I am also a director at Ultimateaddons, we design and manufacture motorcycle technology accessories from Ullapool.  The shoot was based on new product from Ultimateaddons their premium motorcycle heated grips.  As a motorcyclist myself I have ridden a lot of roads in the Highlands and one of my favourite spots is Loch Tarff on the east side of Loch Ness, a very short section beside the loch ticks a lot of boxes in a small area.  

With winter fast approaching the date was set for filming,  motorcycle was kindly provided by Mitchells Motorcycle in Inverness a gorgeous Yamaha Tenere T7 Rally Edition and my friend Andrew MacDonald would be riding it.  Andrew has recently passed his IAM test and has been riding for Highland Blood Bikes providing a vital service to the NHS.  

We started to work on a storyboard for the shots that we wanted to get and the sequence would be most efficient for filming.  This would be the first shoot using the Ronin 4D, sadly the car rig that I had ordered got delayed so would only be able to use the Ronin handheld. To make the most out of the day there would be three crew for the shoot, myself directing and operating the Canon C300mk3 / Inspire 2, Connor on Ronin and Mhairi would be taking photographs.  

The day before the shoot like always was a day of charging 1001 batteries, clearing memory cards and double checking everything and then packing each bag.  

An early start we left Ullapool and headed for Inverness where the temperature was rapidly dropping the closer we got to Inverness.  

Setting up the microphones on the bike and mounting the accessories onto the Yamaha Tenere was the first port of call.  We got the GoPros mounted to Andy, both on helmet and on chest harness so we could capture two onboard shots as the handlebar grips would be low on the chin mount and wanted to ensure we could capture them.   The plan was to send Andy over the backroad down  to Loch Tarff but as winter had arrived and there was a lot of ground frost we decided against it as pretty slipy under foot. 

Leaving Mitchells and heading down Loch Ness, I really did forget how vast the loch is, felt like forever to get down to Fort Augustus and that was the road very quiet.  Have seen a lot of Loch Ness over the last couple of years with filming for BBC.   

Andy was set to pull into the layby on the loch and when we arrived we sent him further on so we could capture some more single track footage while we setup the equipment.  

We ended up shooting in sequence between both cameras, the Ronin is good and can see a lot of potential with up and coming shoots and was such a shame that the car rig never arrived in time (actually arrived later that day).  

Andy was a true gent, it was bitterly cold and he never complained once, there is a lot of retakes in filming for many reasons and even the best of us can get frustrated at times.  

The team were happy to work through and to capture as much as possible, Mhairi was great on the stills, taking them during filming but also everytime we stopped to change scene / location she was straight on it back on getting one some great product photographs.