Anna McPherson

Programme Leader BA (Hons) Contemporary Film Making in the Highlands & Islands networked degree programme.

Anna enjoys leading and teaching on the degree programme and supporting students in developing their voice as visual storytellers.  With support from the experienced teaching team and support staff, she finds it a privilege to share the journey with students as they develop their critical thinking and praxis in becoming confident in their craft and creating their identity as a filmmaker.  The degree offers students the flexibility of studying remotely and this suits a more mature student profile.  She consistently reflects on pedagogical practices, informed by the UHI Learning and Teaching Enhancement Strategy and strives to develop her teaching based on student feedback, to support individual student needs and build a sense of community across our student co-hort.  Anna is at her happiest supporting students filming on location, encouraging creativity, problem-solving and being inspired by students’ resilience and tenacity.  She is an advocate for sustainable filmmaking practice, in response to the climate emergency and is informed by the UHI Partnership Carbon Management and Sustainability Plan.  She maintains a membership with the Green Film School Alliance (GFSA), for the degree programme, engages in knowledge exchange and shares best practice with international film schools. She incorporates the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals into her teaching.  She is a member of UHI’s Green Champions Network. 

Anna encourages students to be open, vulnerable and authentic, to network and collaborate with your peers, nurture connections with your local community, value the importance of archiving history and to tell stories that are important to you and your community.  Actively seek out professional development opportunities to demonstrate your initiative and ambition, this will help you to stand out from the crowd.  Watch lots of films across a wide genre (not just ones that you enjoy); World cinema, other language films, frequent your local cinema, read scripts and develop a good habit of creative writing. Film content everywhere you go! 

Prepare to fail.  Don’t strive for perfection. 

“It’s not about the destination, it’s about the journey,” Ralph Waldo Emerson.   

Anna believes it’s important to have a filmmaking degree at UHI, as it gives students based in the Highlands and Islands the opportunity to study remotely and not have to relocate to the Central Belt.  The Highlands and Islands provide a rich tapestry of history, heritage, landscape and diverse stories that need to be captured.  Many broadcasters and streaming companies are looking for more homegrown ‘Scottish’ content, and the degree is ideally placed for students to succeed.  The degree also supports a thriving creative community which increases capacity across the Highlands and Islands.  Alumni have setup as independent filmmakers who have exhibited at film festivals, some award-winning and others are employed in industry, e.g. Production Co-ordinator at Disney+.  Read what our students say about the degree programme here. 

She values inter-disciplinary working across the creative industries at UHI in lens-based media, drama, music and creative writing and nurtures connections through professional dialogue, across the subject network.  Anna has been involved in reapproval events for other course areas and numerous SLWGs, which have an impact on internal processes and aim to enhance the student experience.  She oversees quality procedures on the degree programme, attends Exam Boards and regularly attends a Programme Leader forum to share best practice across the subject network. 

She enjoys collaborating creatively with her colleagues and is involved in the delivery of inter-disciplinary Inductions, the inaugural Creative Industries showcase attended by Scottish actor/author/presenter Alan Cumming and the Creative Insights video podcast series.  

She is actively engaged in developments and trends in industry, including the emergence of new technologies, virtual production and Generative Artificial Intelligence and the opportunities and threats this may pose.  She has a wealth of industry contacts which she uses for guest speakers and is in frequent contact with industry stakeholder partners, including; Shetland Arts, ScreenSkills, Creative Scotland, IntoFilm, DYW Scotland, Screen Highland, Eden Court, BAFTA-Albert, Highland Climate Hub, STV, BBC, MG Alba, ITV, OpenBrolly, HIE, Studio Lambert, various independent production companies and theatre companies across Scotland and more.  She is actively engaged in creating opportunities to enhance the student experience by organising set visits, work experience, field trips to film festivals, engaging in subject network projects like the Woven Memories Project (2026) with Highland Hospice, Ardross Castle documentary film (2026) and the development of a new Inverness Fringe Festival in 2026. 

She is actively engaged in school's liaison and runs CPD teacher training and film jams for secondary school pupils at Tern House, in partnership with IntoFilm and DYW Scotland.  This has also created an opportunity for students to be involved in the production of a music video with St. Clements Primary School and Ross County FC in Dingwall.  

Anna has a wealth of experience working in the industry across Film and Television production in various production roles up to the responsibility of Production Co-ordinator including; Disneyland TV Productions, Rebus, Season 3 - STV (2006), various BBC Drama Productions – Tartan Shorts, Monarch of The Glen, River City, Endemol UK (reality TV), On A Clear Day (2005) directed by Gaby Dellal, Wild Country (2005) directed by Ros Borland, Tern TV, Mentorn Scotland, True TV, RDF Media, MTV and others.  She has filmed in the UK, Channel Islands, US, France, Germany, Singapore and Nepal and has organised international film shoots on the Isle of Man and in South Africa.  She then setup as an independent filmmaker producing corporate content for clients across different sectors including; oil and gas safety, health and fitness, local authority, education, TSi, live events, commercial products and services predominantly in the whisky industry. She has filmed music videos with artists in Moray and the Highlands and short documentaries for historical and heritage events around the Northeast coast including the Burghead Clavie and the Gansey Project across her native Moray and the Highlands. 

