Muay Thai at Oran Mor

Sunday the 19th of September was another first for me when I produced my first sporting event shoot. The event was a Muay Thai kickboxing event organisesd by Glasgow's Griphouse Gym. It was held at the stunning Oran Mor and was jumping. It was a hot and sweaty affair from beginning to end. Some of the fighters got very sweaty too (sorry bad joke).

Having spent the majority of the last 3 years shooting shooting and editing events videos I've become pretty competent at the whole thing. The principal is more or less the same no matter what the event is. It doesn't matter if it is a 3 minute Secret Wars video or a 5 hour Muay Thai event. The bottom line is that you have to show what is going on. Unlike a Secret Wars video, though, editing something like this is not really about being "stylish" or fancy or creative. Its a simple case of what I like to call mechanical editing. Basically you start by synching up the 3 cameras in your timeline then you start the process of cutting the "crap" footage camera by camera. With three cameras on this (one hard, two ringside) it was just a case of removing the crap from the two ringside cameras with the hard camera being the last resort camera. Then it is just a case of tidying up and picking the best shots when you have the choice. To quote that annoying meerkat, "simples".

The shoot was a test of stamina. Like I mentioned before the venue was hot and we were filming for 5 hours, more or less continuously. My brother Keith (ringside cam) and myself were knackered by intermission. The hard camera operator Alastair Adamson had the opposite problem. His body was ceased up by the end. If I ever film anything this long again I'll take a fourth operator so we can get rest periods.

Overall it was quite a challenging shoot and it wasn't without its mistakes. None of which were too serious and with multiple cameras they are easily covered. Here is a playlist with some sample fights of the night. I was only going to stick up a couple but they are proving to be mega popular so I may just stick them all up in the future. Till next time, Later.



Thanks goes out to Keith Wood and Alastair Adamson. Without their suffering this wouldn't have happened.