Scout Studio

My first documentary, The Cull - Scotland’s Deer Dilemma, about the debate surrounding land management and red deer in the Scottish Highlands, has made its way onto Disney Plus. When I started making The Cull, I had no idea that it would be my first attempt at a feature film. I had no idea it would resonate with very different audiences around the world. I had no idea it would be my first foray into the very steep learning curve of independent film distribution. And six years (!) after production, I really didn’t think it would be the first film of mine to make it onto a big streaming platform. I really have learnt a lot making and sharing this film and I’m very grateful that it continues to surprise me with moments and milestones like this. Anyway - go watch! It’s trippy to have to wait through a 30 second Avatar advert before your own film loads. #thecull #disneyplus

Still buzzing! Cannot believe we took home Best Environmental Film at Banff. And the show goes on!!! We are beyond excited about our UK PREMIERE at @kendalmountainfestival in TEN days time!! It’s going to be really special to share this film on the big screen with home audiences for the first time. Tickets are just about still available so book now to avoid missing out!! DETAILS: SUNDAY 19th NOVEMBER 9.30am Kendal Brewery Arts Centre #sunliteye

‘Where can I watch your films?’ SO excited to finally have an answer for this question! All of our independent documentaries are now available to rent or buy ON DEMAND on the dedicated Scout Studio Player. Including - The Cull - Scotland’s Deer Dilemma The Eagle With The Sunlit Eye Scotland - Our Climate Journey The Pine Hunters Just head to scout-studio.vhx.tv to watch, or use the link in our bio. Just in time for some Christmas movie nights! 🌲🌿🦅🦌🎥 Photo credits - @finbarproduction @jonnywphoto @ebbflowmediauk #scoutstudio

A standout project from last year has just gone live - a Woodland Trust live session with @lyrband . We filmed L.Y.R, a group made up of Richard Walters, Patrick Pearson & Simon Armitage, as they performed two tracks in an ancient beech grove; ‘Redwings’, and their latest single, ‘Dark Sky Reservation’. We wanted to capture the atmosphere of the incredible location, and really embed the group’s performance within the space. Tom and I recce’d the location (we were given some coordinates and told to look for the mossiest beech trees we could find) and decided we should haul a comical amount of sound recording equipment, generators and cameras up to the site to ensure the highest possible quality of capture. Amazing effort from the whole team to pull this off, especially our soundie Josh who brought a full on studio into the woods. All in all, a special day in the forest, and to paraphrase Pat - it’s lovely to know that those trees have now witnessed a gig as well as everything else they may have seen these last few hundred years. You can watch the full film on the @woodlandtrust YouTube channel. Thanks to @anya.wilding for the lovely behind the scenes captures, and to @sambmanning for pulling this all together. Director - 👋🏻 DOP - @tomkirkman AC - @samfack Sound - @patchworkstudios BTS - @anya.wilding

So I’ve just learnt that Instagram has become a bit more lenient with its aspect ratios - and to celebrate I thought I’d share a few of my favourite frames from The Pine Hunters, my short documentary from last year about a team of ecologists looking to find and record the last fragments of wild scots pine. From the very beginning @tomkirkman and I wanted to creatively approach how we presented the landscape of the Scottish highlands in the film, properly capturing the sense of scale that the mountains provide. @blazarlens.official anamorphic lenses were the obvious choice to help achieve this, despite not being the obvious choice for off grid documentary filmmaking. I was beyond pleased with the final result - the character and uniqueness of these lenses combined with the proper widescreen aspect gave such a unique feeling to the film, and for me it really brings home the emotional weight of seeing the last solitary pines, clinging on in what was once a vibrant, forested landscape.  Granted, it doesn’t work quite as well in the cropped lands of online video - but if you fancy seeing it on a big screen, I’m showing the film next Wedneday in Falmouth at the @polyfalmouth I’ll also be talking about my filmmaking journey that led me to tell this story.  Come along - it would be lovely to see some familiar cornish faces there! Tickets are available through the @polyfalmouth or in my bio. #thepinehunters

For me, making The Pine Hunters was part of a bigger picture - a journey I’ve been on over the last few years, to understand what we see when we look at landscapes. I’ve been told so often that Scottish hillsides are bare, barren. I always understood what that meant, ecologically speaking - but making this film was the first time I felt it. There isn’t much use of drone across the film, but I love this little section - it brings us out of the expedition for a second and let these vast landscapes sink in, just before we drop down into the glen and the search for the last pine truly begins. I’m going to be showing this film and speaking a lot more about my filmmaking journey at the @polyfalmouth next month, for the final leg of my @rgs_ibg speaker tour. It’s been so interesting to reflect on that question of what we see when we see a landscape - and how it makes us feel. If you’re in Cornwall, I’d love for you to join me for the evening to ponder it too. EVENT DETAILS - Wednesday 1st October, 7pm. Tickets available here or in my bio - /whats-on/event/3926/stories-from-the-wild-edges #whatsoncornwall #falmouthpoly #rgs #thepinehunters

🚨Eagles are coming to London!! 🦅🎥👀 Really happy to share that The Eagle With The Sunlit Eye, my feature documentary that explores the story of our relationship with the white-tailed eagle, the only apex predator ever reintroduced to the British Isles, is screening in London next month! The film is screening on the Saturday night of @londonnaturefilms in Hackney, followed by a Q&A where I’ll be on hand to answer any questions about the making of the film. So excited to bring this film to nature lovers in the capital. I thought I’d share a clip from the film to celebrate - this scene is designed to give audiences that incredible feeling of seeing a white tail for the first time… I hope you enjoy! If you’re in London that weekend, give me a shout - I’d love to see some familiar faces! 🦅🏙️ Cover Image - @ebbflowmediauk #sunliteye

