I think were going to need a bigger drone!

Nic from Creative Pie Films a provider of aerial photography based in Birmingham talks about how the impact of having a strong aerial presence is just as important as having a strong ground ground set up in regards to cameras.

For our latest film for Sdl Solutions we wanted to push our production values to the next level and we did this by using an Inspire X5R raw drone, which provided us with amazing footage.

The X5R is a Raw camera which means it films all the footage in its rawest form without assigning a codec. Most drones use MP4 or H.264 which compresses the footage heavily.

Compression is mostly good however….. Raw is awesome!

And here is why, firstly it grades like a dream, its rich in data, each individual image is recorded so every 25 frames is literally 25 individual images per second!

When using a compression you just get one file that contains…. Video…

Creative Pie Films a provider of Aerial Photography based in Birmingham are licensed by the CAA to fly drones!

With Raw its every single frame for as long as you were recording for and they are usually 10mb each!

So when it comes to grading you have so much wiggle room without the image falling apart if you push too much.

For this project we wanted to get a stunning opener to give the film real impact; so we got up early and headed for the Gloucester countryside and waited, waited and waited and then got cold and then waited until…. Finally the sun came bursting through the clouds!

The X5R captures such detail but you need to set the correct exposure and ISO just like any camera. Not enough light and then image will luck dull and you will also have less maneuverability when it comes to grading.

After the shoot Dean then took the footage and exported / optimised it in Da Vinci and then began his processes to make sure everything looked just right in regards to contrast, saturation and getting his gamma curves all in order!

As the business has evolved so has our kit, and you always need to make sure the camera’s are always meeting your expectations and more importantly that of the client.

So as you think about upgrading your ground kit, you also need to ask yourself a question….Does our aerial match ?

With camera tech moving so quickly it’s easy for one to fall out of sync from the other.

High end camera options for drones are now easily affordable due to the amount of drones out there and how fast manufacturers like Dji are pumping new solutions out.

Happy film making !

If you are looking for a provider of Aerial Photography based in Birmingham then give us a call here at Creative Pie!

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