my interview & words for RED Digital Cinema
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Drones have revolutionized the potential for aerial cinematography with powerful shots and never-before-seen camera movement. The latest exhilarating development is first person view (FPV) shots giving audiences an immersive experience of diving down the sides of buildings, scooting between trees at phenomenal speeds, chasing cars or zipping over jungle rapids.
No company has done more to innovate this growing aspect of visual storytelling than The Helicopter Girls, a UK-based global drone services company which has created aerial shots for Fast X, Peaky Blinders, Wonka, Saltburn, The Diplomat, Bridgerton, The Witcher, Paddington in Peru, Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale and Wicked.
“We first encountered FPV in 2016 when we read about 15-year-old British pilot Luke Bannister winning the drone racing world championships in Dubai,” explains Emma Boswell, co-founder of The Helicopter Girls. “We recognized that if we could harness the sheer agility of the drones and the raw skill of the racing pilots that FPV would bring us a new language in aerial cinematography.”
With its skilled fleet of FPV pilots – including Bannister - experienced camera operators and engineers, The Helicopter Girls continues to push the boundaries of cinematic FPV.
“Our goal was to bring FPV into a dual operated discipline, stabilising the horizon and enabling pilot and camera operator to master a new style of flight and a level of storytelling that would open many more possibilities,” says Katya Nelhams-Wright who co-founded the company in 2011.
Such innovation would not be possible without a system that enables small, lightweight drones to fly accurately at speeds of 110 mph while recording action at cinema quality.
“Cinema-quality cameras have been getting smaller and lighter which has allowed us to develop FPV drones with high performance and a small footprint which enables us to move the camera into spaces a larger drone wouldn’t fit,” Boswell says. “For us, that camera family is RED.”
The Helicopter Girls worked on the aerial sequences for Universal’s Oscar-nominated musical fantasy Wicked. The aerials in Wicked: Part 1 were largely captured using heavy lift drones carrying RED MONSTRO paired with Panavision Ultra Panatars.
Filming Wicked: For Good, the team worked with Sam Renton, second unit director of photography, to execute a thrilling FPV forest chase sequence on location.
“It was an especially challenging environment to work in to achieve the shots that Sam wanted,” explains drone camera operator Will Roth who planned and shot the sequence with Bannister. “The ability to manoeuvre in tight spaces at speed was key. We needed the smallest camera possible with the highest resolution possible and something that would be suitable for a relatively heavy VFX sequence.
“RAPTOR was the obvious choice,” Roth says. “The RF mount gave us plenty of lens options so we could choose some smaller, quality lenses to cover the VistaVision (VV) sensor.”
“The FPV work that Luke and Will managed to achieve was incredible,” Renton informed British Cinematographer. “The speed they flew at and the accuracy they delivered enabled us to think differently about a sequence that, without their ability, may have ended up boring and pedestrian.”
What was extraordinary about this shot was that it was accomplished using a gimballed FPV, an innovation that is set to take aerial cinematography to new heights.
“It's very difficult to fix and balance any cine-style camera and cine lens on a FPV drone let alone one carrying a gimbal and achieve superb quality images,” explains Boswell. “What Luke and Will were able to do is to tune the aircraft carrying a very small form factor RS 3 gimbal optimized for V-RAPTOR. You wouldn’t think we’d be able to fly with the top-mounted gimbal, but Luke’s engineering is so exceptional that we've been able to fly V-RAPTOR in this tiny configuration. The images are incredibly stable straight out of the camera. It doesn't need any stabilization. We were able to thread the drone through tiny spaces at incredible speed.”
With a fully stabilized head the DP now has control over pan, tilt and revolve to point the camera wherever the action is and achieve dynamic shots which couldn’t previously be achieved.
“A gimballed FPV flown by the phenomenal partnership of Luke and Will offers the director and DoP so much more agility and it adds this incredible layer of dynamism,” Boswell says. “With V-RAPTOR we've got a remarkable 8.1K full-frame camera in these extraordinary positions. There's nothing else that matches it.”
