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 fun wee day in not the best condition with very low cloud or fog as we do a bit of filming of Fin, son of Pia and Gerry Moffat as he heads to freshers week at St Andrews. A few screen shots below:) Footage is to be part of as bigger documentary.
The red gown pier parade.
An amazing two weeks in Lofted in Norway with a very familiar crew of the Dana TV now:) We are on season 4 now and got to head to Norway for what will be episodes 1 and 2 of this new series out later in Autumn.
Coineach is joined by Calum Gibb from Skye to climb, scramble, boulder, surf and bidi in Norway. Hamish was filming on his sony cameras while I filmed with my drone from the air. Rich and Becky did the mountain safety. For the first time in four years we actually got a day off to go climbing ourselves too which was brilliant:) Few pics below of the awesome trip. Looking forward to see what Hamish has done with it all in the edit:)
Our home for the two weeks
First days climb with Calum on it
The guys on Stentind ridge:)
Kenny on Ridge
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 great week in Switzerland aerial filming Freja Shannon and Ariane Moreau. This is to be one of the Brit rock films for this year directed and film by Alaister Lee who was on the cliff filming as I was at the bottom flying up the climb. Love working with Alistair on these films as always fun filming and challenging at the same time, plus he is a good crack to hang out with. Kim Ladiges was the guide who hset up the ropes for Al to go up and down during filming. A sound guy.
A good bunch of people and some pretty epic shots were had on the Petit Clocher du Portalet. The team were climbing Caesar route, can’t remember the full name but a 7c route following several crack lines up the impressive face.
Definitely got my bit of adrenaline flying with clouds coming in and out making for exciting moments with the drone. The other people climbing were good with the drone as I flew most of the days (a lot) and because we had chatted to them all they seemed pretty happy.
Few pics below of the area and the film will be out in November time, I think.
The Spikey peak the team climbed.
Looking down the route from the drone perspective
The Climbers Freja and Ariane
An interesting day doing an interview with the countries leading expert on fibres. As in fibres from carpets clothes etc and matching them to other fibres. He was involved in a series killers case and created a large part of the evidence towards the killer. Pretty interesting although gruesome world to hear about. Tom the director was brilliant too and very well informed. Good having him there to ask the questions and as he is a camera operator too he could check the set up was the same as other interviews he had done surrounding this court case.
It was a three camera interview with very specific lighting and a window had to be in the back ground. But must also keep all the floweriness of these carpets and curtains out of shot as kind of didn’t fit our theme but was our only location lol.
Three camera interview
A Camera
B Camera
C Camera
What an awesome venue for a concert in the heart of Stirling. Great to be filming great mates as they sell out concerts. Andrew is keen to make a bit of a documentary of this year as Beluga lagoon start filling bigger venues. I pop along to enjoy the music and film a little bit of BTS as the band gets ready and then during the performance and them coming off stage.
Nerves within the band seemed less that Aviemore at this gig. Not that you’d notice from the audience:) Had a friend shooting some wides for me while I did a bit of steady cam and just hand held. Andrew wanted a bit more crowd in these shots so got in amongst the crowd. The crowd was a little more sober than Aviemore and most likely because Scotland had just won against England in the Rigby moments before the Aviemore concert lol.
Lovely interview with Iain ‘Fingers’ after the concert. Mainly unusable footage from Gregor and Willy after the concert lol:)
Very good vibe in this venue and a great night for all:)
Beluga Lagoon in Stirling
A wild and fun day out filming Francis Bourgeois for a BBC travel show going from south off England right to the north. I was aerial filming for my local patch from Dunkeld up to Inverness and being the nice guy I am handing over some stock footage for their day to Thurso:)
The first thing Francis said to me was how well does it fly in these winds. I said its managing fine just now but as it got windier it was struggling a bit but it was getting very winding as the day went on.
Great crew and always fun filming trains as they do tend to get the adrenaline going as they only pass once and you have to catch it on film and make it look lovely at the same time!
A successful day though:)
Francis chatting to Tom’s camera near Kingussie.
Dalwhinnie
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 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.
So a bit of my filming was on last night for this TV Show on the National Geographic program. Was working with Nathan Budd on the Isle of Orkney flying from a boat for the day over the old WWII sunken ships, with the Inspire 2 drone with X7 Camera. Amazingly we got great weather for this as the day I arrived on Orkney to was horrible and the day after the shoot it was also horrible lol. So we were very lucky.Can probably see it on the Disney channel now:)
Awesome time as drone pilot out in Tuscany with GCN. A lot less full on than my Swiss trip last month with GCN:)
Had a great time filming a gravel race called Grinduro in the lovely Tuscany area in Italy. Hank was the very enthusiastic presenter and Stefan the equally enthusiastic director. We made a few films here and the main event was filming the race itself which involved driving round and grabbing shots of Hank as we went. Hank also Gopro’d much of the race as we could not follow a lot of it down closed off gravel roads.
The race feel itself was very chilled and fun and we stayed on a campsite by the beach in 33 degree heat each day so it was lovely:)
The start line was pretty hectic with 3 other drones in the air lol. But we managed to work around each other. I used the Mavic 3 pro CINE where I could and the Mini 3 pro in places near people and buildings:) a few pics below….
Final evening Tuscany filming sunset on the beach for a sequence with Hank.
A Tuscan village and church
The short documentary of the Tour Des Staions Ultimate 1000 that Oli raced in, is out today. Such an amazing effort Oli did cycling this, he had only ever cycled a race up to 380km previously.
Beautifully edited by Stefan Darque who was also directing and main camera, driving was Steve of Elmy Cycles who did a brilliant job staying awake for it. It has turned into a great little film and I believe a longer version is coming. Lots of shots from the air here from myself:) Have a watch in the link below.
