Shoot Day - Using a drone

Me playing with the drone on the shoot

Phantom 1 drone

For our Thriller we needed to use a drone for some of the tracking shots of the runners and also some of the large, complicated shots, for example hovering above the woodland, looking into a clearing showing the two actors running at a birds eye view. This shot would not have been possible if it were not for the drone. Also the drone has steady cam, which means that when shooting the running shots, the camera was steady despite us having to run alongside the runner. The drone came in very handy throughout our shoot. 

Crew operating the drone

However the drone caused a lot of trouble and made our lives generally more difficult and prolonged the duration of the shoot dramatically. This is because the battery in the drone was very unreliable and kept on cutting out. Paul (who owns the drone) had to drive for 20 minutes to get another battery for us to use during the shoot which was very inconvenient. 

Me operating the drone

The drone we used was the Phantom 1 with a GoPro attached to its underbelly which filmed our woodland sequence from above, we also held the drone and ran alongside the female runner and filmed her legs, head and upper body running in different sequences as the drone is more portable than the Sony NX-5 and the drone has steady-cam which means that the camera shakes a lot less than it normally would when you're filming without steady-cam.

We flew the drone with the remote controller and watched the footage through a monitor that was connected to the GoPro on the bottom of the drone.