A I R FORCE OUR ANNUAL COVERAGE OF THE ART OF AERIAL CINEMATOGRAPHY SEES MORE R&D AND GREATER DEMANDS ON WHAT AERIAL CAN ACHIEVE
FEATURE | AER I AL SPEC I AL
WORDS JULI AN M ITCHELL / PICTURES VARIOUS
O ut of all the news we gathered at the start of the year, the fact that an aerial company had built their own drone was one we didn’t see coming. The DJI takeover was seen to be insurmountable and the heavy lift world was also seemingly set. Helicopter Film Services, however, has kept at the top of the business by pushing the barriers and investing in its own engineering offering, and both of these are at the root of its pursuit of its own drone platform.
Jeremy Braben explains the route to market for the Titan drone. “We built it to satisfy the demands we were getting to fly certain camera packages, primarily the Alexa 65. At the same time, we were asked to fly film cameras.” The film angle makes perfect sense with the recent uptake on the use of the medium which we covered in last month’s issue ( Rise of the super labs, April 2019). “That is a big heavy lump to lift, with a 400-foot load of film, an Arri 435 body or a Panaflex body which we have to carry.
ABOVE The new Titan drone from Helicopter Film Services
52 DEF I N I T ION | MAY 20 1 9
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