AER I AL | TECHNOLOGY
“THEY CAN TURN THESE DRONES ON A HAIRPIN AND FLY INCREDIBLY FAST”
which, although decent in quality, aren’t good enough for shooting VFX plates. But Red has just launched the Komodo, a high-quality crash cam that can shoot at 6K, and The Helicopter Girls is the first aerial company to get its hands on it. “We got a Stormtrooper, the white one, and we’ve just finished constructing a small FPV rig for it,” says Boswell. “Last year, we started to get asked by DOPs about shots that could really be only achieved using FPV, so we started working on a drone for the Blackmagic Pocket 6K – and now the Red Komodo has arrived to join the party. We’re now flying it on a car commercial and using it to mimic bird-like flight for a couple of drama productions – it resonates well with the rise of the fantasy genre,” she explains. “On an FPV drone, the camera is hard mounted to the aircraft, so the angle of the camera is determined by the angle of the aircraft. This means that you can twist, turn and dive in a way that maximises the visual impact of the image captured.” Just imagine if the pod race from Star Wars: The Phantom Menace was recreated from Anakin’s POV using an FPV drone. You’d definitely feel immersed in the action!
FPV Meanwhile, Emma Boswell has been functioning on as little as three hours sleep of late, juggling triple the amount of jobs she’d be used to doing pre-Covid. Current projects include Jurassic World: Dominion , The Northman , The Witcher and a new series for Netflix. The Helicopter Girls specialists have also been working on something that has the potential to be game- changing for our industry. Ever heard of FPV? Well, it’s a racing league that flies tiny little quadcopter drones at super speed. UK pilot Rupert White holds the current speed record at a whopping 312mph. The drones are piloted remotely, using an on-board camera that feeds wireless ‘first- person view’ video to special FPV goggles. Boswell explains: “It feels like you’re sitting in the cockpit of a little drone!” The rules and regulations of the CAA state that all drone pilots have to fly in line of sight. But in FPV racing, you have spotters, so you’ve always got somebody else being the
eyes on your aircraft. “It enables you to do manoeuvres that you simply cannot do in line of sight,” says Boswell. “Moves that can’t be achieved on a stabilised drone – for example, diving down the side of a high-rise building – are possible with FPV drones, because of the aerodynamics of the frame and flight controller. This is a new area of drone legislation, and in this country, the regulations don’t yet allow for high- speed FPV work in a congested area, so this is something I am working with the CAA on to enable us to achieve safely.” She adds: “We partner our experienced line-of-sight film pilots with specialist FPV pilots, and together they make an incredible team. We’re working with four FPV pilots, all of whom have been champions on the racing circuit, Their skills are mind-blowing; they can turn these drones on a hairpin and fly them incredibly fast.” Historically, these miniature drones have been fitted with equally miniature cameras, usually GoPros,
ABOVE Red’s new small camera, the Komodo, takes flight on an FPV drone from The Helicopter Girls
NOVEMBER 2020 | DEF I N I T ION 31
Powered by FlippingBook