FEATURE | AER I AL SPEC I AL
FRESH THE UK AERIAL FILMING INDUSTRY IS BOOMING, WITH PLENTY OF INNOVATION AND EVEN SOME NEW PLAYERS. WE HEAR THE LATEST NEWS
WORDS JULI AN M ITCHELL
F ilm Production is benefiting from being part of the fastest-growing sector of the UK economy. There is a huge amount of content being produced and being bolstered by the new streaming channels – can we say boom time yet? Aerial cinematography is one of the growth areas within production and you can understand why. Take the Downton Abbey movie, for instance. How do you take a perfectly good-looking television series and turn it in to a movie? What’s the one thing that shouts ‘movie aesthetic’? You could argue it is a sweeping aerial shot: even as an establishing shot the best aerials are nothing if not cinematic. Emma Boswell, director of operations at The Helicopters Girls, describes their part in shooting Downton Abbey: “The castle really lent itself to low-level aerials, so a lot of the film’s scenic shots were taken around it. The closing shot of the film is a drone shot of the castle, which starts low and pulls out slowly to manoeuvre around the landscape at sunset. It was important to DOP Ben Smithard that the light was perfect, so we were working to make sure we were able to shoot at the right moment.” The drones were also used to track the post boy arriving and cars driving up to the castle. The scene with the steam train was particularly exciting for Ben Smithard, who
told us that he rarely gets to use helicopters to shoot aerials. The aircraft was a Freefly Alta 8 with Mōvi Pro stabilised gimbal, carrying an Alexa Mini LF with Zeiss Ultra Primes. Boswell notes: “We had a separate iris hand unit for Ben to control as he likes to work that way; he’s got such a clear vision about what he wants and he’s just a great person to work with.” NEW PLAYERS Another sure sign that the good times are here is when a new company enters the market from another territory. For the UK aerial business this is quite rare as relationships are built up over many years,
aerial cinematography is an expensive business and you need to know the company you use will get the shot in the best and safest way. New to the UK aerial business is a company called XM2 Aerial with engineering and some production based in Melbourne, Australia and with connections with Pursuit Aviation in the USA: XM2 are essentially the same company as Pursuit Aviation in the US. Aidan Kelly from XM2 explains where the company has come from. “We were established in the US and Australia with offices in both countries. We managed to get on the Jordan component for Star Wars late last year and on that shoot
TOP The Jet Cam, capturing 450mph stabilised imagery by Pursuit Aviation RIGHT Pursuit’s Arri film camera rig with 1000ft mag ABOVE XM2’s Tango drone on the salt flats
42 DEF I N I T ION | DECEMBER 20 1 9
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