Helicopter Girls’ has subsequently flown gimballed FPV with the V-RAPTOR for Ben Davis BSC on Stuntnuts: The Movie, an action film directed by Damien Walters; and for Ben Smithard BSC on the recently released Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale. Here Roth and Bannister captured incredible FPV shots of racehorses on the V-RAPTOR with Zeiss CP3 100mm.
“What’s remarkable about that shot is that it doesn't look like it could possibly be from a drone,” says Boswell. “It looks like it should be from a tracking vehicle or a wire-cam. It's an astonishing sequence and certainly an exciting direction for FPV. The V-RAPTOR is just brilliant for that work.”
For Knuckles, the miniseries created for Paramount+, based on characters from Sega's Sonic the Hedgehog video game, Helicopter Girls created a FPV shot inside bowling alley.
“It's all about performance-to-weight ratio,” Roth says. “We can fly whatever you want to fly but usually the pilot will prefer to fly the most agile and powerful platform with the smallest package. V-RAPTOR is the ideal cinema package.”
Agile drone arrays for volume plates
Drones capable of lifting heavier payloads are necessary for capturing high resolution plates destined for VFX or playback on a volume stage. Helicopter Girls has developed three types of array optimized for RED’s KOMODO: A toe-in 3-camera configuration; a bespoke 3-camera 181-degree array and a 360-degree 4-camera array with Laowa 12mm lenses. Every lens is calibrated for zero distortion with timecode, sync and run/stop control. Plus, the drones have full permission for flying in congested areas.
Indeed, under new regulations, The Helicopter Girls is set to be the only drone company with authorisation to operate drones over 25kg in European territories.
“For safety, you’ve always got to consider a drones’ weight in relation to proximity near people,” Boswell advises. “So, when we design multi-cam arrays we want to provide something which is practical for clients to use. You don't want anything that's heavier than 35kg which would preclude operation in London, for example.
“It's really important for us that we keep the form factor small enough to be usable while retaining the ability for cinematographers to shoot full frame lenses. There's no point having a large array if you can't fly it within 150 meters of the public and can only use it on location miles from anywhere.”
Helicopter Girls can now provide its clients with unparalleled flexibility, cost savings and continuity for productions shooting in popular European film hubs including Malta, Spain and Italy.
For Paramount+ spy thriller The Agency starring Micheal Fassbender, Helicopter Girls’ Chief Pilot and Engineer Pete Ayriss was asked by the show’s VFX Supervisor Matt Kasmir to adapt their 3-camera array to increase the field of view for background plates captured at 181-degrees.
The plate shoot for Sony Pictures’ Paddington in Peru was led by 2nd Unit Director/DP John Sorapure in Colombia’s remote rainforests. Helicopter Girls partnered with local drone operator Eagle Films on the eight-week prep and shoot and supplied five drones including an Alta X lifting a three-KOMODO array and another operating with V-RAPTOR.
None of the cast travelled to Colombia so the plate shoot was critical as the backdrop against which all the action took place. A POV of Paddington’s boat hurtling down whitewater required particular technical precision. The combination of high velocity, the unpredictability of the rapids and the positioning of the camera as low as possible, made it exceptionally demanding.
“Along the route there were a couple of big boulders that were fairly close together so to make the shot more dynamic I flew the drone right between them as low as possible,” reports drone operator Aaron Cole.
Aerials integrated into the camera team
While primarily a drone filming company Helicopter Girls increasingly sees itself as a creative technology hub.
“We keep up to date with our inventory and certainly find that it’s very helpful to have REDs in-house,” says Boswell. “We want KOMODOs and RAPTORs here because we need them all the time. If they are not out flying on production we are prepping them for the next shoot or designing and testing with drones in R&D. We prefer to have anything that we use on the FPV drones in-house because we're doing so much development and innovation.”
With drones integral to so many productions, Helicopter Girls are also on a mission to embed their unit with the camera team as much as possible.
“We're doing everything we can to integrate with camera teams because the earlier we talk to them the better we are able to advise on different kinds of technology, techniques and solutions,” she says. “The more we do that, the more productions are comfortable with the language of drone cinematography.
“For instance, our drone operators are adept at hand catching, hand launching and hand-offs [from operators and equipment] to maintain fluidity of shot. V-RAPTOR and KOMODO are the best quality and lightest camera for that sort of work.”
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