My summer holiday this year was cut short. Just as I was relaxing away the stresses of a jam-packed summer, by the pool with my kids, I received the call to say the Sierra Leone trip I’d be waiting to plan had to go ahead – and it had to be now. We had been waiting to shoot this promo for Proactive Investors for quite some time and I wasn’t going to let the opportunity slip!
So I packed my bags, got a taxi to the airport, flew to London, got a taxi home, packed my bags, got a taxi to Heathrow and jumped on the next plane out to Sierra Leone. It was hectic but truly one of the most incredible experiences. Arriving at the airport was nothing else I’d ever experienced, there were people everywhere! It was overwhelming to say the least.
The site we were working on was well over 300km from Freetown airport, so I got my head down and was up at 5am to meet my driver Mr Vasalli to start the 6 hour trek through the jungle to the Sula exploration site. I saw some incredible sights on this journey, within 5 minutes I had my camera out of it’s bag and had started shooting. It was incredibly overcast and quite a dark day so I couldn’t really use an awful lot of footagebut I got some cracking stuff. One particular favourite was the trio on a motorbike. You gotta love those red slippers!

My brief was to shoot a promo, but with a cinematic feel to tell a story rather than sell a product. I shot with an FS700 a Canon 5d Mk3 and a Gopro3. I wanted the slow mo from the FS700, the versatility/small form factor of the 5d