A reflection on why lens choice is really a question of camera position, perspective and audience proximity rather than simply focal length. Using examples from The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford and The Revenant, the piece explores how distance between camera, subject and environment changes the emotional relationship of a shot, influences performance and shapes whether the audience feels like an observer or participant.

A reflection on the shot design, blocking and visual language of The Last Hike, exploring how camera distance, landscape, movement and memory were used to express the changing relationship between Dan and his mum. From detailed pre-production plans to the realities of weather, time and performance, the piece looks at how the film’s visual grammar evolved on location and how the Yorkshire landscape became part of the emotional architecture of the story.

When I was a kid growing up in South Yorkshire, Japan felt like the furthest place from home.

Not just in miles. In mood. In rhythm. In the way a place can exist in your imagination long before you ever set foot there.

It was the country I saw in photographs, books and documentaries and quietly filed away as somewhere alien. Somewhere impossibly distant. That eclectic mixed of Pink Neon and Shinto shrines. Vending machines and mountain roads. Silence and noise - very muchy sitting right next to each other without any need to explain themselves.

We didn’t arrive at Northlight Studios by chance. Previous test footage had already shown us how well the space worked for intimate, performance-led interview work. The scale, texture and industrial character of the studio gave us authority without artifice — exactly what this story needed.

Thanks to Anton/Bauer this unit has just landed on my desk. It’s an EDEN. Power is one of those quiet problems in filmmaking. You don’t notice it when everything works, but when it doesn’t, the whole set grinds to a halt. Coming up as an AC, power was always on my mind and would keep a run bag fully stocked with fresh batteries, always ensuring we had some charging, roattaing as required.

The photograph front and centre of this post is from early, early in my career. I’m cleaning what, at the time, was one of the very best HDV cameras I could get my hands on. It felt like serious filmmaking equipment. And in many ways it was. It was the tool that allowed me to start experimenting, learning how light behaved, how movement affected a scene and how a camera could begin to tell a story.