VORTEX: Shot with Freefly's new MoVI iPhone gimbal

Since it's inception, Brooklyn Aerials has been lucky enough to revolutionize a handful of shooting techniques.  We pioneered the dolly-zoom (aka. 'Vertigo-effect') and extreme roll movements on the drone, pushed drone lighting into a new realm and captured NYC in new ways that haven't been seen before with our pieces STREETS and MOMENTS.

Our latest piece, VORTEX, explores the streets of NYC yet again and uses one of the first handheld gimbal that is capable of 360° barrel roll moves: Freefly Systems MoVI iPhone gimbal.

In BALANCE we used the roll effect on helicopter and drone to create a feeling of uneasiness and confusion, within a space and city that we are all familiar with (in some way or another).

For VORTEX the goal was to have a more grounded view of the city.  While the spinning camera was the perfect way to capture the feeling we were trying to evoke, the idea was to portray the buildings as the foundation - the body and bones - of all of it. Yet the people are the ones that really suck you into it and create the pulse and flow of the city and help to create the overstimulating element in our piece.

Personally, we would have never seen ourselves shooting an entire piece (or even just a shot) with an iPhone.   But given that there is no other tool out there that could achieve this effect and also being able to film without a large rig, in very busy, high security spaces like the World Trade Center, Penn Station or Grand Central, this turned out to be the perfect combination.

The tricky part for such a light gimbal and camera is the support.  When shooting with a heavy camera package - e.g. our MoVI Pro with Alexa Mini and Panavision G anamorphics or Master anamorphics - the weight itself really helps to smooth out steps and make the camera float through space.  While a light camera - e.g. MoVI M5 with a Sony a7s - would have a lot more noticeable steps and translated movement.   Freefly's MoVI Carbon will be one of the first handheld gimbals to tackle this issue - but for the time being we'd have to find alternative solutions to achieve smooth and constant movements.

For our NYC exteriors we ended up relying on a Ninebot Segway MiniPro. For interiors we used an old school wheelchair - that helped shooting hyperlapses ('MoVI-lapses') without drawing too much attention from the NYPD and also with pedestrians that were mostly mindful and cleared a path.

While it was an interesting challenge to film this entire piece on an iPhone, we think the real revolution might come with products like the RED Hydrogen that might be able to open new doors to have both a very small form factor camera, as well as a truly cinematic tool.  Regardless, we are at the beginning of a very interesting era that will lead to new creative and technical opportunities that we are very excited about.  To be continued very soon, I am sure.

Cheers!

Tim

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EDIT Dec 7th, 2017:

The original blog stated that the Freefly MoVI is the first handheld gimbal that is capable of 360 degree roll moves.  It looks like this is not accurate and that other gimbals, such as the Letus Helix are already capable of those same moves.

DRONE LIGHTING V2 // Short-Film: mémoires

Lighting with drones has come a long way.   Just a year ago - from spring to fall 2016 - we were working on our first design of a powerful drone light.  For our short, THE LIGHT and the release of the Freefly MoVI PRO, we used this first version of a drone light with great success.  It had a decent output and nice soft quality with a 360 spread (incl. top and bottom).   This was a great solution for what we needed but our design has evolved since then.

After finishing THE LIGHT we discovered the work from Daniel Riley at Stratus LED, which had a very inspiring influence on us.   His approach was to use a much harder light source - focused 100W LED COB chips that he'd hard mount under the ALTA 8. This was interesting and created beautiful results, though it had one major downfall:  because the light was hard mounted, all drone movements would translate into the light.  While flying this usually isn't a huge issue (it is less noticeable), in a stationary shot every little movement of the drone (compensation for wind) would result in a shift of the light beam and become very noticeable.   

The solution was an easy one: all of our future lights had to be mounted on a MoVI to create stable shots but also have full control over light movement, angle and directionality.

The three lights we built are the following:

• 900W Flood light with 9x 100W LED chips (98 CRI - Daylight balanced) - supported on MoVI M15
• 400W Spot light with 4x 100W LED chips and parabolic reflectors.  This light uses a Connex Prosight HD FPV camera for remote framing and is also supported on a MoVI M15.
• MAXABEAM - HID Xenon light with a spot as narrow as 1 degree. Supported on MoVI M10.

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In the past we've seen drone lights being used for very stylized effects, like big, hard moving shadows at night. It is a very impressive look, but is also something that we've seen repeated a lot right now.   The big question was: how could we use a drone light in a new way? How could it replace traditional film lighting - both in a very subtle way (that wouldn't immediately give away that it was lit by a drone) and in a creative way? 

The options with these lights are endless. Even in this first test we've been able to use them for a variety of different effects:

• Stationary key light for our actors
• Overhead stationary spot (mimicking a light on a condor arm)
• Orbiting or moving key
• Stationary panning spot light
• Painterly lighting effects (e.g. highlighting just a tree or a spot on a field) at dusk and dawn

All that being said: this is only a first test.  We think this kind of lighting could be revolutionary for the film industry - pushing creative lighting in a completely new direction and open doors for indie filmmakers as well as high-budget feature films, commercials or even music videos.  We are very excited to see where this technology is going and how we can use it on future projects!

