HISTORY IN THE MAKING

It's been a fun week with lots going on in Edinburgh, and a very productive week filming it all and cutting it together in my edit suite.

In June this year the young students that I teach film to every Saturday filmed six movies that they had written themselves. It's taken a while to edit them all but this week the music soundtracks were added and the films were completed. The students mission was to produce all the films without any dialogue, and still tell a story. This they achieved remarkably well, and some of these students are only six years old! Click here to see one of the films made by the teenagers.

Wednesday was a manic day of filming in two locations. The first was incredibly exciting. The Tour of Britain cycle race was on stage four out of Edinburgh to Blyth, in Northumberland, about 110 miles. Their route was to pass very close to where I live, and so I decided to position myself on a long straight section of road on the outskirts of Edinburgh to film the action. My guess was they would attempt to sprint here.

When I got to the location there was no one about, and I felt slightly disappointed that there weren't lots of cheering crowds, but all the better for me as I could pick and choose were to film from. I settled on a pedestrian crossing island in the middle of the wide road. However, this was to prove hair raising!  It was all over in seconds, but as they rocketed toward me they did indeed sprint, then decided to swap sides of the road, then back again, then split in two to go either side of me. It was a WOW moment. Click here to see the result.

Just an hour later I was positioned on the embankment of a railway line. Not just any railway line, but the longest section of railway to have been built in the UK for over 100 years. This new line reopens a stretch closed in the 1960s by Beaching, and stretches 30 miles from Edinburgh to Tweedbank in the Borders. To celebrate, a steam train, called the Union of South Africa, with Pullman coaches carrying  HM the Queen and several lucky people, rumbled and tooted its way passed me. Like the cycle race, it was over quickly, but click here of you'd like to see the historic moment.

All in all an exciting week of history in the making.