Field Notes
Notes from behind the camera: commercial work for brands like Ruroc, Subaru and Superdry, individual stories from weddings we've filmed across the Cotswolds, the Forest of Dean and beyond, plus craft and process.
How Much Does a Wedding Videographer Cost?
What changes the price of a wedding film, what each format includes and how to decide which level of coverage fits your day.
ReadShould I Book a Wedding Videographer, or Will I Regret Not Having One?
I've filmed weddings since 2012, but when it came to my own wedding I wasn't sure I wanted a videographer there at all. Here's what changed my mind.
ReadWhich Wedding Film Package Should I Book?
It's one of the questions I get asked most, and the answer usually comes down to one thing: what do you think you'll want to watch again in ten years?
ReadWhy I Still Shoot Weddings With No Crew
A second or third operator means another stranger at your wedding. Most days, it's just me, and that's on purpose.
ReadThe Wedding You Didn't Know Happened
There's the wedding you remember, and the one happening around you the whole time. My job isn't to direct your day. It's to notice it.
ReadWhat Action Sports Taught Me About Filming Weddings
You can't ask a skier to do the jump again for the camera. You learn to anticipate instead of direct, and that's exactly the instinct I bring to a wedding day.
ReadWhy I Shoot Super8 Alongside Digital
Digital gives you control. Super8 takes it away. Somewhere in that trade-off is a texture no amount of colour grading can fake.
ReadThe same experience used to direct demanding international productions is brought to each wedding quietly, without turning the day into a set. These entries lead to James's commercial site, jamescampfilm.com.
North Until We Found Winter
Too late for the Southern Hemisphere and too early for the Alps, why we took Ruroc's campaign to the edge of the Arctic Circle.
Read on jamescampfilm.comThe Winter We Built Indoors
With no budget to return to the mountains, we recreated the beginning of a ski day in a Gloucester studio, and produced one of Ruroc's fastest-selling launches.
Read on jamescampfilm.comFrom the Desert to the Roof of the Andes
My introduction to Ruroc took me from Chilean vineyards and cactus-covered valleys to the thin air beneath Aconcagua, capturing the stories surrounding one of the brand's biggest campaigns.
Read on jamescampfilm.comHow We Turned a £6k Budget Into an Entire Winter Campaign
The brief was four helmet colourways. We came home with a brand film, an athlete documentary series, and enough content to carry Ruroc through the rest of the season, for around six thousand pounds. The measure of a good production was never the size of the budget.
Read on jamescampfilm.comA Wider View of Cinematography
A 12mm lens, a thirty-person crew, a £200k budget and two days spent mostly away from the camera changed how I understood the role of a DP.
Read on jamescampfilm.comThe Architecture of Neymar+
How Superdry's internal studio team designed, choreographed and filmed a deceptively complex campaign in Paris.
Read on jamescampfilm.comThree Days in Iceland, Filming for the BBC
We were there for timelapses and GVs, commissioned for an Attenborough documentary. It remains one of the best three days of my career.
Read on jamescampfilm.comOne Corner at a Time: Following the Subaru Rally Team Across New England
In 2017, nobody flew me to America to make a film. I asked my best mate one question, mind if I bring a camera, and turned up with a Canon 60D bolted to a shoulder rig I'd built myself.
Read on jamescampfilm.comWhat Producing Records Taught Me About Directing Films
Long before weddings, I was behind a mixing desk, not a camera. The two jobs turned out to have more in common than I expected.
Read on jamescampfilm.comCamera Bag or Flight Case: What Changes When You Travel to Shoot
Big productions mean flight cases, and flight cases mean ATA Carnets, the paperwork that lets you bring professional kit across a border without paying import duty on it. A lot of the work I did with Ruroc was different: just going away with friends and a genuinely agile rig, which starts to feel less like commercial filmmaking and more like being an enthusiast who happens to have a camera.
Read on jamescampfilm.comEnjoyed reading? Let's plan your film.