Anna is inspired by people and place, archiving stories for future generations, preserving the Doric dialect and is engaged in her local communities.  She continues to develop a slate of documentary films and short drama projects, and music videos as part of her freelance work.  She is inspired by early ethnographic work in social history, of Shetland documentary filmmaker, Jenny Gilbertson, who filmed crofting communities. Similar work of Mike Russell during the Cinema Sgìre project documenting life in the Outer Hebrides in the 1970s and is fascinated by Charlie Chaplin’s links with Nairn.  She enjoys binge watching Ben Fogle’s lifestyle documentaries including Scotland’s Sacred Islands series and true crime documentaries.  She enjoys a wide variety of films from arthouse cinema to horror, including work directed by; Alfred Hitchcock, Wes Anderson, Werner Herzog, Wong Kar-wai, Steve McQueen, James Wan, Fernando Meirelles, Danny Boyle, Darren Aronofsky, Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Alejandro Iñárritu, Christopher Nolan, Mira Nair, Agnès Varda, Lynne Ramsay and Kathryn Bigelow.  Best Scottish film must be Restless Natives (1985) directed by Michael Hoffman.  She enjoyed a trip to the Western Isles hotel on Mull recently, where she visited the filming location of I Know Where I’m Going (1945), Powell and Pressburger’s romantic comedy.  She’s particularly fond of Eden Court’s La Scala cinema and its homage to the original La Scala cinema in Inverness, which ran from 1913 to 2001.  She enjoys visiting the Moray Playhouse in Elgin, which was frequented by director Christopher Nolan during the production of The Odyssey, Grosvenor Picture Theatre, IMAX and Glasgow Film Theatre, the Scotsman Picturehouse in Edinburgh, BFI Southbank and the Zoo Palast in Berlin. 

Hobbies

Watching films in the cinema, going to film festivals, live music gigs, comedy gigs, visiting museums and art galleries, hillwalking, cycling, travelling, finding new coffee spots, gardening, upcycling, beachcombing and learning to crochet. 

Academic

External Examiner for the BA Digital Film and Content at the Grimsby Tech Partnership since 2023.  

BA (Hons) Contemporary Film Making in the Highlands & Islands degree programme since 2015, modules include: 

• SCQF L7 Single Camera Production 
• SCQF L7 Intro to Post-production 
• SCQF L7 Stories from the Highlands & Islands: Making a Film - Production 
• SCQF L8 Remote & Rural Film Making in a Highlands & Islands Community 
• SCQF L8 Post-production Techniques 
• SCQF L9 Fictional Narrative Film Project 
• SCQF L10 Major Film Project 
• SCQF L10 Advanced Post-production Techniques 
• SCQF L10 Freelancing Skills for the Digital Filmmaker 

Internal Verifier HNC Photography.  

Taught across FE and HE in Digital Media Computing and dissertation supervision for BA (Hons) Interactive Media at UHI Moray.   

Carbon Literacy Training (2025)  

Scotland’s Entrepreneurship and Enterprise Educator’s (SEE) Programme (2025) 

Embracing Innovation: Leveraging AI – UHI Inverness (2024)  

Creative Industries Safety Passport (CRISP) – BECTU (2024)  

QNUK Level 3 Award in First Aid at Work (RQF) (2023)  

Programme Leadership - Advance HE (2022)  

Teaching Qualification in Further Education (TQFE) – Dundee University (2015) 

GTCS registered (2021) 

BA (Hons) Film Production – Paisley University (2000) 

Community education in delivering filmmaking workshops at various locations across Moray. 

Drone operator licence (current). 

Conversational German. 

SCWF L4 Gaelic for the Workplace – UHI (2023) 

Awards

• Highly Commended in Best Personal Academic / Learning Support HISA Awards (2024) 
• Nominated in Best Personal Academic / Learning Support and Most Engaging Online Lecturer HISA Awards (2023) 
• Speyside Cooperage Visitor Centre interactive film experience - Best Event (2015) - Moray Speyside Festival 
• Finalist – Moray Business Women’s Award (2012)  
• Nepal Trust documentary film - Best Documentary (2012) - Institute of Videography Awards 
• Burghead Clavie documentary film - Best Film, Moray Film Festival (2010)  
• Wee Man, Here You! (That’ll be Right) music video – Runner Up Best Comedy, Channel 4 (2006). 

Industry/Voluntary: 

• BECTU Member 
• BAFTA Scotland Member 
• Member of Eden Court’s Filmlands Network 
• Curated and hosted Moray Film Club 
• Voluntary Trustee and Communications Director, Nepal Trust (current) 
• Voluntary Treasurer, Moray Baby Bank 
• Board Member Institute of Videography