Just back from one of the most inspiring and exciting projects I’ve worked on this year; making a trail running film in the far NW of Scotland. Colin Meek and Paul Tattersall and I had spoken about the possibilities 6 months ago and we booked the time in mid May for a number of reasons ;
1. its before the midges get into full flow
2. the weather can be stable for long periods from mid April to end May
3.It coincided with a full moon so potentially a moon lit shot on the ridge would be possible
Colin and Paul know the area like the back of their hands and I had done a photoshoot for Trail Running magazine last year when they ran all the Torridon tops in a day. Its an amazing part of the UK , nothing really comes close to its wild and remote nature and you can be off grid for days on end linking up trails through and over the mountains. Rab were supporting the film with kit and we were trying out the latest ultra light weight base , mid , down and shell layers all of which were brilliant.
Alex Frood , Lee Fleming and Eddie Mclaughlin were also around over various days to help move the crane, sliders , flash , tripods etc around the mountains and having a team was a massive help . Making a film is very different to doing a photoshoot and trying to cover different angles for the viewer is important . I was shooting the film on my Canon 5D iii , mostly with the 2.8 24-70Lii lens, This is an amazing lens , as sharp as a prime, with very little distortion at the edges. Its certainly one of the heaviest lenses I’ve got but for the quality of image for both stills and video , its worth the effort to carry it. As well as the camera and lens, the 3 other essential bits of kit I was using were the Tiffen variable ND filter , the Kinotechnik LCDVF loupe and the Mannfroto fluid video head on a mannfroto CF tripod. The slider and crane were both by Glidetrack and I used a Rode mic . For time lapses I used the Syrp Genie with a ball tripod head.
Any photoshoot in the outdoors is at the mercy of the weather and my last experiences in Scotland have been a challenge to say the least but our planning had paid off and we had just the right amount of cloud to give drama to the sky , rain to give nice puddles for reflections and enough dry weather to allow us to film without water spots on the lens all the time .
One of the highlights of the shoot was the night in Sheneval Bothy and the candle light in the bothy has come out really nicely in the video footage so keen to get that edited into the film. We also got some of the best stills shots on the rocky escarpment that runs from almost the road to the base of Sail Liath.
Now the work of editing the film begins but hoping that in a couple of weeks I’ll have a rough edit with music that can then be graded and polished and titles etc added . Thats another post though . Thanks for reading .