MAY 2021 - BAFTA winning drone pilot for aerial filming!
Well this was amazing a team of us drone pilots working for Windfall films making a film for BBC won a BAFTA for our aerial filming under Factual: Photography woooohooo. It was a great team to work with Johnny Shipley as director and David Dugan as the Exec producer, both from Windfall films. Then swapping ideas with the other drone team members and seeing everyones setups was great. Most were on the Inspire 2 like myself.
If you are interested I’ve written a little bit about my own experience below on the shoot and what went in to a few of my bigger shots.
I had the job of meeting the Shepard Andrew at the top of Scarfell for the start of the gather on the main days shoot (Day 3 on site). We went up different routes as he chased sheep on the way. He arrived 30 mins early just as I had arrived and I asked for 5 minutes to set up he said “you can have 1 minute” haha. I managed just! Took off into very cloudy conditions and wind, ‘took off’ sounds a little dramatic, I basically hovered over the ground. Knowing that at 4:30am no one else would be daft enough to be up there, I was sure not to meet anyone. We could see 50m at best and had to walk with the drone just flying 5-10m ahead of me just off the ground. I got some lovely shots in the mist and extremely atmospheric and totally different from the planned shots that we agreed on two days ago on the recci. Andrew did say “not the best for gathering sheep in” just as I was shouting at him to remember and cheesily touch the top cairn for my shot, I got the impression he was only half keen to do this. But he did it anyway haha.
The drone landed and he continued onto the next set of drone pilots. I’d warned them he was early so they were ready, as we all had radios. My drone was extremely wet now I hadn’t quite realised how wet the cloud was as didn’t feel like rain. Picture below
So now I leap frogged three drone positions to set up at another spot down out of the cloud at the foot of the valley. I was there with David (exec producer) as he was keeping me company as I was a solo pilot. I got the drone setup ready to take a few GV’s as I waited for the sheep again. The drone wouldn’t record due to water in the microSD port. Then came 20mins of panic trying to dry inside it and get my drone working again!! Finally it started recording and all functions were good. So I flew up the cliff above for some GV’s. One of these formed the opening shot of the program. Then it switches to another drone pilots shot of sheep hanging out on hill side. After this into some of my shots of Andrew in the mist as the gather begins:)
On this spot I gathered a bit of a shot plan to try and create a long shot as my summit plans hadn’t come together as I’d liked (but did give a great different feel to the shots). You can only plan as best you can as the tricky bit is it’s live in essence and there is no reshoot and you don’t know exactly where or how quickly the sheep will move lol. So lots to think about. The key being to move very slow (but never stop, Johnny’s direction also had said please keep it moving) and try to keep interesting shots and develop things in a nicely framed shot. This started with a reveal over a slight knoll amongst boulders and fly over the rise and to see the sheep. As should be an easy cut if no sheep in it to start. Then the shot develops after I realise the sheep are slightly nervous of my drone (much less nervous that they are of the sheep dogs though but you can slightly tell in the film too). I move round the side and swoop round the back and down the left side then use the boulders very low to ground, notice a little turbulence in wind as drone starts moving up and down a little by itself. The low ground and boulders manage to create a bit of a second reveal then I start rising to where the crush or narrows are.
This is where the sheep come to a halt and I notice shepards standing blocking the way, I slow my rise trying desperately to keep the sheep in shot as they do not move forward into the space I had left and planned in my shot. In my head I am saying “move move” to the sheep and the shepards blocking the way, “you are about to destroy my shot!” I might have been mumbling a few swear words too but my memory is faint on that front.
Then finally the shepards clear and the sheep start running forward “thank ….!”. I’m almost as high as I can go (Drones have a legal maximum height above the ground) and fortunately I’m spinning with the shot so I can keep the spin as I stop going up and begin to come done again. This means the stop is not so noticeable to the audience but will display a change which will link with the sheep now moving on. I then lower down and stop the spin and blend it into the beginning of a tilt up to start to show where the sheep are going which we haven’t seen yet. I pull away from the sheep to show them going away from this location. Once the shot shows the sky which won’t link as well with the next shot my continuous shot stops at 7 minutes and 30 seconds. Which is my longest shot I’ve ever had on a film and the longest shot in this film.
I remember being very chuffed the next day after first seeing the film on TV that this long shot was spoken about on twitter in relation to the program lol.
There were two days filming and the first was a smaller gather from opposite side of the valley and we used several shots from this too but we had a smaller team. Johnny had bought 360 Gopros to attach to sheep etc. I got one on a dog that morning but the dog wasn’t happy with it haha. It looked like a teenager asked to wear really uncool clothing to a friends party and just feeling awkward and not at all cool.
We switched it to put it on Andrew and a sheep. One shot which it caught was when Andrew was wearing it when he got to the top of the valley about 3-400m beyond me so I’m well out of shot. Andrew sits down and starts rolling a cigarette and is speaking to his dog and taking in the scenery and as he takes the cigarette up to his mouth because Johnny had 360 cameras then in the edit he could tilt up to its lighting and tilt back down to the view as the smoke is blown out. It’s a great shot and it’s actually been directed from the edit suite which is different:)
Hopefully its back on TV sometime and you can give it a watch.
The Team:) Although many members of the team not in the shot but most of the hill going ones.
The very wet drone after the misty shots at the start of the film!
