A BAFTA for best director on Echo Wall!

A few weeks ago I mentioned that BAFTA Scotland had nominated me for best director for Echo Wall in their new talent awards. On Friday Dave and I (and our families) were in Glasgow in a packed grand theatre for the BAFTA ceremony. I had totally convinced myself that much as it was absolutely amazing to have been nominated here, we could never win this award.

Well, it turned out I was wrong about that. The host opened the Best Director award envelope and read out that the winner was me. After lifting my jaw from the floor I headed for the stage wishing I had made a ‘just in case’ speech after all. Winslet would have been proud.

We heard that BAFTA’s jury had liked how personal Echo Wall was as well as the scenic beauty of the places we filmed. I am still feeling a touch bowled over by all this. But it’s brilliant for sure to get this recognition. 

This week Echo Wall also won best Scottish film at the Fort William Mountain Festival and best film at the Glasgow Mountain Film Festival.

Claire nominated for a Bafta!

I got home the other day to find Claire on the phone looking very cheery. Turns out it was Bafta Scotland on the phone saying she had been nominated for best director in the Bafta new talent awards for Echo Wall. Both of us were fairly dumfounded by this news to say the least.

It’s brilliant though that the quality and commitment of Claire’s work on Echo Wall has been recognised at such a high level. Claire has been creative all the time I’ve known her. But with Echo Wall she did what most others wouldn’t manage, she took it to another level by shooting footage that was extremely arduous and ultimately frightening to get, not to mention a year of long days and nights of work and all our savings and earnings to turn it into a finished film. I’m really pleased for her.

So next month the kilt will be coming out for the Bafta ceremony in Glasgow!

Recieving our awards for Best Film and Best Climbing Film at the Edinburgh Mountain Film Festival last October.

Echo Wall is here!

Claire has been busy as a bee this week and all pre-orders have been dispatched - thanks to all who bought them in advance, we hope you enjoy the film!

Awards for Echo Wall!

Wow, where to begin. What a weekend.

Our first film, Echo Wall, premiered at the Edinburgh Mountain Film Festival last night and I discovered a new-found respect for Dave for doing his lectures. I figured I would be nervous getting up to introduce the film but not that nervous! I can't believe Dave gets up on stage regularly and talks for an hour or so without notes. If any of you saw me just before the evening started with a crazed look on my face and you could see the whites of my eyes, it was because I was so flustered I managed to drop and lose my notes - thank you Pete for finding them! It was only a couple of paragraphs but I could just not remember them for love nor money. This was, by far, more nerve-wracking than watch Dave crank his way through the crux on Echo Wall. Kudos to Dave and any public-speakers out there.

To say I was blown away when it was announced later that we'd won the Alien Rock award for Best Climbing Film would be an understatement. But when Sir Chris Bonington presented the Tiso Best Film award to Echo Wall, well that was just unbelievable and I was left literally speechless, as anyone in the audience who seen me stare blankly at it in disbelief would probably agree. It's very hard to get your head round, especially when we were not expecting it; for heavens sake, I only turned a camera on for the first time last March! Needless to say, we're both dead chuffed and thanks to EMFF and everyone who came along to make an amazing evening.

Echo Wall - good enough to eat! Photo thanks to Sarah Hyde (and Shona!).

Echo Wall released this weekend!

This Sunday our first DVD release Echo Wall premieres on Sunday evening (October 19th) at the Edinburgh Mountain Film Festival. There are a few tickets left so you can still get a seat. We will hopefully have the first DVD copies of the film available then too. If our stock arrives on time we will be dispatching DVD orders from the site early next week.

Thereafter, Dave is going on a lecture tour of England with dates at the Cotswold stores in Harrogate on Monday 21st, Manchester Tues 22nd and Preston on Oct 24th where he will be talking about Echo Wall and showing some sections of the film. Full details are on Dave’s lecture page here.

Echo Wall premiere

Rare Breed’s first DVD release, Echo Wall is premiering at the Edinburgh Mountain Film Festival on October 19th. Tickets for the premiere are selling very fast and it looks like they might only be available for another few days. So if you’d like to come along - get your ticket in now! The EMFF site has all the info you need to buy tickets.

The DVD is also released on October 19th. We are hoping to receive the DVD stock just before the EMFF premiere and have copies at the premiere, but if you want to be the first to receive a copy through the letterbox at home (wherever you are in the world), then just pre-order one from the shop. We use paypal to handle our shop transactions which accepts most credit/debit cards as well as a paypal payment itself.

If you want to find out more about the story of Echo Wall, you can find all the posts about the route and the film on Dave’s blog, and Claire’s blog. I’ve also posted the full credits here which has all the music from the soundtrack. We were very happy with our soundtrack, and each of our musicians meant a lot to us in different ways.

The late Martyn Bennett was always an inspiration, both through his tunes that got us psyched in cars and ipods on the way to mountains over the years, as well as by his lasting impression on us as a person.

Siren (aka Katy MacLeod, Dave’s sister) and DK & Solar (Katy’s partner Ronan) produced an impressive array of tracks for Echo Wall, matching the style of the footage very well, and working to a tight deadline. You can see more of their catalogue and DJ nights on their myspace sites (click their names).

We were really chuffed when Scotty from Elmo agreed to let us use If I Fall and Heaven on the film. The If I Fall running section is maybe our favourite part of the film and I’m sure you’ll agree the music certainly gets you fired up!

If you would like to purchase any copies of the DVD wholesale for your shop, just get in touch and we’ll arrange that.

We are Rare Breed

We are Rare Breed Productions; Claire and Dave MacLeod. For several years, we’ve been involved in loads of creative things. Claire studied fine art photography at ECA and later published lots of climbing photos in various magazines. She also organised events like the world’s first Slacklining masters last year. I’ve spent a fair bit of time in front of a film camera in films like E11, Committed, Stick It and other climbing films and always felt I’d like to make my own films. Then both of us got involved in graphic and web design running our respective internet shops – Claire selling hampers and me selling climbing films and clothing.

So we thought…

Why don’t we go for it and start making our own films, books, websites, events and make the photography we were doing a little more organised. So started Rare Breed.

We will be making all sorts of cool things for people out there, the first of which will be Echo Wall – the film documenting my ascent of one of the hardest trad routes in the world, in the rather lovely setting of the north face of Ben Nevis. But we also hope to shoot more film and photography for other businesses, as well as design websites, organise events and generally…

Create.