Brooklyn Aerial is excited to be one of the first out there to get their hands on a prototype of the new Freefly Tero.

What is the TERO?

It is a super-compact RC car - scale 1/5 about 30" long and just 20" wide. Based on the HPI Baja 5B Flux, which is built for intense off-road action and massive jumps, so naturally the shocks do a great job eliminating a lot of vibration. Additionally, Freefly designed a wire dampened camera mount which further helps to reduce any unwanted shakes, vibrations and small bumps from the MōVI.

A MōVI M5, M10 or M15 on top will give perfect stabilization and full control over the camera and will allow you to mount pretty much any cinema camera on there.

Why this tool?

What is unique about the TERO is the small form factor and it's speed. Opening the doors for slow dolly-like shots without worrying about leveling tracks or having them in the shot. But most importantly it has an almost instant acceleration to high speeds of 40 to 50 mph, which makes it the perfect tool for car tracking shots, extreme sports and is a new cinematic way to move the camera.

Test

For a recent shoot in Chicago, I was able to test the TERO for the first time in a real-world production environment.

First shot, first day: We decided to track in front of a group of young men running through a park. With the Red Epic Dragon on the MoVI M10 we were able to get perfectly stable footage driving right in front of the group. A shot that would never be as smooth and more importantly would show a lot more translational movement with the M10 handheld.

To push its limits we decided to ride it on the lawn ride next to the path - a bumpy piece of grass that was desperately waiting for some trimming. The result definitely shows some bumps, but overall I was impressed with how well it worked and how it produced some very usable footage.

Here is a short video - more tests will follow and footage from the tests will be up soon.