Alastair MacEwen is an award winning cameraman and director. His experience is unusually wide, ranging from conventional long lens cinematography with subjects such as humpbacked whales, Amazonian river dolphins and giant otters, elephants, lions and cheetahs through to the highly specialist techniques required for macrocinematography in series such as David Attenborough's 'Life in the Undergrowth. He has worked extensively with film (35mm and super 16mm) and has had considerable experience in Hi Def contrbuting to the award winning Hi-Def BBC series ' Planet Earth ', most of the 'Life of' series (including Life in the Undergrowth and Life in Cold Blood) and National Geographic's ' Strange Days on Planet Earth'. He is a zoology graduate starting his career writing and directing commercial documentaries then he moved into wildlife camerawork which was more in line with his interest in Natural History.
He has used an extremely wide range of equipment
from
starlight cameras, infra red sensitive cameras, motion
control
time lapse, probes,
snorkels, minicams, pole cams etc.. He has set up optical benches and
had a great deal of experience with microscopes and is familiar with
most microscope optical sytems.
He has used 16 and 35mm film cameras as well as a range of different
video cameras. His latest work has involved working with P2
Varicams and the Red.
He has filmed high speed sequences with a variety of different
cameras including the Photron SA1, SA2, Phantom HD, and Phantom
v640 high speed cameras.
He has done some of the things listed above up mountains like Mt Kenya and Mt Kilimanjaro and the Andes, in the flood plains of the Brazilian Amazon or the forests of Borneo. He has been up numerous trees, and quite a few creeks. He has recorded an incredibly diverse range of animals, plants, people and places.