AER I AL SPEC I AL | FEATURE
cam system in order to get the shot that we did. We were able to set-up in ten minutes, go for a take and job done.” John is shooting for the 25th Bond film at the moment with the IMAX camera, using the Eclipse XLHD with 1000 feet of film to give John about four to five minutes of screen time running at 24fps. “The Eclipse has this unique ability of geo pointing, so I can target a specific spot on the ground and memorise that GPS coordinate both in lat-long and height; and then we can fly away from our start position and I just tell the system to line me up on that memorised position so the camera automatically points to that spot. “We then start the run-in and I’ve got a display on my screen of exactly where that memorised spot is within my frame. So we can always hit that mark absolutely bang on. For example, if you’re flying across a large piece of forest trying to find a clearing and you’re low level over the trees, it’s almost impossible to spot where the clearing is. The system allows me to nail the shot pretty much on take one.” LEFT John Marzano shot the aerials for Artemis Fowl; they were shot using the Red Weapon while on the ground it was all film
and many more (check his site for the whole list). We asked John how the requirement for movie shooting has changed. “We’re still asked to do very dangerous, for want of a better word, shots that require very low-level flying both for the helicopter and drones that we provide productions with nowadays,” he says. “For example, I’ve just come back from a shoot abroad where we had to fly the helicopter at about five feet off the ground for a shot, passing very close to the stunt crew we were filming. “There’s a demand for those shots that push the safety envelope. We’ve been testing on another production with our Alta 8 drones which requires us to also fly extremely low over water and very close to a stunt performer. That’s very challenging. “Speed is important sometimes – if we’re doing air to air for example at around 90knots and a rotor distance apart – but similarly the two shots I’ve just described to you on two different shows are extremely slow, walking pace in fact. “We did a shot recently for Hobbs & Shaw inside a large auditorium. It was a long tracking shot overhead the action that was taking place. Traditionally productions would have had to put up an obtrusive wire-
MAY 20 1 9 | DEF I N I T ION 57
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