I remember the first time I flew a drone for Emotivo Productions. Last summer, I first used it to deliver aerial shots of the Capital Region for New Abode LLC, a real estate services company that services Albany, Saratoga and Schenectady counties in New York State (here’s their website).
The first thing I felt when I turned on the drone and it lifted off the ground was fear. “Oh my god, what if this thing falls from the sky and hurts someone?” I thought. “What if lose it? What if I get sued?” I came up with lots of doomsday scenarios to prevent me from learning this new skill. Eventually, through lots of practice, that feeling of dread got replaced by a feeling of thrill and exhilaration.
As a filmmaker, I was used to the camera capturing stories, feelings and moods on two planes: horizontal and vertical. You can pan a camera, you can tilt it, you can raise it or lower it on a gimbal, jib or a crane or you can push it in or out via a dolly. My stories would always be confined to a two dimensional plane of creativity. That is, until the miracle of flight and drones shattered all my preconceptions of what filmmaking could be!
With drones, you don’t have to confine your artistry to just left, right, up and down; you can now capture images in a three dimensional space. My drone gave me access to new ways of seeing the world, to new ways of coming up with shots and stories. It opened up a new channel of creativity inside of me that I didn’t know existed and it was a truly eye-opening realization. The value that these little flying machines can add to a filmmaker’s arsenal is quite high and all my clients are very happy with the aerial videography I have created for them.
Here are the five places where drone videography shines best:
- Real Estate:
Whether you want to add astonishing exterior shots to videos of your commercial or residential listings, or whether you want to use a drone to survey hard to reach areas of a home, drones are an essential tool in a filmmaker’s kit for real estate videography. Drones provide the client a fuller, more complete picture of the property they are viewing. If you are a realtor or home inspector and you aren’t using a drone to showcase your listings, you are doing your business a huge disservice.
- Wedding Industry:
There’s nothing like those jaw dropping establishing shots of a gorgeous venue, or a totally new perspective of your wedding that you could never envision. Drones allow a wedding videographer to add luxury and beauty to an already gorgeous event, take viewers’ breath away and focus an audience into the story being told. In short, they elevate the storytelling of any wedding video.
- Music Videos:
What’s better than a cool, complex and mystifying shot to add pizzaz to your music video? Dronescan also be used as a substitute to a gimbal in these shoots. The staggering visuals that can be achieved with drone videography can give a music video that edge to help it stand out from the thousands of other music videos out there.
- Filmmaking industry:
This one is pretty obvious. What used to take a robust crew and a helicopter to film a hair-raising stunt sequence or establishing shot has now been replaced by safe, stable and easy to operate drones. I remember watching a behind the scenes special on the making of the 2020 Oscar winning war drama “1917”. I remember my head was spinning from trying to figure out how they created some of those seemingly impossible shots. Let me cue you in on a little secret: they used drones. Drones have forever changed how movies are made and I can’t wait to see how these tools continue to be used in the coming years!
- Surveillance, investigation and research.
While I will not get into the ethical debates about using drones for surveillance, it is undeniable how much drones have changed this industry due to the unique vantage point they provide, as well as their reach and speed. They have similarly affected research and investigation fields of endeavor, such as with the study of plants and animals in remote parts of the The ability to maneuver small flying units within feet of your subjects or to take breath-taking shots from really high up or reach previously inaccessible places can shine a light on an animal behavior that had been shrouded in mystery. Drones are so cool!
All of us in the human race benefit from these new glimpses into how our world works and should be thankful to all the people that have put their life energy into creating these revolutionary devices.
I am extremely grateful to now be able to offer drone videography services for all promotional documentaries, weddings and special events we create, as well as real estate videography and more (latest project here). If you are interested in hiring us to capture your event from a unique perspective, please reach out to us at info@emotivoproductions.com.
