An occasional blog on topics related to my work. For a behind-the-scenes look, subscribe to my Patreon page.
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Being able to call myself an ‘award-winning filmmaker’ is a notable bonus when it comes to getting a certain type of person to take notice of my work. Like a well-designed book cover or a blog post optimised to attract search engine traffic, film awards are a way to advertise the fact that what you’ve made might be worth looking at. Given the near infinite competition for public attention, only a martyr would ignore the value of such things. Those in my line of work, however, are all too aware of the double-edged sword of this type of self promotion. Charlatans use it to aggressively advertise…
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2015’s Resolutions, Goals & Major Life Upheavals
Yeah, I know it’s a little late to be posting articles on New Year plans and resolutions. What can I say, I’ve been busy! (And that itself is something I want to change… on which more later.) This is my third and final Annual Review post for this New Year. If you’re just arriving, first check out this post reviewing 2014’s successes and failures, and this post looking at how well I did keeping to last year’s resolutions – plus the effect they’ve had on the various aspects of my life. In this post, I’m going to take the successes…
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2014’s Resolutions: How Did They Stand Up?
This time last year I published a similar ‘Annual Review’ style series of blog posts, the third and last of which was a forward-looking piece, aimed at setting a few resolutions to overcome the previous year’s ills. It’s been interesting reading back over these words, because I didn’t pin those resolutions to my wall, nor revisit those commitments on a regular basis. Yet now I take the time to reconsider them, they seem to have been pretty effective over the last 12 months in changing the way I’ve approached things. Do More Short Adventures On the theme of adventuring, I…
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Getting Perspective Down Under (Plus, My One Big Resolution For 2015)
Of the many reasons I came to Australia, the most fundamental was a growing need to let go of the habits and routines I’d fallen into. Tenny and I officially migrated to the UK in 2011 as a married couple, driven largely by the idea that two British citizens would be better than one when it came to our future together, whatever it might hold. The bureaucracy involved would tie us here for a minimum of three years. Inevitably, the original reasons were smothered as reality took over, and after experimenting with a year in London and a year in the Lake District we finally found…
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5 Easy Ways To Massively Boost The Watchability Of Your Travel Videos
Here’s five easy ways to improve the quality of your video footage when you’re on the road. Follow these pointers and the watchability of your travel videos will skyrocket. The text is packed with links to video tutorials on each specific shooting-related topic, so bookmark and study at your leisure. Tip #1: Know your camera. You wouldn’t bake a cake without a recipe. And you wouldn’t jump in the sea without learning how to swim. Why, then, would you begin a filmmaking project without a basic knowledge of videography? It happens all the time. If you don’t know how to focus, how to expose,…
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These 5 Secrets Will Make Your Travel Videos Approximately 100 Times Better
Secret 1: Know your story. Know it well before you set off. Good films begin with a clear question and travel towards an answer through a series of shorter scenes linked together, each of which reveals something new — just as in a play. Focussing on this will help you to shoot what’s relevant, not just what looks nice, with the bonus of saving you untold hours in the edit. Travels are often filmed but seldom edited because the footage all-too-often doesn’t cover the key points of a clear story. I found this the most difficult thing of all when…
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5 Lessons Every Adventure Filmmaker Should Learn About Storytelling
Without a story, your adventure film will fall flat, no matter how interesting you think it is. This article is a crash-course in the building blocks of story, specifically for adventure filmmakers. No two journeys are the same, and so no two videos will tell quite the same story. But regardless of the specifics of your project or your filming ambitions, the same key considerations will make your film as successful as possible. 1. First, Find The All-Important Big Question Remember the age-old business concept of an ‘elevator pitch’, in which you have ten seconds to convince a perfect stranger that they…
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Some Crucial But Overlooked Elements Of Making A Good Adventure Film
A great number of expeditions and adventures are filmed, especially now the equipment to do so is cheap and accessible. But few projects ever reach the screen. This begs the simple question: Why are so many expedition film projects unsuccessful? The art of filmmaking is broadly misunderstood. It’s not just ‘photography with movement’. That’s cinematography, not filmmaking. Having a video camera doesn’t make you a filmmaker, in the same way that having a dictionary doesn’t make you a writer. Whether my own film Janapar is or isn’t a good film is not for me to say – so far, preview audience reactions…
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Karun: A Source To Sea Journey Along Iran’s Longest River
Today I’m very pleased to be able to share with you the first of a couple of teaser videos of Karun, the film I’ve recently been working on. For those who missed it, Leon and I travelled to Iran in the spring of 2014 in order to follow the longest river in Iran. This film, which we’ve named after the river, was originally intended to be a cultural exploration with the river itself as a mere conduit to our experiences, but things didn’t quite go to plan – as is so often the case with adventures in general, but particularly…
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Something’s Happening In The World Of Adventure. And I’m Not Sure I Like It
Let me tell you a little story. A couple of years ago I was invited to give a talk in London. The details were vague, but the gist was this: a small, select group of people would really like to spend a couple of hours hearing about my adventures. In return for my talk, they would give me an envelope containing enough cash to cover my living costs for another couple of weeks. I agreed. I needed the money. (Typical writer.) The talk, it turned out, was not what I expected. I delivered it to precisely three people. It took…