Tanked Up!

This week Birmingham based drone pilot Nic from Creative Pie Films talks tanks and drones!

Could this be one of the best blog titles ever?! Yes is the answer!

ST Engineering, based in Singapore, were over in the UK showcasing their new Bronco tank / people carrier and they were going to film a promotional video at Bovington Camp while they were here.

Bovington is essentially a huge playground for heavy machinery. Hills, forests, mud, water, inclines, you name it Bovington has it. All testing for the British Armies hardware takes place here, so you couldn’t ask for a better location.

Creative Pie Films were commissioned to provide aerial imagery for the shoot using our drone. It took all of about 3 seconds to decide whether to do this job…. “1,2,3 ok!”

We enlisted the help of another drone pilot to use multiple drones to capture the tank being put through its paces from more than one angle. Another reason we used a ‘multi drone’ approach was to try and not waste time. The tank moves quite slowly so resetting a shot was a time consuming process.

I have two favourite shots from this shoot, one when the tank was climbing a hill and then rolling down the other side, so we set one drone to monitor the top while the other filmed the climb which was awesome, when edited together it gives full coverage and perfectly demonstrates the vehicles maneuverability.

The second was shot where the drone had to fly down a narrow line of trees towards the oncoming tank. This had to be flown using the ATTI mode on the drone which meant it had no GPS positioning. This mode enables the pilot to have way more control over the drone but it means you have no GPS lock, so the drone can drift with a sudden gust of wind etc.

The shot was completed in one take and looks really cool after being colour graded by the master pie grader Dean T Brown!

You can see the before and after below..

To fly multi drone you need to fly with someone you trust, who understands the drone capabilities and all the possible dangers. Luckily for us we know some top gun pilots!

If you want to see the footage check out our new showreel below..

Thanks for reading and visiting Creative Pie Films and if you need a Birmingham based drone pilot give us a call!

Call me goose!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.