TECHNOLOGY | AER I AL
be underselling it. It would be fairer to say that work for them is booming right now. Flying Pictures just supplied aerials for an Emeli Sandé concert, performed on the roof of Wembley Stadium. The shoot was made easier thanks to its congested areas permit, which allows the company to fly in places like central London, at ten metres from any person, vehicle or building. “Normally, you can’t get closer than 50m,” explains Rose. The practicalities of lugging a drone to the top of Wembley stadium was the difficult bit: “We were using our heavy drones, so we had to carry those, plus all of the cameras, all while trying to stay social distanced. It was technically very interesting! We also had to bring more than our usual kit, with multiple monitors, which were separated by two metres, and everyone had to keep their headsets and radios disinfected.” Despite this new normal and all of the regulations, which – although necessary – can be quite time- consuming, aerial companies are striving to make it work. Helicopter Film Services recently supplied VFX aerials on two big Marvel films involving a couple of filming firsts. Braben explains: “Our six- camera array drone, the Typhon, shot VFX and live action plates in Norway, Svalbard, Tangier in Morocco and the UK with six Red Helium cameras and 21mm Zeiss CP.3 XD lenses to “WE HAD TO KEEP OUR HEAD- SETS AND RADIOS DISINFECTED ”
ABOVE The GSS gimbal mounted on to one of Flying TV’s cost-efficient helicopters
scaffolding and washing lines. “To aid our pilot, the Aerigon drone was fitted with a pilot camera, allowing the pilot to plan the route effectively and navigate obstacles more easily,” says Braben. It’s also illegal to fly drones in Morocco, but Helicopter Film Services has “a good reputation for filming in this beautiful country”, allowing it to work closely with local authorities to negotiate permissions to fly there. With sport returning to our television screens, Aerial Camera Systems (ACS) has also been busy, says David Manton, the ACS aerial unit head. “We’re still supplying aerials for football matches and horse racing, and we did the London Marathon in October. We also got a newly configured gimbal in the office, which can take Red cameras and the GSS cinema pro, so we’ve been using that out on natural history shoots.” The company also supported the return of the Goodyear Blimp to European motorsports. The blimp supplied aerials of the rescheduled Le Mans tour, which aired in September, with a camera solution package that consisted of a HD Cineflex V14 gyro-stabilised system, a Sony HDC-2500 camera and a Fujinon 42x long zoom lens. “It’s something we’ve been doing since the early 2000s,” says Manton. “So, I’m glad we were able to be back again this year.”
give a massive field of vision. For the Norway shoot, we integrated the use of focus and iris control via remote control on each lens, with six iris motors and six focus motors for each body. This enabled us to calibrate each lens individually to counter any mechanical difference in the scales of the focus and iris. And we used a single, hand-controlled unit in the helicopter cabin to control all 12 of the motors, which was our aerial filming first.” Drone shooting in Tangier presented a few issues for the company, from difficulties transporting the equipment up small, winding staircases to rooftops, to flying around the roofs of busy medinas, complete with TV aerials,
30 DEF I N I T ION | NOVEMBER 2020
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