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 day by myself filming lots of aerial shots to be used in amongst the live broadcast of Autumn watch. I was filming at Tentsmuir near St Andrews. Lovely place and saw a few red squirrels (not while flying just while walking) and some seals far out on the tidal flats.
The wee drone out for some flying, 9 batteries of filming:)
Headed off on my fourth job with the Global Cycling Network this summer to film a documentary about the Outer Hebrides and presented by Jenny Graham (fastest women round the world on a bicycle). We were a team of four with Hugh Farrow directing, Jenny presenting, Jason driving the follow truck, setup up specifically for following cyclists. Then myself as 2nd camera and doing the aerial cinematography.
The Islands were amazing and we travelled to 7 different ones and met many locals with interesting stories. Jenny did a great job presenting with her outgoing and very positive approach to life. We started in shorts and t-shirts getting a tan then finished with the horizontal rain trying to give us a skin exfoliation:)
As always great fun working with Andrew and Mark from Beluga Lagoon films as we make another episode of their ‘Roaming in the Wild’ for BBC. This time to the borders and with hiking and stand up boards involved. I was filming them on there journey with camera and drone. Andrew would be getting wildlife shots with his big lenses as we went. Do enjoy this work a lot when you get to take part in the trip (behind the camera) with the team. Carrying camping stuff, stove, tent, sleeping bag, and Camera, tripod, drone and all the batteries makes for a heavy load but good bit of exercise:)
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.
Spent four days drone filming and ground camera while riding an e bike round and over a lot of the Cairngorms over a four day period for a Documentary for GCN (Global Cycling Network). This was pretty full on and my bum had some pretty big bruising from carrying all the kit and doing 70-110 km per day and often over mountains. plus the pair that Stephan (From Morocco media who was directing and 1st camera) and myself had to keep up with weren’t exactly slow, being the two fastest people round the world on a bicycle.
Jenny and Mark
Had a few days with Nigel Havers from ‘Chariots of fire’ as we filmed in Edinburgh and St Andrews for a few days. We even gave a wee visit to the Chariots of Fire beach. It was good banter with Nigel and Phoebe (The director/producer). Lots of good stories from Nigel.
I was doing the main camera, sound and drone. Had to fly in a military zone which is always different as need to unlock your drone, get a police incident number and get permission from the RAF and let their air traffic control know when you are flying and when you’re finished:)
Phoebe, Nigel and myself on West Beach St Andrews.
The 3rd film of Barry this time tackling doing Jobbies in the wild. Some popular spots are pretty horrible now with poo and toilet paper everywhere, doh. Something that has appeared all over the news of late.
Hoping to still make the next two films which will look at Camping and campfires as we always planned for a 5 episode mini series:) Scott from the Pine Marten bar plays Barry. Hope you enjoy:)
Great week working on the Caledonian Canal. My first ITV job since lockdown so great to be back out there. What a fun crew too, all new to me.
Josie Gibson was the presenter with a great West Country accent, she was great fun. Sam Palmano as the producer/writer who was also great and laughed and looked like Mike Myers:)
Then we had Brian driving the boat and Rachel from Le Boat who were also awesome and great fun. So all and all a great trip. I shot with the GH5 and the Magic drone. Always fun flying from the boat:)
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:)
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!
Had a great time in the summer filming this film for Plantlife Scotland about the plants in the Cairngorms and especially the endangered ones. I love the fact with filmmaking you keep meeting knew people and learning lots about new things. As a Mountain Instructor I know a fair bit about the mountain plants but I learned so much more out with these guys:)
Filmed over three days with my ground cameras, steady cam and drone and then added too with my aerial archive and a few wildlife shots from Beluga Lagoon Films and also some music from Beluga Lagoon Band:)
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:)
I live in Scotland and film a lot here. Every so often I head abroad on a job to film in exotic places. So I thought I should stick together a short montage of some of the work abroad I have been involved with.
We start in Antarctica with some mates climbing while working as a polar guide for British Antarctic Survey.
Then to Sweden with Flying for Freedom who train injured and wounded service people how to fly microlights and get them to organise expeditions. This was training for an Antarctic trip.
