Documentary films · Glasgow · Since 2009

Stay long enoughand the storytells itself

Long Lens is a documentary house on the Clyde. We make feature films and series for broadcasters, producers and the occasional brave brand, and we make them slowly: years of access, a crew of three, and an edit that keeps one minute in every 267.

An empty tripod standing in tall dry grass under a pale sky — **Plate I.** The tripod stays when we go for soup. Carnbeg shore, day 212 of filming.

14films
11festival laurels
1edit room by the Clyde

Now in the edit: What the Water Keeps

Now in the edit · Feature documentary

What the Water Keeps

In 1952 the village of Carnbeg was drowned to make a reservoir for the city. In the drought of 2021 it came back up: the bridge first, then the kirk wall, then the old road. We were there for four summers, and so were the last two people who were born in it.

Running time: 90 minutes
Filmed: 2021–2025, 212 days
Picture lock: March 2027
Looking for: A festival premiere & sales

Chapter the First

The summer the water dropped

August 2021 · Glenmorven

In the dry August of 2021, the Glenmorven reservoir fell eleven metres in nine weeks. The first thing to come up was the bridge: three stone arches built in 1791, still holding their shape after sixty-nine years under water.

Morag read about it in a four-line paragraph on page 17 of a local paper. She drove up that Saturday with a camera, a tripod and a flask, and didn't come home for nine days.

−11.2 mwater level, 14 August 2021

23days the bridge stood dry

9days Morag stayed the first time

Aerial view of a reservoir at low water, pale dry banks striped with old waterlines beside dark water — **Fig. 1**Glenmorven from 120 metres, August 2021. The pale bands are seventy years of waterline.

Every summer since, we have gone back and waited for the water to drop. Some years it didn't. In 2022 we filmed for forty days and kept eleven minutes.

Chapter the Second

A village under the water

1949–1952 · Carnbeg

Carnbeg had seventy-four people, a kirk, a one-room school and a post office that opened on Tuesdays and Fridays. In March 1949 a letter from the water board gave them fourteen months to leave.

Upper Ward Water Board

Notice to occupiers

The Board, under the powers of the Upper Ward Water Order 1947, give notice that the lands, houses and buildings of Carnbeg will be required for the Glenmorven reservoir, and that occupiers shall give up possession on or before the first day of May, 1950.

J. A. Muirhead, Clerk to the Board

Received14 Mar 1949

In 2022 Rubina, our archive producer, found nine reels of 8 mm film in a loft in Biggar. The schoolmaster, Alasdair Kerr, had filmed the village's last three years: a harvest, a wedding, a sports day, and the kirk bell coming down on the back of a lorry.

The Kerr reels · found 2022
Reel 1	Hay harvest, August 1949	4:52
Reel 3	The last wedding, September 1950	5:10
Reel 5	School sports, June 1951	3:40
Reel 7	The bell comes down, April 1952	2:18
Reel 9	The water rises, November 1952	6:04
Nine reels in all		41:20

A roofless stone cottage among rocks and moorland grass beneath a mountain ridge at dusk — **Fig. 2**What still stands above the waterline in a dry year: the schoolhouse gables, 2023.

Chapter the Third

The witnesses

2023–2025 · The old road

Isobel Cairncross was eight when her family left Carnbeg. In September 2023, at ninety-one, she walked back across the bridge with her sister Nan, who is eighty-eight and walks faster.

“I always knew it was still down there. I just never thought I'd stand in it again.”
Isobel Cairncross, September 2023

An elderly woman in a grey dress walks away along a dirt track beside a dry-stone wall, holding flowers — **Fig. 3**Isobel on the old road. The kirk would have been on her left.

We filmed the sisters for three autumns. We never asked either of them to walk anywhere twice.

In October 2025 the rain came back and the water closed over the bridge again. The film is about what it kept.

Where the film is now

Rushes: 400 hours
Archive: 41 min of 8 mm, 1,260 documents
Picture lock: March 2027
Premiere: Open to festivals
Sales: All territories available

Ask for the 12-minute preview

The films · 2009–2025

Fourteen films. Not one of them finished on schedule.

We would rather miss a deadline than a moment. Commissioners have mostly forgiven us. Festival juries have been kinder still.

Black and white photo of trawl nets and floats heaped on a harbour quay in front of fishing boats — **Fig. 4**Girvan harbour, the second winter. Nets drying, nobody sailing.

2024 · Feature · 88 minutes

Slack Water

Three winters aboard the last inshore trawler working out of Girvan harbour, and the crew of four who refuse to sell her.

Grand Jury PrizeMarrowgate International Documentary Festival2024

Best CinematographyPenwick Non-Fiction Awards2024

Official SelectionHarrowfield Documentary Week2024

“A film with the patience of the sea and none of its mercy.”
Jury statement, Marrowgate 2024

2022
Tenement
Series · 4 × 58 minutes
One close in Govanhill, forty-one households, and a year of conversations on the stair.

Audience AwardCairnhollow Film Festival2022
2021
Signal Box
Short · 34 minutes
The last eleven months of a Highland signalman before his box is switched off for good.

Best Short DocumentaryGrey Isle Docs2021
2019
Undertow
Feature · 96 minutes
Six fishing families, one quota, and a court case that ran for fourteen years.

Official SelectionQuarrymoor Documentary Festival2019
Best EditingGrey Isle Docs2019
2016
Peat
Feature · 71 minutes
A family on Lewis cuts peat for one last spring, and argues about every bit of it.

Official SelectionMarrowgate International Documentary Festival2016
2013
Hold Fast
Feature · 82 minutes
A Clyde shipwright kept a diary of every launch for forty years. We read all of it.

