FRONTIER LAND
A NEW REALITY
Los Angeles-based Drone Dudes is fully established as one of the world’s leading suppliers of aerial footage and is now adding VR recordings
WORDS TERRY HOPE
I f you ever needed evidence of the maturing of the drone industry, just look at the established top operators who not only deliver high quality commercial aerial footage on an everyday basis to an expanding client base, but also actively push back the frontiers as they look to the next big challenge. One of those at the forefront is California-based Drone Dudes, which has been conquering the skies since 2010. That’s a long time in drone years: eight years ago it was a very different world and the company’s founder, UAV pioneer Andrew Petersen, recalls just how tricky it was to realise the dream of getting a high quality camera up in the air. “I first started to think about having a flying camera when I was inMilford Sound in New Zealand,” he says. “There
were all these amazing waterfalls and it was beautiful and remote. I didn’t want to work out of a helicopter, so when I got back to LA I researched buying a ‘multirotor’, (what drones were called then). I ended up spending $10,000 on a Cinestar 8. “I went all in, thinking this is cool –I could see the benefit. I started by flying DSLR cameras with servo gimbals: really old technology that involved super DIY skills, with me having to hack and solder everything. My goal was to be able to fly a RED camera and, after spending so much money, I was so invested that I had no choice but to keep pushing ahead. “I started out using flight sims on a computer so that I could learn before flying for real. The Cinestar was the first multirotor drone I’d built and flown, and I was blown away by the fact that, after a
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WINTER 2018 PRO MOVIEMAKER
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