Sharing ‘The Pine Hunters’ to different audiences down here in Cornwall recently, through the amazing @99pfilms , has got me reflecting on my filmmaking journey over the last six years. After seeing the precarious state of wild Scot’s pine in the Highlands, the discussion after the film (maybe inevitably) led to *the* question that seems to dominate discussions of rewilding, at least in Scotland, for as long as I have known about it - “Why don’t we just bring back wolves?” Trying to answer this question in 2019 led to my first long form film, ‘The Cull - Scotland’s Deer Dilemma’, and the first real steps in my journey as a director and environmental filmmaker. The more I delved into the topic, the more I realised that there isn’t a quick fix to issues surrounding our land - it’s complex, messy, and fraught with emotion and tension. ‘The Cull’ evolved from that realisation - it intentionally refuses to provide any ‘answers’ to the deer debate in Scotland, but gives people a chance to better understand the perspectives, emotions and context of each strongly held opinion across the story. That approach - to try and incorporate emotion and understanding into these stories of conservation and science - has become a cornerstone of my filmmaking. But when I was asked the question last night, I slightly surprised myself by giving an answer - that ultimately, we need to recognise that we are a part of these systems of nature as much as any other apex predator would be, and we can’t simply pass on our responsibilities in that system to a wolf or a lynx. If we did bring these animals back, I’m sure there would be fascinating ecological (and social) implications. But a few wolves won’t change the fact that we have been a central figure in sculpting, managing and protecting these landscapes for hundreds of years. Protecting nature isn’t something we can outsource. Wolves or no wolves, we still have the biggest role to play. If you fancy watching The Cull, it’s available on demand now through the link in my bio. I’d love to know your thoughts - do you have an answer? 🐺 📸 - @finbarproduction #rewilding #environmentalfilm

The Pine Hunters 🎥🌳 Two intrepid ecologists journey to find the loneliest Scots Pine in Britain to record the last of our ancient wild Caledonian forests. They hope that by rediscovering these places and reconnecting to their cultural and ecological significance, they can protect them. A beautifully shot, thought-provoking film playing as part of the 2025 @scottish_adventure_film_tour collection. Directed by @ted__simpson DOP- @tomkirkman Production- @scout_studio Supported by @treesforlifeuk #FilmTour #ScottishOutdoorandAdventureFilmTour #SOAFT #Scotland #CreativeScotland #AdventureFilm #NatureFilm

‘It was a wildlife conservation triumph - and then came the corpses.” When driving to a shoot last week, I put on a podcast from The Guardian - and heard some very familiar voices. The episode covered the story of lamb predation in the Scottish highlands - a story which I spent three years exploring, culminating in my 2023 feature documentary, The Eagle With The Sunlit Eye. The podcast encompassed some of the very same contributors that I had spoken to, and archive footage too. It was really interesting to hear their perspectives in a different format. I’d recommend giving the podcast a listen... or if you’d like some visuals too, The Eagle With The Sunlit Eye is screening this week twice! THURSDAY 23rd JANUARY Hope Valley Cinema https://lnkd.in/eqgAErj8 SATURDAY 25th JANUARY Wild Writers Festival - Peebles https://lnkd.in/e2Nwh-EU And of course, if you can’t make it to a physical screening, you can now rent or buy the film online, via our dedicated player. #sunliteye 📸 / @ebbflowmediauk

2024 has been a really fun year, working on some fantastic projects with amazing people. Some highlights include: - working with the amazing @coldhouse_ team, co-directing with @mattpycroft on a series of docs for @mammut in Switzerland 🎿 - creating a film for the @houseofhackney ‘We Are Nature’ Campaign 🌿 - shooting for WWF UK with @annarobertsdirector & @euella_isis 🐼 - making ‘The Pine Hunters’ with @tomkirkman and premiering at KMF, supported by @blundstone_uk 🌲 - making ‘Adapt’ for @berghausofficial , following the incredibly special stories of @_charlie_frenchie_ @_tcarus & @alicesainsbury.co ⛰️ - The Eagle With The Sunlit Eye playing at @wildscreenorg - filming another documentary for the National Trust which is going into the edit in January! 🦫 I feel really lucky to be surrounded by incredible talents and supported by such an awesome filmmaking community and wonderful clients, who encourage and empower me to make films I believe in. Here’s to more of that in 2025 🫡 📸 - @tomkirkman

Kendal Mountain Festival 2024, a whirlwind as always. Was lovely to catch up with lots of people, have a few pints and get soaked in between venues. I felt very lucky to present two films this year. It was special to watch the premiere of ‘Adapt’ with @_tcarus @_charlie_frenchie_ @alicesainsbury.co who were so gracious and open in sharing their stories this year. Thanks to @berghausofficial @millimetres2mountains & @edjackson8 for supporting the film. I loved seeing the reaction to ‘The Pine Hunters’, a film I’m really proud of. Thank you to @blundstone_uk for making it happen, and special shout out to @from.trees for an amazing pine tree tea tasting to accompany the film and the best impromptu Q&A! Seeing your films on the big screen and hearing people’s reactions to the stories you’ve worked hard to tell is such a special part of this job. It’s made better when we come together at events like KMF, and witness some of the work from so many brilliant filmmakers sharing stories from all over the outdoors. I’m really proud to be a part of this community! Thanks to @adventure_cal for papping me on the bothy stage during my chat with @beckivale 🙌🏻🌿🌲 @kendalmountainfestival