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 superb few weeks up on these islands with wonderful locals, well worth a visit up here if you have not been yet. Season 2 of Jules and Greg’s Wild Swimming and this year it was Islands. I missed the first 2 weeks on the Western isles as I was is Norway on the Dana shoot for the same company the great Solus Productions.
We had the same team as last year with obviously Jules and Greg doing a super job of presenting and generally being lovely guys to hang out with for the few weeks. Then we have a brilliant and great fun team to work with. As last year Tony was at the helm directing again, Jim producing, Sean as DOP (main camera and gyros in water), also water safety, Colin on sound, Raonaid doing a bit of everything and myself filming the aerials and a little bit of second camera too:)
We swam in lots of different spots for the TV program with beautiful beaches, saunas, rum, vikings, shipwrecks, cliffs, waves, town swims etc and many swims on time off too:) So good being the only people on a lot of these beaches and we met some super characters along the way. A few pictures below to give you a flavour and it will be on BBC Scotland in January coming:)
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 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 fun wee job at Glasgow Hydro with the ‘Lorraine’ TV Show. Albertine directing today and Ian doing the sound. A three camera setup for the interview. These things are always a bit rushed so arrived 90 mins early and did a few drone shots then got in with Katie the Take That PR person to setup up well in time.
We met Ross King and did a few pieces to camera with him. Super nice guy and he had his mate Kenny along to play the bagpipes.
Then we sat in for the Take That interview with Howard, Gary and Mark. Lovely guys and very easy to chat to. They have an ice bath they jump in before doing the show too. We toured the stage after to see the set up and chat through their show. A fun time.
Then I had ten minutes to setup an interview with Olly Murs at the far end of the corridor. Thankfully everyone helped move the kit:) Olly is a super nice guy and the interview went well.
Then we were all done just before they started getting reading to get on stage. These jobs always pass in a blur of adrenaline as I rush around for 4 hours then all finished and off home haha. Watch on Catch up as it was on Lorraine this week:)
Ross interview the Take That lads
My ten minute set up for Olly interview actually looks great :)
Me and Take That
Glasgow and the Hydro
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 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
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
Filming the Christmas Markets and Castle light show with ITV ‘This Morning’. Was a date night for Roger and Janey from ‘My Mum your Dad’ TV program. Was fun going round the markets and seeing everything and going on the big wheel, and Ice skating. The highlight for me was flying my drone at the Castle to film the amazing light show. The Castle is very hard to fly from as in the centre of the city and an active military building too. But it was closed off for our exclusive use for two hours and with all the permissions there we could film the stunning light show. Just a couple of shots below for you to see:)
A lovely day out filming Highland cows on north Uist with a great bunch of people. Carriane MacDonald and her mate and Angus MacDonald and his wife.
The plan was to film the cows going over to a tidal island for the winter. They’d walk a few kilometres down the road then head onto the sand and make the 3km crossing over the tidal sand at low tide. This all needed to be done at low tide. I’d got a friend of a friend Archie to drive for me so on the drive I could fly from the car and keep up. As the cows wouldn’t stop for us. Angus would lead the cows while Carriane and her mate would push from behind.
The day went very smoothly once I swapped the inspire 2 drone for the Mavic 3 Pro CINE so I could fly in the winds gusting 40 mph at times. I even had to rush off the island as the wind got worse and worse they cancelled all the ferries for the following days. Great to see these lovely looking cows doing the crossing though.
This will be shown on next years ‘Europe from the Air’ on Nat Geo channel or Disney Channel.
A collection of some of the engineering works I've been filming from the air over the last year. Making the Industrial stuff look as beautiful as possible:) Had some awesome inversions at Nigg Bay to make things look awesome:)
Filming the guys cleaning the cables on the Queensferry crossing for Nat Geo was a highlight. I'm good with natural heights in the mountains but always makes me shiver seeing folk working on man made structures for some reason:)
Few shots of renewables too and flying from boats, Glasgow City and the Kelpies. All the footage is from different projects
A fun weekend with CC-Lab and a few film buddies. Rupert and Andrew from Scotland and Fred from England along with Amy and Olly from CC-Lab:) We were filming a wolf made of lights plus a bunch of other pieces during the day. Was pretty different and fun.
Rupert (director), Andrew (ground Camera), Me (aerial filming)
I spent a couple of days filming the River Spey in flood as often documentary makers are looking for shots of the Spey in flood so I thought I should catch some of it and plus it is very interesting to see it from the air but also devastating seeing what it has done to peoples properties too.
Been a while since I made a drone show reel. A new drone showreel of a selection of work I have been up to over the past while. The clips were all shot for actual jobs I was working on for several different companies. 'Scotland from the Air' was my title then I realised one shot is not from Scotland but heyho. I was thinking Holy Island is north of Hadrians wall but on googling Hadrians wall I learnt (seemingly a common misconception, was for me lol) has always been entirely within England:). But I filmed at Holy Island twice this year on two different jobs so wanted at least one shot in there:)
The showreel has been all filmed by drone using the DJI Inspire 2 with X7 Camera, the DJI Mavic 3 pro CINE and the DJI Mavic 2 pro. Hope you enjoy:)
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:)
So a large part of my August was taken up as the Drone pilot for this TV show produced by Solus Productions with Tony directing, Jim Producing, Sean as DOP, Colin on sound, Rowen as production, and Kitty and Niamh in trainee positions. It will be released later this year or the start of next year:)
Then Jules (the teacher in Balamorey) and Greg (Victor in Still Game) were our talent who travelled round Scotland filming with different cold water swimmers to find out why they all do it. We were in Fife, Aberfeldy, Kenmore, Aviemore, Loch Ness, Skye, Mull and Iona:)
Was such a brilliant crew and made for a very fun job. Jules and Greg are superb fun too. Plus we all got in swimming in a lot of the places as we went too. A few pictures of some of the BTS.
Aerial Filming the Boat swim day:)
The awesome Solus Productions crew:)
Loch Ness
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
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
Fun day popping round a few houses in the North east of Scotland to get drone shots for Scotlands home of the year. Nice to meet the owners and see these places. One was near my parents house and one was near my house lol.
I had free rain just to be creative with my drone for an hour or so at each location. looking forward to seeing the show:) Unfortunately I can’t show the houses until after.
Lovely job here on the first episode of Jules’ and Greg’s Wild Swim with Solus Productions who I normally shoot the drone on Dana for.
Was a fantastic team here and lovely to see these tidal pools along the Fife coast. Was very pleased that Greg is super sound and so is his wife as I am a big ‘Still Game’ and ‘Chewing the Fat’ fan:)
I was tasked with catching footage of the pair swimming in these tidal pools with others. Also getting some driving shots and shots crossing the queensferry crossing. More to come on the next episodes.
