It allows us fly from outside to inside, get close or fly through obstacles to make a shot more dramatic and create long takes. The drones’ propellers are also encapsulated which makes it very safe for interior projects like the Morley Glass Video.
The drone is completely manual and doesn’t hold its position like a normal drone and you can flip it, it’s the same sort of tech that’s used in drone racing.
What’s more is the footage that comes out of the drone is completely unstabilised. We use a gyroscope to record the flight movement and use that data in post-production to produce a perfectly smooth stabilised shot.
We initially went to look at the site and discussed what would be visually the most impressive route to showcase Arbeta and to tick all the boxes for the brief.
We walked the route several times and filmed it from the ground before creating a flight plan back in our office.
On the day of the shoot, we walked the route again to check everything was looking spot on and setup a station where we would fly from.
We began by making test flights and fine tuning the speed and timings. After around 5 short flights we were happy with the route. It was really a waiting game chasing the best light.
The large atrium in Arbeta is flooded with natural light and we wanted to capture an option with natural daylight and during golden hour. Manchester being Manchester provided us with in out cloud all day so made the timings tricky.
We ended up doing about 20 takes finding the best light. The take used in the film ended up being the flight we flew on the day!
The only thing we did to make it more engaging was by adding time remapping – the original take was over 3 minutes, and we ramped the speed throughout the video to get to the more exiting parts quicker.
We tend to use the FPV drone mostly for real estate, events, and sport. We generally use conventional drones for the other applications.