FEBRUARY 2021 - Drone filming Lake District with hundreds of sheep

Well tonight the TV program ‘The Great Mountain Sheep Gather’ shot in a slow television fashion to show the gathering of sheep in an almost real time by shepherds on Scafell Pike in the Lake District is on at 10pm on BBC4. The Program has been nominated for several awards now and is up for some hopefully shortly.

There were about 6 drone crews working on this. As a mountain instructor I got the joy of following the main Shepard up the mountain at 4am at an incredible speed to film our first shots on the main summit, in the wind and rain with 30m of visibility. A little taxing flying and the drone got very damp/wet. Then I leap frogged the next two drone teams to set up at another spot lower down. This is where I got a shot that ended up making it in with no cuts in 7 and a half minutes I was pretty chuffed solo flying the Inspire 2 with X7 camera shooting and in RAW. We were asked to get shots as long as possible. Totally different from normal as usually 10 seconds and sometimes just over 30 seconds for a end credit shot. So going for as long as possible you need to keep looking for new shots within shots to progress a clip in an interesting way and never ever make a sudden movement. A lot of fingers and thumbs and brain overload, but very good fun:)

APRIL 2020 - The Great Mountain Sheep Gather

Tonight at 7pm on BBC 4, Easter Monday. Well there has been no filming or work for 5 weeks now due to the Virus for me. But tonight I have some footage on TV at least. 100 minutes of filming of sheep being gathered in from Englands highest peak. This was an awesome job to be involved in. Perfect for me being a mountain instructor and a drone pilot. 6 drone crews were involved which was what made it so special for me working with so many people and learning bits from everyone at some point.

Normally filming as a drone pilot you are looking for a 10-15 second long shots. But the format of this show by Windfall Films is known as slow television and tries to film things real time with no presenter etc. So we were asked to get as long a shot as possible for each shot. That doesn’t mean hold the same framing for ages. It meant getting a shot framed and filmed and in a nice way move into a re-framing and new shot then do this again and again as long as you can without messing up your framing or flying hahaha. I was using the DJI Inspire 2 with X7 camera on wide angle, solo operator. We all got long shots but I was lucky and got the longest shot of the program that made the cut with 7mins 30seconds in there:)

Can’t wait to do some more jobs like this in the future.

The Shepherd Andrew and a helper and the all important dogs. 4:30am walking up the hill. Man he walks fast even when rolling a cigarette!