Award for Observational FilmPenwick Non-Fiction Awards2013
2009
The Ferry Keeper
Short · 22 minutes
Our first film: one man, one ferry and one very long winter on the Kyles.

No laurels. Shown on four channels and in one village hall, twice.

How we make a film

We film everything. Then we keep almost none of it.

400hours

→ cut down to 90 minutes · What the Water Keeps

IRushes400 h212 shoot days over four summers
IILogged400 hEvery hour transcribed: 3.1 million words
IIISelects61 hThe moments we would fight for
IVAssembly9 h 40Everything left, in story order
VRough cut2 h 48The film appears, too long
VIFine cut1 h 52Every scene has to earn its place
VIIPicture lock90 minOne minute kept in every 267

Running time 400:00:00:00Kept 100%Stage I of VII

On the record.

Five promises a commissioner, a lawyer and a contributor can all hold us to. They are in every contract we sign.

^¹
Nothing is staged
If we missed it, we missed it. Nobody does anything again for the camera.
^²
Contributors see it first
Everyone in a Long Lens film sees the cut before a commissioner does, and can tell us what we got wrong.
^³
Every claim is sourced
A researcher checks each fact and keeps the paper trail. Your compliance team gets a fully referenced script.
^⁴
Archive cleared before it's cut
Rights, releases and licences live in one log, so legal sign-off takes days, not months.
^⁵
We keep the rushes
All the footage is archived for twenty-five years and offered back to the places we filmed.

For broadcasters, producers & brands

Bring us a slot, a question, or a place.

We make singles and series for broadcasters and streamers. We co-produce with companies who need Scottish access and a crew that can wait. And now and then we make a long film for a brand that can stand a hard question.

Three crew members in silhouette carrying a camera, tripod and kit cases on a beach against bright water — **Fig. 5**Fergus, Kirsteen and Ruaridh carry the kit off the Carnbeg shore at the end of day 212.

I
Commissions
Feature documentaries and series for broadcasters and streamers, from development through to final delivery.
Shape
1 × 90 min, or 3–6 × 60 min · 18–36 months
Budget
From £280,000
II
Co-productions
You hold the slot or the fund. We bring the access, the crew, the edit room and a clean delivery record.
Shape
Majority or minority · 12–30 months
Budget
From £120,000
III
Brand documentaries
Long films for organisations with a story that can survive a hard question. No scripts written by marketing.
Shape
20–60 min · 6–12 months
Budget
From £85,000
IV
Crew & edit
A three-person observational crew, kit, and two edit suites in Glasgow for productions filming in Scotland.
Shape
By the day or the week · edit suite £420 a day
Budget
From £1,450 a day

14films since 2009

9broadcasters in six countries

11festival laurels

0compliance complaints upheld

What lands on your desk

Masters delivered to your broadcast spec
5.1 and stereo mixes, plus music and effects
A fully referenced script for compliance
Archive and music clearance logs
Errors and omissions insurance
Subtitles and audio description

The people

Six people who are very good at waiting.

Small on purpose. The same faces turn up year after year, which is the whole point when you're asking someone to trust you with theirs.

Morag Fairlie
Founder · Director
Started Long Lens in 2009 with a borrowed camera and a ferry timetable. Has directed nine of our fourteen films.
340Longest waitdays for a contributor to say yes
Ruaridh Gow
Producer · Commissions
Ten years commissioning factual before he crossed the desk. Reads every budget twice and every contract three times.
19Longest waitmonths for one archive licence
Shona Baird
Editor
Cut Slack Water and Undertow. Watches every hour of rushes before she makes a single cut, then watches them again.
800Longest waithours of viewing before cut one
Rubina Aslam
Archive producer
Found the Carnbeg reels in a Biggar loft. Fluent in rights, releases and nineteenth-century parish handwriting.
11Longest waitweeks for a loft to be cleared
Fergus Lennie
Cinematographer
Shoots on long lenses from a long way off, so people forget he's there. Usually they do.
9Longest waithours in a hide for forty seconds
Kirsteen McAra
Sound recordist
Records the room before anyone speaks in it. Keeps a library of 2,300 Scottish silences, all labelled.
2Longest waitwinters for the right kind of wind

Contact

Tell us about a story that won't fit in a week.

We read every pitch ourselves and reply within ten working days. If it's urgent, ring the edit room. Someone is usually there.

Studio: The Bonded Store, 19 Kelvinhaugh Quay,
Glasgow G3 8XN, Scotland
Phone: +44 (0)141 496 0732
Pitches: [email protected]
Commissions: Ruaridh Gow · [email protected]
Hours: Mon–Fri, 9.30am–6pm. The edit room keeps longer ones.

Stay long enoughand the storytells itself

What the Water Keeps

The summer the water dropped

A village under the water

Upper Ward Water Board

Notice to occupiers

The witnesses

Where the film is now

Fourteen films. Not one of them finished on schedule.

Slack Water

Tenement

Signal Box

Undertow

Peat

Hold Fast

The Ferry Keeper

We film everything. Then we keep almost none of it.

On the record.

Nothing is staged

Contributors see it first

Every claim is sourced

Archive cleared before it's cut

We keep the rushes

Bring us a slot, a question, or a place.

Commissions

Co-productions

Brand documentaries

Crew & edit

What lands on your desk

Six people who are very good at waiting.

Morag Fairlie

Ruaridh Gow

Shona Baird

Rubina Aslam

Fergus Lennie

Kirsteen McAra

Tell us about a story that won't fit in a week.

Pitch us a story