Konnichiwa means hello in Japan. These rather scary looking inhabitants
of the Suzuka race circuit were waiting for us inside one of the tyre wall barriers at the Spoon corner. The impending typhoon and Jules Bianchi's
crash made this a rather sombre week. Otherwise it was good to be in a
new country and meet some of the locals who are all very enthusiastic
race fans. Kampai (Cheers) and Arigato (Thank you) were about the only words of Japanese that I managed to pick up, very useful in the local bars..!
From the little town of Adler just south of Sochi, this view looking out
across the Black Sea was waiting to greet us one evening after we had finished at the track.
The race circuit is built
within the complex of buildings that housed many of the winter Olympic
events and even attracted the Russian President Vladimir Putin who
turned up to watch the end of the race on the Sunday. This caused mass hysteria with security, snipers and a fly past featuring several MiG fighters. We even had cameras inside the MiG's with 3 live feeds as they flew over the circuit.
We completed filming and post production on a short film documentary for the LCC Lakes Christian Centre based in Windermere, Cumbria who celebrate their 90th birthday this
year.
Sarah Tyson who produced and directed the film had come up with a short script that took us from the early 20th century right up to the modern day. Shooting was done over a couple of days at various locations around the south lakes including the Langdale Valley, Ambleside, Windermere and Bowness.
We also used some of our own library footage filmed around Lake Windermere, and editing was completed on time in three days. The film has an original music score composed by local musician John Wright who did a fantastic job of scoring his piano sounds to a version of the edit that wasn't quite completed. He captured the feel of the film beautifully.
