu for a much more peaceful and subdued Bhutan. It is a fantastic country that seems to be beautiful in every way. Here we would be filming some of the traditional places to get a feel of Bhutan and to link in to how things have changed since Gerry’s original footage of the country. Gerry also jumps back in a kayak to film on the river. We got a very nice morning shot past the Dzong just below in the landscape picture. We used ground camera throughout and several time lapses too. we couldn’t fly a drone in the country unfortunately. Karma who has known Gerry for many years was our guide, he was excellent.
Gerry’s website to see how the film is progressing is at: https://thunderdragonfund.org
I fly out to Asia for my first time ever to spend a week in Nepal filming a documentary as director of photography with Thunderdragon fund. I worked on this documentary in Scotland with Gerry Moffat back in April May and they were keen on my footage so I got to head to Asia for two weeks filming with them:)
The first week was in Nepal in a small local village where an old friend of Gerry’s has been involved in turning it into a kind of Airbnb style place where you stay with the locals in a beautiful hilltop village over looking the Annapurna range. It was an amazing place with lovely people.
My goal was to catch the mountains in the distance and then catch the locals working with nature in detail. I had an awesome time and the memory of this place will stay with me for a long time:) Some pics below of our stay.
The company I worked for is https://thunderdragonfund.org if you want to check out the progress of the film or to find out more about the amazing Gerry and his adventures:)
The village we stayed in is: www.annapurnahomestay.com if you are interested in looking into it or going for your own stay there:)
Riepe village on the left and Annapurna on the right of shot:)
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:)
So spent a few days with the DJI Inspire 2 filming on a Rolls Royce advert which was fun. Got to ride in my first Rolls Royce, very comfortable. Slightly beyond my price range haha.
We did a lot of dual operator during these days with Sammy the DOP doing my Camera Operating as he is also a drone pilot and obviously knows a bit about cameras. Dual op is often required once we start using the longer lenses and especially following fast cars.
We had to change locations several times to avoid the rain so it was great using some local knowledge and contacts to figure out the best spots. I did a bit of Camera assisting in-between drone flying to help out setting up camera kit, lights and focus pulling:)
Great fun few days and a super switched on crew from SWR Media Magazines Ltd, which was great:)
I continue doing quite a few shoots for ITV ‘This Morning’ this time an interview with Westlife at Glasgow Hydro. Not something I thought I’d be doing but it was great laugh and very sound guys. The presenter Alison Hammond is brilliant too and Riaz the producer who is a real life Westlife fan:)
Had an amazing time travelling around Scotland for these 24 days days with Gerry Moffat making his new film, the second in a trilogy.
The film looks at coming home, connection to people, places, adventures and the wildernesses affect on people and several other themes. One theme is looking at the fact that many adventures are on your doorstep at home and Scotland shined for us with amazing weather during this month of May.
A common theme linking the film together was kayaking as Gerry is a well known kayaker so I took back to my boat to carry my camera kit into the wild for several parts of the film. We got a lot of fantastic footage and it was great to get too know Gerry better and he definitely influenced my outlook on life:)
A few pictures from the iPhone below. The film will be released next year after they have shot in America and the Kingdom of Bhutan. Fantastically I shall be travelling to Bhutan to be the DOP there too:) Can’t wait!
