AER I AL SPEC I AL | FEATURE
We were able to do a 1000-feet IMAX reload on the ground with motors running in about two minutes film camera around on that same drone,” says Aidan. “We actually developed those drones ourselves; we have two main drones in our arsenal, one’s called the Sierra and the other is called the Tango. The Sierra is the one we developed to originally carry the Alexa 65 and for the same production we developed the three-camera Alexa Mini array with a toe-out format. Just recently on Fast & Furious 9 for the Thailand and Georgia shoot we changed it to toe-in. “We also have XM2 Labs, our engineering workshop, all set up in Melbourne to work up our new designs for things like Sierra and Tango. That capacity came from the need to fly an Alexa XT M on Pirates of the Caribbean back in 2013 and we have just carried on with that facility.” A big plus for XM2 was working with drone regulations which have been active in Australia for a while now. “We had the regulations over ten years ago which allowed us to develop our craft quite early on,” says
up here in the UK similarly to how we have done in the US. We can offer anything from ground base up to 40,000 feet including drones, helicopters and even jets. We are also able to offer small camera rigging with remote stabilised heads on the ground.” XM2 developed a drone for the Star Wars shoot to carry the Alexa 65 camera which was used for five weeks straight in Jordan. “We were also carrying an Arri 435
we met a lot of the UK crew and made connections there. We had been waiting for a project like that to be able to establish ourselves in the UK. “Off the back of that we established the UK company in early January and we really kicked off things in early June here in Pinewood. We have just finished some work on Bond 25, No Time to Die, and Fast & Furious 9 . We want to build the business
DECEMBER 20 1 9 | DEF I N I T ION 43
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