Next is Sardinia and filming Gino with ITV This Morning. This was great fun as Gino is a right laugh and we were in the Mediterranean filming haha. I was filming on the ground as DOP here also as we made a cooking show.
The Lake District next in England filming maybe not as exotic but pretty cool place with 4 other drone crews to capture the sheep being taken in from Scafell pike. We had some interesting weather here too and took many long shots my longest shot was 14mins. This was what they wanted for slow television. Quite interesting keeping a shot continuously visually attractive for that length of time:)
Faroe Islands is next on a job with NHK Japan, we had pretty mixed weather as you'd expect with somewhere further north than Scotland with sea completely surrounding it. Also went to Guernsey and Sark Island in the Channel Islands on the same job which was much sunnier. Had to fly from Georges boat on Sark as the government had only given us permission to fly over water and not on the island itself. This made for interesting taking off and hand catching with the Inspire 2 with X7 camera.
Mallorca is next where I filmed with Dickson Minto during a road biking event. A stunning place to go road cycling and lovely weather:)
South Africa next where I filmed some of Table mountain, a friends wedding out on western Cape (I was just filming for fun not doing a wedding video) then to Clint and Ruth's farm near Durban where I filmed the Lemon harvest and took a bunch of pictures of the fields from the air to see the quality of the orchard. pretty cool to see what is involved in getting Lemons over to us.
Nepal and the village of Reipe, a very special place and my first time to Asia. Here I was filming ground and air with Gerry of Thunderdragon fund on a documentary. I also filmed in Scotland for this same documentary. Check out https://thunderdragonfund.org for updates on this documentary coming out or to see the first in the trilogy.
Then back to Antarctica one of my favourite places, so features twice. Here I film a bit with Scott driving the Tucker snow-cat and also climbing a mountain called Stork while we were out recording Snow petrel nests with a scientist in the area.
Hope you enjoy, I certainly loved filming it all:)
Been a while since I have done a little showreel, as last year was so busy I never got time. But as it’s January I have a bit of time.
So here is a selection of aerial filming from jobs this past year in Scotland:) With Ocean Swift the self built catamaran at the start into kayaking, Kelpies, Springwatch, fly fishing, surf kayaking championships, Cairngorms trees, Devils Pulpit, steam train, Astin Martin, helicopters, VW camper, Cawdor Castle, maze, Kenmore and Beluga Lagoon team in Doug's boat.
Filmed with the DJI Inspire 2 with X7 Camera and the DJI Mavic 2 pro.
Enjoy watching:)
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:)
Spent a few amazing days filming aerials for a TAG Heuer advert that included Astin Martins , helicopters and social media influencers. It was a superb crew to work with on this busy few days with many different activities. Filmed in Cine DNG on the DJI Inspire 2 with X7 camera. I piloted while Richard Elliot did an excellent job camera operating the drone. Mountain and Water Safety specialists were on hand doing the safety for the kayaking, walking and tyrollean too:)
A few pictures below of the days:)
Spent a few weeks travelling all around Scotland for an NHK Japan (like a Japanese BBC). This was all shot on Cine DNG RAW 6K and will be ramped up to 8K for Japan’s 8K channel. The program was shot entirely by drone.
It was a great tour of history of Scotland and a great bunch of people to work with. We flew in remote parts of Scotland (Skye, Orkney, Cairngorms) and right in city centres and also inside buildings. Amazingly for September we filmed in 40 locations and got all our shots!! Unheard of in my experience with Scottish weather especially when lots of sites were programmed in for certain days and could not be changed. Often filming at Historic sites before visitors arrived or after they were closed.
We shot with the DJI Inspire 2 with X7 camera with Jordan summers camera operating for me and Takashi on focus pulling (Takashi is a world expert on 8k shooting and has been to the BBC HQ to teach people how to work with 8K formats). It was great to have him there and did an amazing job of keeping things in focus. Riwa was our director, Junku the producer and Cosmo the Sound man.
There were some real money shots from this program with amazing light early morning and late evening. A few pics from the shoot below.
Fun time on this with director Michael and DOP Sam and myself on the DJI Inspire 2 with X7 camera shooting for this documentary/music video. Bit of filming with the band in the morning then with their landrover later. Weather played ball for us which was great:) A few screen grabs below.
The band walking over Feshie Bridge
