In Your Shoes - Dylan Drummond

Monday: The Quiet Discipline of the Edit Suite

After twenty-plus years in the video production industry, I’ve learned that the real story often takes shape in the quiet of the edit suite.

Today is dedicated entirely to post-production, curating and grading a massive stills package from the Pittenweem Arts Festival. Festivals like this are a sensory delight, historic coastal light, vibrant galleries, and fleeting human interactions tucked into winding East Neuk alleys. Capturing that energy is only half the battle; the real craft lies in distilling hundreds of frames into a cohesive visual narrative that honors both the artists and the client’s brief.

When you’ve spent two decades behind monitors and viewfinders, colour grading and pacing become second nature. You stop looking at images simply as technical files and start treating them as emotional touchpoints. Today’s workflow is about tonal consistency: balancing the sharp Fife coastal sunlight with the ambient, intimate interiors of local pop-up venues.

By mid-afternoon, the timeline is refined, colour passes are locked, and the final export queue is running. It’s a focused start to the week, setting a high creative benchmark before production gears shift to motion and corporate storytelling tomorrow.

Tuesday: Storytelling That Counts – Henderson Loggie & Community Impact

Tuesday brings a shift from pure aesthetics to purposeful corporate storytelling. I spent the morning meeting with the team at Henderson Loggie to plan some video content I will be filming for them soon.

Last year, I produced a series of short documentaries highlighting what their first round of funding made possible for local charities and community groups.

Corporate video has evolved dramatically over the last two decades. The days of stiff talking heads and generic B-roll over stock music are long gone. Today, authority comes from authenticity. When filming community projects, my role is less about directing and more about creating a safe, comfortable space where people can share genuine lived experiences.

Sitting down with leadership teams like Henderson Loggie to translate corporate philanthropy into compelling, human-led screen content is one of the most rewarding facets of this job. We wrapped the meeting with clear shot lists, defined deliverables, and a unified production schedule for the new stories I will help them tell.

Wednesday: Fresh Talent and Creative Directing – Zack Gibson

Midweek this week is all about creative development and music video pre-production. Today kicked off the first major concept and logistics decisions for an upcoming video with a promising 17-year-old Dundee-based singer-songwriter, Zack Gibson.

Zack recently came off Kyle Falconer’s La Sierra Casa songwriting camp in Spain, and his raw songwriting chops reflect that mentorship. Working with emerging artists at this stage of their career demands a very specific production approach: you want to elevate their visual identity to an industry standard without stripping away the raw, authentic edge that makes them unique.

Today’s session focused on concept ideation, location scouting across Dundee, and locking in a visual palette that complements Zack's sound. At this stage, my twenty years of production experience serves as a practical compass. It’s easy for ambitious creative treatments to balloon out of scope; seasoned directing is about knowing exactly how to achieve cinematic production value efficiently through smart lens choices, lighting design, and narrative blocking.

We settled on a treatment that balances local and authentic locations for a new Dundee artist, with polished cinematic framing. Pre-production locked; cameras roll tomorrow.

Thursday: Fast Rhythms on Set and the First Assembly

Production days run on adrenaline, precise timing, and relentless problem-solving. Today was dedicated to shooting Zack Gibson’s music video across multiple Dundee locations before heading straight back to the studio for immediate ingestion and assembly.

On set, time is your most expensive asset. Muscle memory takes over: you anticipate lighting changes, keep talent comfortable and energized, and adapt on the fly when Scottish weather refuses to cooperate. We captured the core performance setups under controlled moody lighting, followed by natural-light narrative inserts that anchor the track’s emotional beats.

By late afternoon, the gear was de-rigged and every card was backed up onto redundant RAID drives. The evening was spent building the initial assembly cut. The thrill of cutting music videos is the freedom of rhythm: syncing cut points, utilising jump cuts, and finding visual counterpoints that breathe life into the melody. Seeing the track pair with the footage for the first time never gets old.

photo by Seany @capture_create_co

Friday: Client Collaborations and Screenings at V&A Dundee

The working week wrapped at one of my favourite creative environments in the city: V&A Dundee. Beyond its status as an architectural landmark on our waterfront, Kengo Kuma’s building provides an inspiring, dynamic backdrop for creative discussions.

The morning began with a coffee and a production planning meeting with a client on an upcoming, confidential campaign. After more than twenty years in production, I’ve found that stepping out of traditional boardrooms into vibrant cultural spaces fundamentally elevates early pre-production conversations. It encourages more ambitious visual thinking, clears away routine distractions, and sets a collaborative, imaginative tone before the camera package is even prepped.

Once our meeting wrapped, I headed through the museum to check in on Maggie’s: Architecture That Cares, the major exhibition celebrating 30 years of Maggie’s Centres.

Seeing one’s work integrated into a curated exhibition at Scotland’s design museum is always a proud milestone, but this particular commission holds deep meaning. I produced three films featured directly within the exhibition, documenting the vital work and unique architectural philosophy of Maggie’s across the UK.

Filming for Maggie’s requires a meticulous balance of cinematic craftsmanship and human empathy. While the physical centres, designed by world-renowned architects from Frank Gehry to Zaha Hadid, are striking, the true story is always the sanctuary they provide to people navigating cancer. Directing in these environments demands an intuitive, discreet footprint: listening carefully, putting contributors entirely at ease, and letting authentic, vulnerable moments unfold naturally without heavy-handed intervention.

Standing in the gallery and watching visitors pause, watch the films, and connect with those stories in a dedicated exhibition space was a powerful moment.

Looking back across the entire week, from fine-tuning festival grades and corporate philanthropy documentaries to directing emerging music talent and seeing finished films on display at the V&A, it captures the multifaceted reality of running a production company in Dundee. The technologies and formats evolve, but the core objective remains constant: telling compelling, human-led stories that endure.