The Fell Runner

Phillip and I were hunting for an idea that we felt had depth to it. We explored a few different avenues, however kept coming back to Fell Running due to Phillip’s dads connection to the sport. He was a Fell Runner in his youth and hearing about it gave us plenty of inspiration. It’s a relatively unknown sport which doesn’t have a huge following, and this is something that really attracted us to the project.

As we started to learn more about the runners and the sport itself we were hugely inspired by the great lengths and feats of endurance these athletes go to when training and competing, often alone miles from anywhere. It’s a personal pursuit and battle against one’s own will.

We were introduced to Calum through a mutual friend and from the initial telephone conversation where he generously gave us an hour of his time to talk all things fell running, we knew he was the right man for the job.

Then came the pre-production, we spent a great deal of time researching the location and preparing a shot list and visual references. One of the main challenges was filming at high altitude because of the strong risk of clouds blowing in and being left with zero visibility. After a little searching, and turning to Calum for his knowledge of the area we found a beautiful tarn up near Helvellyn which was the perfect setting to shoot. To top things off Calum hadn’t ran that route before so it was fun for him to explore that with us (he says!).

We gave ourselves two days to film the project, recording the voice-over in a pub near Windermere and staying overnight before a 5am start the next day to catch first light. Lugging the Pelli cases and camera gear up steep mountain tracks was a real test on the team but everyone was up for the challenge and pushed on regardless for what ended up being a real labour of love!