What do I mean by dual drone filming?
Well I always carry a sub 250g drone (currently a mini 3 pro) so that we can play it safe if factors on location change or we are asked to do something that was not examined at the planning stage.
It is of course a back up unit too in case of problems with your bigger drone. In our case a Mavic 3 pro cine. (pictures are of our previous drone the Air 2 S)
Another advantage is when flying indoors, it’s smaller and nimble and it is able to do less damage if it falls or comes into contact with something. We also tend to use prop guards to ensure that if there is the odd nudge against walls etc. that it doesn’t end in an incident.
But isn’t the quality sub standard? Not at all, I have used both in the same programme for broadcast (Coronation Street) and the quality on the smaller drone (used in 10 bit D log) is fine.
So our bigger drone has many things going for it, for instance it is more stable, has a more solid feel while flying.
It also has ADS-B which warns you when there are manned aircraft flying close by. For example we had a warning on this particular shoot. We landed the drone and looked around as we couldn’t see anything. A small twin engined plane approached, so we got a warning before we could see or hear it.
This feature really gives you confidence especially when flying in a flight restriction zone you have permission for.
Here you can see us fitting the wide angle lens to the mini 3 pro.
This gave us a great perspective of the site we were filming as at our maximum height we were not getting all the site in and so had to back off considerably. And when filming inside it gave us the ability to get the whole manufacturing plant in shot.
In conclusion we will always be dual drone filming, If you need a drone shoot give us an email, Brian Barnes.
See here for rates https://www.activideo.co.uk/prices/