See http://watch.opb.org/video/2336971141/ The shots over the heavy equipment were not mine, but those above the river were. Kudos to Andy Maser, the master videographer (who also works for NatGeo). Andy.
Nice story Andy. How about some background? How many flights, how much video, which camera, what was the main work shot with since your sequence from a quality standpoint was well integrated.
Sure. Cinestar 8, 3-Axis gimbal with beta Radians (a fact that will rear its ugly head later), Canon 5D Mk III, 24 MM IS lens. I was flying pairs of QC 6200's. EDIT: Andy Maser was shooting with a Red Epic, but I think obviously there's some Go Pro Hero 2 footage in there as well. I was working with the Andy Maser (http://andymaser.com/) who has shot some amazing footage for NatGeo and was working with Oregon Public Broadcasting for this special. We got on site at around 10:00am but they were using a yarder (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cable_logging) high above and parallel to to where the dam had been, to pull a 30-ton chunk of culvert (about 40 foot long, 6 feet internal diameter) out of the river bed, I couldn't fly over the actual dam (or what was left of it) itself. We were grounded until they'd pulled the culvert out (which also included (a) breaking a yarder steel cable (the stored energy in that cable was amazing!) and (b) waiting for a more experienced yarder operator to come on-site from a nearby logging site. By then it was late in the day, so the sun was not entering the river canyon, but Andy (Maser) figured there was enough light to get some good shots. So I did several passes up and down the river away from and towards the dam site. He wanted me to fly through the gap in valley where the dam had been, but that would have meant almost certain Tx signal loss and we couldn't get high enough above the dam site to be able to have line of sight of the flight path. Bummer. But we shot about 15 minutes of footage, so I'm pleased that so much of it ended up in the program. So we just did several passes up and down the river. Andy Maser driving the camera with the Mondo Stinger downlink to a Small HD monitor, and me flying visual -- although I did have FPV downlinked via Lawmate to a Small HD with Smart On Screen Display. I really didn't feel comfortable using FPV as it would have been too easy to fly out of line of sight and almost certain TX signal loss. The gimbal was working pretty well. It was acting a bit like a pendulum so that is wasn't Scholl smooth (if you know what I mean). There was some gentle oscillation in the pan axis. However the Adobe Premiere Warp stabilization took care of that amazingly well. There was lots of metal on the site where we were shooting from the other chunks of culvert, but the worst problem was I was using beta Radians and, unbeknownst to me, the tilt Radian was working its way loose (well, the double sided tape was). When I was bringing the bird back for a battery change on the fourth battery change, it finally broke loose and succeeded in waggling the tilt axis back and forth like crazy, shifting the CoG like a wild thing. Way beyond my flying skills. I fought with it for about 15 seconds trying to bring it in to land, but fortunately it decided to land in a tree. I say fortunately, because the landing site was crushed concrete from the dam. Not a good place to crash. The tree cushioned the impact nicely and the tree-prop crunching noise caused a couple of the construction guys to come over to see what had happened. They stood and stared at the Cinestar about 50 feet up in a tree (I'd had tried to climb the C8 to buy myself time to sort things out, not realizing what had gone wrong -- that's why it was 50 feet up). They stared at it for about four or five minutes without saying a word (or if they did, I couldn't hear it). Then they said, "We've got an idea" and drove away. They came back about ten minutes later with a 40 foot ladder, and a 15 foot aluminum pole. They'd duct-taped a noose with a slip knot at one end of the pole and one of the guys went up the ladder managed to noose one of the booms on the first try, tightened the noose and lowered the Cinestar into my hands. (Larry and your colleague: I owe you big time!) And that, kiddies, is how I did my second tree landing and learned the hard way you really need that mode switch to disable the gimbal. The pan servo stalled and burned out. I also lost about four props and I think I naffed up a couple of motor bearings. The camera and lens were unmarked and undamaged. Lots of booms on the frameset and the gimbal had twisted and thus had absorbed the impact energy. I also learned that crashing into trees beats crashing into concrete any day. All in a day's work for a copter pilot. Now if only Tabb would share some of his stories! Andy.
Ha! Actually, it's not that spectacular as the copter flew backwards into the tree, so one second it's flying, then next it's not. No dramatic images of trees and branches looming.... Andy.
Seriously, play this up. Add special effects, explosions, fire, tsunami mud slides, roaring walls of water from the dam. Did you get to do the dam tour?
Are your shots at around 19:00? They look really nice! Looks like it was a really interesting project. Nicely done! Too bad the video quality is sketchy. We're spoiled with all this 720P and 1080P online video...seeing a DVD rip posted in low quality is disappointing, especially with such beautiful scenery. Do you think now that the video is online that you can post a cleaner sample? Or convince your client to post something higher quality?
Yeah. Anything airborne over the river itself. The down-looking shots of the heavy machinery were done by Sylvain Chancel with a Go Pro Hero 2 and a hexa. I don't know Sylvain, but I'm trying to get into contact with him. Let me ask. As part of my volunteer agreement I grant OPB the copyright, but I'm allowed to use my footage for a demo reel. Just don't have the time to edit a demo reel now! MK_GPXTOOL is calling.... Andy.
I would let them know your intentions just so they aren't surprised if they stumble across it. I haven't had anyone deny the use for a demo reel yet. Of course I've been too busy to finish one..
I have a written agreement that I can use footage shot with the copter for my demo reel, so I don't have to ask for that -- but it's only for the copter footage. What I've asked is whether they or I could host a high resolution version of the entire program. Andy.
Ahh I misread that as a question. "Am I allowed" wasn't really there but that's what my eyes saw. They shouldn't have a problem with you sharing the finished product but again I would clear it with them. Being a documentary type program I don't see any negatives for them if your just sharing a better quality version of the same program.