TECHNOLOGY | AER I AL
Like Flying Pictures, The Helicopter Girls specialists wanted to utilise the time they were grounded to meet these competitive industry demands: “We were very focused on R&D on both the super-heavy lift capability and at the smaller end of the spectrum, too. We have a great medium-weight heavy lifter, which has a maximum take-off weight of 36kg for payloads like the Arriflex 235 film camera, which we can fly with a 400ft mag. And thanks to bespoke in-house engineering, we have unique full pan, tilt and roll control on the Ronin gimbal. What I like about this aircraft is that it’s still nimble and manoeuvrable, with a footprint that’s not much greater than the standard heavy-lift drones.” The last time we spoke to Helicopter Film Services CEO Jeremy Braben, back in May, the company had just created the Titan drone, also for large film cameras and VFX departments. During lockdown, the teams were focused on adapting their impressive multicamera array. “It can handle anything between three and six cameras, and we’ve been working on adapting new cameras into the array. At the moment, it’s being used with the Arri Alexa, but it can also carry the Red Helium,” Braben explains. “On the ground, VFX departments often use multi-arrays and will have up to 12 cameras. But in the air, we’re restricted to size, so six to seven is what we regularly achieve.” Work didn’t enormously slow down for Flying TV, whose USP has always been its economical, smaller helicopters with the GSS gimbals.
IMAGES Helicopter Film Services shoots VFX plates using its six-camera multi-array for a new Marvel film
helicopter. But I’m pleased to say the aircraft is finally back in the UK!” PROJECTS More recently, Flying TV has supplied aerials on Flying for Britain with David Jason , which the company shot on its new Sony HDC-P50/ Canon CJ45 combo in UHD. Wyer adds: “We’re also very pleased to have been asked by the producer, Kiaran Murray-Smith, who we worked with on the J K Rowling Cormoran Strike dramas, Silent Witness and Bulletproof , to capture the aerials for the new Peter James drama, Grace . This will be done on the Red DSMC2 with the beautiful Angénieux Optimo 25-250mm.” Productions have also started to pick up for our other aerial companies, although that might
Aerial DOP and operations manager for the company, Monica Wyer, says: “Certainly, new production bookings slowed, with many projects put on hold or cancelled. But aerials often come at the end of a production, so some tasks were able to go ahead as we often fly without a client on board. We were also very lucky to be part way through an Amazon project, which didn’t really stop as the client was working remotely.” She continues: “Our most recent development, our high-speed, fixed- wing solution, which launched at the beginning of this year, had several projects lined up. Unfortunately, the fast escalation of Covid meant that the aircraft had become stranded overseas while on a task, meaning a couple of projects – particularly air-to-air ones – meant reverting to a
“WE WERE VERY FOCUSED ON R&D – WE DID SOME BESPOKE ENGINEERING”
28 DEF I N I T ION | NOVEMBER 2020
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