Ski and Do

If you’re passionate enough to take a small risk, there’s always someone out there who will take a punt on you.

I had failed my law paper at university - my mate Rocky walked into the room with a manual for a video camera.

It looked like the coolest thing in the world. He had a dream for us to go and make money with it.

I just loved the idea of going around shooting stuff, paid or not. So when Alistair Cunningham at Ski and Do holidays in Edinburgh agreed to pay us a small amount of money to travel with a group to the Alps and make a promo-film for his new ski company, we leapt at the chance and jumped on the coach.

We boldly called ourselves ‘Shots Productions’ but were alarmingly green. I remember Rocky and I reading the manual together at the back of the coach, hoping no one would see us.

Anyway, despite a huge amount of arguing over who would get to use the camera each day, we came back with some shots and edited the footage together in an old caravan on a farm in Perthshire.

It was a technical shambles - we even made the graphics using scissor cut-outs from the Ski and Do brochure and used Tippex to try and hide the scissors marks. But Alastair was delighted, paid up and now, as we loved telling everybody, we were in the film business!