Big thanks to Adam Koontz, who was our pilot and a great collaborator on this one - and to Peter Paul Longo for the wonderful edit.

As always - please feel free to reach out with any questions or ideas and we look forward to collaborating with you on your next project!

All the best from the Brooklyn Aerials Team!

Cheers!  Tim

FREEFLY ALTA / NOSTALGIA

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The new Freefly drone - the "Cinestar" successor - has been in the making for a long time now. Many people had been speculating whether it would ever see the light of day. After the success of the original Cinestar and Cinestar X8 Heavylift, expectations for this new multicopter were enormous.

At NAB 2015, Freefly finally announced and recently released the ALTA with some groundbreaking design and capabilities that surpassed a lot of expectations.

Brooklyn Aerials was lucky enough to get their hands on a pre-production model of the ALTA and took it out into the wild to test it's capabilities for a new short called, "NOSTALGIA".

THE ALTA

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What sets the ALTA apart from "conventional" drones, like the Cinestar and Cinelifter, is it's design. With the perfectly engineered folding design and the option to bottom and top mount the camera, Freefly has created something truly revolutionary.

For me, as a very visual person, the ALTA is not just a new drone on the market, it provides me with an entirely different way to move the camera and get shots that have been impossible to capture before.

Here is the perfect example of why the ALTA is so amazing - a shot like the one below would have never been possible to shoot with a drone before and would have required either dolly tracks or a skilled Steadicam or MoVI operator, but is now easily and very precisely captured with the ALTA:

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"NOSTALGIA" SHOOT

The goal of this project was to experiment with new ways to capture images with a "drone". Every shot needed to feel different than what we were used to seeing being done with drones these days. As a result, high altitude, wide-angle shots had been banned from the concept before we even started shooting.

Equipped with an ALTA and a RED Epic Dragon Monochrome, we ventured out with a bare bones team of three people. In the photo below from left to right: Drew English, Camera Operator; Michael Marantz, Co-director and Tim Sessler, ALTA Pilot.

Given our post-apocalyptic script, the goal seemed simple: shoot cinematic shots that tell the visual story of nature reclaiming her territory.  We filmed in abandoned locations like Seaview Hospital in Staten Isalnd and Letchworth Village further outside of NYC, then moved on to the beautiful natural landscape of Upstate, NY with the epic scenery that can be found in the Adirondacks.

The idea really was to use the ALTA as a tool to get very slow and controlled dolly or crane shots in locations where it would have been difficult or impossible to use either of these traditional film methods.

Strapping a multicopter to a hiking backpack and hiking into a fairly remote place like Mount Jo in the Adirondacks would have been unthinkable up to this point. The foldable ALTA design makes it substantially easier to bring a bigger cinema drone not only to these extremely hard-to-reach locations, but also in using it on a daily basis with car and air travel, as well as having that flexibility on production. And of course on the days that you want to put your multicopter on the back of a 6 wheeler and conquer the rolling hills and forests to get to remote locations - the ALTA makes it a lot more enjoyable! 

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SHOOTING MONOCHROME & INFRARED

I've been fascinated with infrared black and white photography for the past few years. I even converted one of my Canon 5d mk3s to infrared by removing the original OLPF and installing a permanent 720nm IR filter in front of the sensor.

Now with the new modular OLPF system, RED is allowing us to install an IR-Pass OLPF and open up standard RED Epic Dragons for infrared photography. On top of that, to maximize the B/W IR look we were also fortunate to shoot on the RED Epic Dragon Monochrome. This version of the camera has a pure monochrome sensor, that results in a higher sensitivity (base ISO is 2000 vs. ISO 800 with a color Dragon) and higher detail.  In combination with our Leica R lenses we had the perfect set-up for the ALTA - just below the maximum payload, yet with the best quality and flexibility for our edit and grade.

The RED Monochrome footage is absolutely amazing to work with in post. The image is seemingly clean at ISO 2000-3200 and thanks to REDs RAW codec allowed a huge dynamic range and possibilities with bringing out details. We graded the whole piece in Davinci Resolve and used the Filmconvert T-Max 100 film stock as a base for the contrasty B/W look.

As far as filtration in front of the lens, we used both a B+W 93 Deep BW IR filter, a traditional Hoya R72 720nm IR filter and a variety of focal lengths. From 19mm super wides for some of the tighter spaces (e.g. flying in a forest, looking straight up into the trees) to a 50mm, and even all the way up to 135mm for some nicely compressed shots (e.g. the ship graveyard).

I really hope you enjoy this piece and I look forward to soon sharing one of our unreleased projects from earlier in the year: an aerial short shot in Hawaii with the MoVI M15 out of a full-sized helicopter. Stay tuned.

Cheers,

Tim

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NOSTALGIA - BEHIND THE SCENES

Testing the Freefly TERO

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.