This was a pretty fun yet crazy filming job making this documentary. Fun because we were in the Swiss alps and with a great team of people. Stefan as director and first camera, Oli racing his bike, Steve driving the van, James riding the motorbike and myself doing the aerial filming.
The crazy bit was we did a 37 hr shift on day one of the race filming, and driving for Steve then we got about 3 hrs sleep the next night and 3 hrs the following night. (James stuck to his legally insured 10hrs a day driving:) So there really should have been two crews covering this! But GCN does like getting free overtime out of everyone lol! But we just got on with it in a very happy way as we were there and needed to film it and support Oli and everyone. Hopefully it all looks good when it comes out tomorrow on the GCN channel:)
I also got to see the North Face of the Eiger which I’d always wanted to do and Oli got an amazing position in the race for it being his first Ultra race.
The race was the Tour Des Stations 1000 Ultimate. Meaning 40 racers would do 1000 km and climb 26000m in the race! Oil did it in 72 hrs which is incredible! Need to watch it to see how he did:) A few pics of the lovely Swiss alps below.
Some hairpins
The hotel from Goldfinger
The North Face of the Eiger
Appeared in a few papers over the weekend to advertise the National Geographic series called Europe from above. I shot a few of the UK parts of it mainly in Scotland with Barra airport, Up Hella Ya in Shetland, an Archeological dig on Holy Island where a few. Great to be involved in this and the second series for me. Below arte a few paper articles and seemingly it ran in around 100 regional papers too. Nice phot of me in the Sun lol.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/22629778/brits-never-heard-traditional-events/
https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/uk-news/top-unknown-traditional-uk-events-30193275
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/top-unknown-traditional-uk-events-30193038
https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1779034/top-traditional-uk-events-competitions-cheese-rolling
Me and my Inspire 2 drone with the X7 camera that I use to shoot the series.
Up in Orkney with Nathan a director I’ve worked with previously but on a nature film. This time we would be filming from a boat. Thankfully on a wonderfully calm and sunny day. Which was sandwiched between two pouring with rain and windy days lol. Very lucky!
We would be on the dive boat mvhuskyan (www.huskyan.com) with Emily and Ben. Emily was our presenter here and she was brilliant on camera and had pretty interesting stories on the ships of Scapa Flow where we were filming.
As far as the drone went I was mainly tracking the boat here and doing a few GV’s (General Views) of the lookouts and machine gun placements and some shots of the blockade ships. Most of the interesting bits are underwater so this would be Emily’s stock footage and some amazing 3D models that she has. Not sure when this will be out but it’ll be on the Nat Geo channel on Disney plus.
We filmed a few bits afterwards pretending I was a German submarine in Kirk’s Bay where the Nazi’s snuck through several defences to then sink the Royal Oak killing many men and obviously surprising the British army in the worst way that Scapa flow was not 100% safe. Really interesting history. Nathan did a fantastic job of launching and catching the drone about 8 times. Thankfully it was smooth. The boat was brilliant and very comfortable too. Probably the best I’ve flown from.
Stromness where we met the MVHuskyan
Me tracking the boat with the Inspire 2 drone with X7 Camera. Video by Emily out her window:)
What a brilliant fun week with this team of Rylan, Oti and Emma. Also the whole safety team who I know from my work in the mountains, and Graeme and Kirsty who guided them on camera. A very wild weather week with 108mph on the summits. People, even heavy ones, get blown through the air at 100mph so pretty windy.
We hiked and filmed and I was covering the socials for Comic relief and for the uploads to BBC Breakfast and news crews each day. While along the way the a BBC crew were filming the documentary to go out a little later. The celeb team were new to the hiking and camping etc so was fun to see how they got on and how great they are with chatting to cameras and always being observed. Great week and Hamish Frost did the stills and Rupert Shanks helped me out.
Hamish, me, Rylan, Oti and Emma at the end.
Rylan getting a rare moment to himself to take in the surroundings on Cairngorm summit.
Emma and Oti on the summit of Cairngorm.
This was the first of several shoots to come of filming lights at night as several hundred volunteers create a light show. Part of Green spaces dark skies series. Rupert Shanks was directing with James shooter doing daytime drone and both doing night shots on the ground. I did some camera and long lens during the day and then Drone at night with the Inspire 2 drone with X7 camera shooting in prores.
Pretty exciting shoot as only have 40mins at night to get the shots. But longer during the day. Camping shots by Rupert and beautifully put together by Rupert and Lindsay the editor.
Practice as the light starts to get right for it:)
Pretty interesting and a real shame for the estate and many others in Aberdeen area with the destruction of forests and trees all over Aberdeenshire. This was for a TV show about the storm. Some shots from the air below to see the destruction. Pretty windy day for flying but got some great shots all the same:)
Today I was back with Ramsay and Robyn from Caledonia TV for a program about a horse stunt team in the borders of Scotland. Today was a little different where we were filming an annual ride out of 300 or more horse, which was pretty amazing to see. Very busy few hours so not much chance for pics as had to film then run to the next spot lol. Will go out late summer on Prime time BBC.
Now this was an amazing trip with the Dana crew. Filming the 8th episode together and the 2nd episode of season two. Here we head to Mingulay the un-inhabited island on the far south of the Western Isles. We are going for 4 days camping and climbing on the massive sea cliffs. there is something very special about this island, not sure what it is just feels great being there with the wildlife and sea and cliffs:)
We amazing get great weather although quite windy. We almost get stuck there which we were all looking forward to but Angus in his boat managed to get in to the little rocky gully where we load up. Some pics below just to show how amazing the place looks.
The footage was stunning here with climbers high on the cliffs and an ever moving background of waves crashing against the cliffs. Akira Kurosawa would have loved the movement in the shots lol. These episodes are out in October:)
