AERIAL DOPS INTERVIEW
DYLAN GOSS
WORDS Adrian Pennington
H is first aerial credit was for Bad Boys , the original 1995 hit. Nearly 30 years on, Dylan Goss is one of a handful of go-to aerial cinematographers in the business. Name a blockbuster and you have probably seen his work. Among them are The Game, Titanic , Kundun , Pushing Tin , Up in the Air , Fast & Furious 6 , Elysium , San Andreas , Independence Day: Resurgence, Skyscraper , American Made , Avengers: Infinity War , First Man , Black Panther: Wakanda Forever , Free Guy and, just this year, The Fall Guy and Civil War . He has also shot aerials on shows you may not associate with sweeping vistas, like the Oscar-winning Crash and Funny Games, and considers himself equal parts technician and photographer.
“I grew up wanting to code computers and solder electronics. Back then, there weren’t YouTube videos telling you how to do it. I enjoyed figuring it out myself. So now, when we have to come up with solutions and custom integrations, I feel pretty comfortable doing that.” On a new untitled Paul Thomas Anderson feature, Goss had to adapt a gimbal to fit large 35mm VistaVision cameras which were never designed for aerial work. “Even though they are supposed to be mimicking digital news footage coming from a helicopter, so they could easily have shot digital, they were adamant about using VistaVision. We built this crazy rig to put an awkward camera inside that gimbal.” On another recent project, he helped design a 360 rig fit with six RED V-RAPTORs to capture shots to be used on a volume built by Lux Machina. “We took the existing gimbal design, worked out the geometry of the lenses and how they would work in sideways or portrait mode, and helped them understand the challenges of putting this on a helicopter. “You just learn how things work in an aircraft. Although there are remote- control options, everything needs to be wired and needs to be redundant. You are in a real flight environment, and when you start working with a product that was not made for that scenario, you have to make some adjustments.” Equipment used to be so specialised that Goss was once flown out to Australia for just one day to shoot a commercial, purely because there was no such kit or crew in the country. Kit now is more solid-state electronics, with fewer moving parts, and designed to be bulletproof. “In the old days, you had to keep returning to the factory and to
A FRESH ANGLE With a truly impressive CV, Goss’ film and TV credits span three decades and various genres
Definition explores the world of aerial cinematography through the lens of three high-flying DOPs
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