Ask The Pro.....Ben Rowland of Yonder Blue Films
- Thread starter Bartman
- Start date
Benjamin Rowland
Member
Hiya Ben,
Top 3 Lessons Learned?
That's a good one... I don't know if I have a top 3, but I can share a few off the top of my head. (These aren't directed at you SMP as I'm sure you've learned these lessons already.)
One lesson I've learned over and over is that any changes to the copter or gimbal will take about 3 times longer than you think they will. The common back and forth among our crew is, "How long will that take?" The person answers. "Now square it." When it comes to doing maintenance, replacing a part, doing an upgrade, it always takes longer than you imagine it to. You run into unforeseen challenges - motor mounts that don't match up to your motors for example. Overcoming those challenges takes time. So you need to set aside more time than you expect so you won't have your back up against the wall for a shoot. When you take this from a hobby to something more, you have to take more time to thoroughly test your gear. You can't show up to a shoot with untested equipment. Proper testing takes time - like leaving a voltage regulator powered for several hours to make sure it isn't going to kick the bucket when the time comes to perform. And you don't want to be distracted by some nagging thought in the back of your head, "Is that new piece of gear going to perform during this shoot?"
More lessons to come. (Gotta go eat some breakfast!)
Motopreserve
Drone Enthusiast
Ben (after breakfast),
very sound advice. Do you all have a rule of thumb for how long you test new gear before deploying it in the field? Certain amount of test flights or x hours in the air before you trust it?
thanks for this thread - really informative.
very sound advice. Do you all have a rule of thumb for how long you test new gear before deploying it in the field? Certain amount of test flights or x hours in the air before you trust it?
thanks for this thread - really informative.
Benjamin Rowland
Member
Depends on what gear it is. Just gotta trust your gut on this one (informed by past experience).
DucktileMedia
Drone Enthusiast
Ben, if in general I am an A-hole, and tend to frighten people when opening my mouth, do you think spending more money on fancy camera gear will distract the client enough to potentially still win the contract?
Benjamin Rowland
Member
That's an easy one. Yes.
Motopreserve
Drone Enthusiast
Benjamin Rowland
Member
Every person's "road" is different. But I can share a bit about mine. My first quad was a Blade MQX. It was small enough to fly indoors, but big enough to fly outdoors in a light breeze. I flew that thing like crazy. I bought a bunch of batteries for it and I'd fly it everyday. I burned out motors on it, replaced them, flew, burned 'em out again, replaced 'em, flew.... I pushed myself with that little quad. My camera op and I would challenge each other to fly tight controlled patterns. We'd joke that there was a Red Epic on there. Once we got the hang of it pretty well, we'd make the challenges tougher and we weren't allowed to crash. Because if you're going to fly something around larger than a GoPro, crashing ain't an option. The nice thing about the Blade MQX is that it flew in manual mode - no help - no altitude hold, autoleveling, GPS, etc. This forced me to get good at flying in manual mode. And that's important. And being small, the MQX could be a bit twitchy and the remote that came with it was rather rudimentary. But I had a blast flying it.
Then I built a Cinestar. That was quite a jump up in size, but I was very confident in my flying with the Blade MQX. The first time I flew the Cinestar, I was sweatin'. But once I got the gain tuned up on the second flight, it flew pretty well. Later that day, I put a 2-axis gimbal on it, and we started practicing with it. A few weeks later, the 3rd axis for the Cinestar gimbal was released. So I upgraded the gimbal to 3-axis and we started practicing like crazy with it. We practiced by ourselves (no people nearby), and filmed stationary objects.
After tons of practice, we started to get better... I continued to fly in manual mode 95% of the time. I think that forced me to continue to improve. I still fly that way.
I haven't gotten into FPV. That's something I'd like to try for fun. I have very limited experience with single-rotor helis. I'd like to get into that more as well. I have flown a large ducted-fan plane, and that thing was a ton of fun. It has since been "retired" - I need to buy another.
