Watch your speed on country roads

Following last year’s collaboration with SMARTS Communicate on the Scottish Government’s country roads campaign we’ve just completed a trilogy of hard-hitting films on the lasting trauma of fatal road accidents.

British Lions and Scottish International Stuart Hogg remembers his best friend Richard, whilst Firefighter Iain McGarry and Paramedic Tanya Ellis share their haunting experiencs of attending at the scene.

The target audience was young male drivers who account for three out of four fatalities on Scotland’s country roads.

The campaign has been a great success. Our previous Stuart Hogg film received 274k views and was broadcast to over 6 million during the 2015 Rugby World Cup. You can watch here

Inspiring Enterprise Challenge 2016

Enterprise Challenge Enterprise Challenge

I had a fun couple of weeks working with young people from South Lanarkshire and mentoring future media star Rebecca as she filmed and edited a movie about their enterprise challenge. Sixteen students took part in the ‘Young Apprentice’ style challenge working at businesses including Border Biscuits, Coca Cola and Scottish Power.  Yes, we actually watched the Dark Chocolate Gingers bake in front of our eyes.

It was great to see a link between business and school as they applied their knowledge and skills to a real-life context. Beginning the fortnight as a bunch of shy teenagers and ending it as confident, inspired young adults was brilliant to see. Thanks to Helen Salt (Bright Yellow Thinking), Michael Kearns (UXL) and Eliot Jordan (South Lanarkshire Council).

Watch Rebecca’s documentary below – shot and edited on an iPad!

The Dirty Digger

To whet the appetite in anticipation of our latest feature The End of the Game , here is the full version of The Dirty Digger. Directed by David Graham Scott and produced, filmed and co-edited by yours truly, it explores the dark and dangerous world of the Digger – an underground crime magazine electrifying Glasgow. Working as the paper’s court photographer, David joined vigilante editor James Cruickshank on his controversial campaign to rid the city of crime and corruption.

The Dirty Digger is a 30-minute ‘Gonzo style’ documentary commissioned for BBC Scotland’s Storyline strand in 2007 and executive produced by David Peat. Special mention to the wonderful Chris Bowman who also co-edited.

The End of the Game

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The last few months I’ve been editing a feature documentary by award-winning director David Graham Scott for Hopscotch Films.

The End of the Game is a compelling character study of a bizarre eccentric undertaking his last big game hunt in Africa.

A committed vegan, David follows 73-year-old colonial relic Guy Wallace to South Africa as he fulfils a lifelong ambition to bag a cape buffalo. It’s Guy’s last chance to relive his glory days and finally lay down his guns.

The oddball relationship between David and Guy is the central drive of the film as the director explores the ethics of big game hunting and questions his own animal rights stance when lured in by the thrill of the hunt.

Guy is cut from the same mold as Molly Dineen’s central character in her 1987 classic Home from the Hill: a man out of time and out of place. Watch this space for more info.

 

Scotland’s Green Future

2014 is our most prolific year yet and demonstrates the growing appetite of organisations to commission video content as a core component of their digital strategy.

We’ve worked with young people in North Ayshire (Irvine Burns Club), interviewed Team Scotland for Irn Bru (Glasgow 2014), produced a music video for British indie band Mazes and delivered an inward investment video for Glasgow’s largest and oldest business park at Hillington. Most recently we’ve completed a promo for Dundee and Angus tourist board.

One of the standout projects was commissioned by the Scottish Government via Stripe Communications. We were asked to capture portraits of community-led projects that have received support from the Climate Challenge Fund. The fund was set up to help Scotland achieve its ambitious target of a 42% reduction in greenhouse gases by 2020. In total nearly 700 projects have received support.

It was a humbling experience as we travelled across the country meeting inspirational and energetic individuals from all walks of life warning of the dangers of climate change and tackling carbon emissions.

Never was this more explicit than on the Isle of Coll where the natural world overwhelms. The community has devised a brilliant method of imploding glass bottles into sand to make concrete closing the recycling circle on Coll. It was great to hear the children passionately defend the future of their island.

In the suburbs of Edinburgh we witnessed the asylum-seeker community offering home energy saving advice to minority groups. They’re not just fulfilling a requirement of government policy but a deep-felt need to protect the planet. Some had witnessed first-hand the impact of climate change in sub Saharan Africa.

In Scotland the natural environment is an unequivocal part of our lives. As a nation we depend on it to generate income, provide nourishment and act as a playground in which we can exhaust our energies.

These projects are brilliantly inventive, varied, and resourceful and most importantly they are inclusive.

Please enjoy the film, introduced by Paul Wheelhouse MSP, Minister for Environment & Climate Change, and share these brilliant examples of grass root projects protecting our land for future generations.