Shooting a Commercial with a Radio Controlled Helicopter

Out doing some shooting for some local t.v. spots and found out about these guys that mount an HD video camera and still 10 megapixel digital cameras to a gyroscope mounted to a radio controlled helicopter. You can see some of what the footage can look like at www.imageabove.com . Went out yesterday to Marin County on what might have been the single best day of the year to shoot and I am stoked. We got some absolutely rocking footage and hopefully we'll marry it up with some other footage and have a nice little t.v. spot in about a week or so. I'll try to post the spot or some of the video up here when it's edited, although I have been having trouble getting any of my video to load on Adgabber.

I also have another shoot with a tight budget. (They all have tight budgets) and we were thinking we might need to get a jib in and found this guy who put a video camera up on top of a 30 foot pole. I beleive the savings for this shoot will represent a savings of 963 Big Macs. While I would love to see what I could do with some of those half million dollar budgets, I do take some pride in working on these microbudget pieces that somehow manage to ocassionally win awards.

Tomorrow I am off to talk to an advertising class and get embarassed by just how good the stuff they come up with is.