A big part has been my camera op, Will Wheeler. He has a good eye for shots. We plan the shot we want to grab, then make it happen. I rely on him a lot to get what we want / need. We've known each other for a long time, and we always work together. We've flown dual-op since the very beginning. And I've only had one camera operator.
My "road" isn't necessarily the best road, but it worked out for us. I hope that helps. More to come....
EDIT: One thing I would've done different is to build a small quad in between flying the MQX and building the Cinestar.
Last edited by a moderator:
Thanks for sharing. Interestingly, my "road" was almost like yours, with an MQX and later an NQX (more opportunity indoors). Almost ... except in my early beginnings when I learned a few lessons the hard way with a couple self built copters that I soon crashed. Big loss of time and money ... I've found that flying the MQX, and NQX in agility mode (no self-leveling) really helped wiring in basic reflexes, especially flying patterns. Crash after crash at the beginning (e.g high speed banked turns) but that helped tremendously when I was sweating bullets later on large rigs with cameras, even when said rigs with self-leveling or GPS/Position hold felt like driving a slow bus ... When you say you fly in manual mode 95% of the time, you mean with self-leveling though, right?
Surprised you didn't fly FPV at some point, I would think it would have helped developping skills for piloting and framing shots. But I take it your camera op took care of that from the beginning and/or you had more than enough experience/feel. Do you just communicate verbally on position and shots, never looking at what's being filmed at all, as he exclusively takes care of that? Just wonder how that can work when you have 360 yaw gimbals and "a bit closer" is hard to interpret... Or you yaw the copter instead and don't use, or use very little, third axis?
Surprised you didn't fly FPV at some point, I would think it would have helped developping skills for piloting and framing shots. But I take it your camera op took care of that from the beginning and/or you had more than enough experience/feel. Do you just communicate verbally on position and shots, never looking at what's being filmed at all, as he exclusively takes care of that? Just wonder how that can work when you have 360 yaw gimbals and "a bit closer" is hard to interpret... Or you yaw the copter instead and don't use, or use very little, third axis?
Motopreserve
Drone Enthusiast
I would love to see a "pro pre-flight checklist" or some type of routine you use to gear up for a gig. I think even for people like myself not doing serious shoots, a solid checklist would be helpful for anyone looking to be safe and hopefully make the most of their AP/V day at the field.
Great thread so far.
Great thread so far.
flyworx.co
Member
+1 would love to hear more on preflight checklist/process as well!
Benjamin Rowland
Member
Been working like crazy lately. More answers to come...
I'll answer this one quickly. When I say manual mode, I mean WITHOUT self-leveling. It's just the way I learned.
Lots of verbal communication between my camera op and I. We use the yaw on the 3 axis gimbal a lot. We've just had a lot of practice.
More to come when we're not working 14 hour days...
flyworx.co
Member
I have another question for Mr. Rowland:
We have been flying the new Panasonic GH4 for the last few months and loving it. I know you guys been flying this camera as well as the red, in your opinion how does it compare to red in quality? Is it worth investing into red and suitable platform to fly it? I am sure when higher end clients looking to hire it won't hurt to have it in your toolbox, but for the huge difference in $$ outlay would you say it is worth it?
Wondering how the little GH4 affected this market in general.
Thank you for your input here, looking forward hearing your thoughts on this!
Roman
We have been flying the new Panasonic GH4 for the last few months and loving it. I know you guys been flying this camera as well as the red, in your opinion how does it compare to red in quality? Is it worth investing into red and suitable platform to fly it? I am sure when higher end clients looking to hire it won't hurt to have it in your toolbox, but for the huge difference in $$ outlay would you say it is worth it?
Wondering how the little GH4 affected this market in general.
Thank you for your input here, looking forward hearing your thoughts on this!
Roman
Benjamin Rowland
Member
They are fairly different cameras, but we have mixed the two on productions. The Red has more dynamic range, which is nice to have. The Red requires a much more substantial rig to fly it. It uses a lot of power, both for the copter and the camera, so you need a 3rd crew member to stay on top of the battery charging. I love flying either one, but in my opinion, you should invest money in gear that there's a demand and market for.