Ask The Pro.....Ben Rowland of Yonder Blue Films

[Bartman]

Speaking with Ben the other day I found out that in addition to running his media business (and all that that entails) he also spends a good amount of time fielding emails and PM's from site members asking about the finer details of his operation and how he and his partner do what they do.

When the site was started a little over three years ago I had the intention to get out and interview people within the multi-rotor world but it's something I've never been able to find the time to do. Ben agreed to do a virtual interview where I will submit questions and he'll take some time to answer them for us and then provide follow up after the piece has been posted.

So here's your opportunity....what should I ask him? Please post your questions below and I'll pick eight to ten of them to submit to Ben for his reply.

Ben's background is in television production so he can address a pretty wide spectrum of topics from the actual aerial equipment he's using to the post-production process. Yonder Blue Films continues to expand their services and are presently scheduling full production services featuring all aspects of production including their highly regarded aerial product.

Who, what, where, why, when, how..............?

We'll give this process a week or two to play out and then I'll post which questions are going to be forwarded to Ben.

Fire away!
Bart

 

[Droider]

What does he think is the perfect all rounder for

1 machines under 7Kg
2 machines over 7KG

If, god forbid he had a fire in his workshop which would be the machine he would grab?

 

[DucktileMedia]

When Ben wakes up in the morning, does he put his pants on one leg at a time, or does he just go straight to making gold records?

 

[Bartman]

Ben,

When trying to execute a shot that covers a long distance and which may require flying through combinations of sunny and shady areas, do you set exposure more for the sun or the shade and would you ever consider auto-exposure for a particular shot?

Bart

 

[jdennings]

Ben, what was your "road" to flying smoothly and accurately for film? Did you train on simulators, fly helis or planes, small/fast multis? What's your view on mastering (or at least training for) 3d Helis as a way to improve piloting? Experience with crashes? FPV?

 

[McWetty]

Hi Ben,

First post. Reg'd just to ask you a Q. What are your thoughts on the FAA's ban on using UAVs/multirotors/etc. for commercial purposes?

I'm not trying to scare anyone because I'm looking to break into this area myself (although not on your level, haha). I just want to know how big timers are skirting the ban.

Dave Wetty
Cloud Prime Photography


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Bartman]

Hi Ben,

First post. Reg'd just to ask you a Q. What are your thoughts on the FAA's ban on using UAVs/multirotors/etc. for commercial purposes?

I'm not trying to scare anyone because I'm looking to break into this area myself (although not on your level, haha). I just want to know how big timers are skirting the ban.

Dave Wetty
Cloud Prime Photography


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

McWetty,

I can answer that rather than Ben as it's not something that we'd likely pass on for Ben to address. The FAA lost in court recently after trying to fine an aerial media company that was known to have performed aerial media services for compensation using sUAS equipment. A such, the operation is no longer strictly illegal and operators are continuing to provide their services for hire. However, anyone operating for hire should continue to respect the informal FAA altitude limit of 400 feet above-ground-level as this has long been in place for any and all RC hobby operations. Operators should respect private property by not overflying without permission and should also not ever fly over people or active roads. More than anything else though, flying near or around airports is prohibited and doing anything that may put a manned flight at risk is to be avoided at all costs even if it means you crashing your helicopter intentionally.

Regulations will eventually be released and we'll all pick it up from there but for now we've been given a reprieve from further regulation and as such we should be doing everything we can to show as a community that we can handle the responsibilities involved in safely doing what we do.

If anyone would like to discuss this further please start a new thread.

Hope that helps.
Bart

 

[McWetty]

McWetty,

I can answer that rather than Ben as it's not something that we'd likely pass on for Ben to address. The FAA lost in court recently after trying to fine an aerial media company that was known to have performed aerial media services for compensation using sUAS equipment. A such, the operation is no longer strictly illegal and operators are continuing to provide their services for hire. However, anyone operating for hire should continue to respect the informal FAA altitude limit of 400 feet above-ground-level as this has long been in place for any and all RC hobby operations. Operators should respect private property by not overflying without permission and should also not ever fly over people or active roads. More than anything else though, flying near or around airports is prohibited and doing anything that may put a manned flight at risk is to be avoided at all costs even if it means you crashing your helicopter intentionally.

Regulations will eventually be released and we'll all pick it up from there but for now we've been given a reprieve from further regulation and as such we should be doing everything we can to show as a community that we can handle the responsibilities involved in safely doing what we do.

If anyone would like to discuss this further please start a new thread.

Hope that helps.
Bart

Thank you for the answers, Bart.

 

[flyworx.co]

Ben,

When trying to execute a shot that covers a long distance and which may require flying through combinations of sunny and shady areas, do you set exposure more for the sun or the shade and would you ever consider auto-exposure for a particular shot?

Bart

+2

Great question!! Would love to hear his take on this.

Roman
www.flyworx.co

 

[dazzab]

www.flyworx.co[/URL]

Make that +3. But I'm going to guess here so I can see if I'm right or not. I'm going to vote for auto exposure even though normally I don't think it's a good idea. _However_, I'm also going to hedge my bet by saying that in the old school days of still photography we would expose for the highlights as you can usually bring up the shadows when printing but you never would have any hope of bringing the highlights down. Once highlights blow out there's just no data there to recover or 'burn in' to use an old darkroom term. But shadows usually still have the info in them you just have to lighten them up with a bit of dodging.

I'll be most interested to see if my 40 year old photo training is anywhere close to the right answer.

 

[nickad]

Ben,

Any recomendations for a brushless gimbal kit or parts for a cinestar 8 conversion. Or for an additional gimbal build?
Without the MOVI price tag of course

Nick

 

[Benjamin Rowland]

Speaking with Ben the other day I found out that in addition to running his media business (and all that that entails) he also spends a good amount of time fielding emails and PM's from site members asking about the finer details of his operation and how he and his partner do what they do.

When the site was started a little over three years ago I had the intention to get out and interview people within the multi-rotor world but it's something I've never been able to find the time to do. Ben agreed to do a virtual interview where I will submit questions and he'll take some time to answer them for us and then provide follow up after the piece has been posted.

So here's your opportunity....what should I ask him? Please post your questions below and I'll pick eight to ten of them to submit to Ben for his reply.

Ben's background is in television production so he can address a pretty wide spectrum of topics from the actual aerial equipment he's using to the post-production process. Yonder Blue Films continues to expand their services and are presently scheduling full production services featuring all aspects of production including their highly regarded aerial product.

Who, what, where, why, when, how..............?

We'll give this process a week or two to play out and then I'll post which questions are going to be forwarded to Ben.

Fire away!
Bart

Thanks for putting this thread together, Bart.

 

[Bartman]

Hello everyone,

This has run longer than originally intended for a number of reasons. I'd like to submit the questions for Ben by the end of this week so if anyone else has questions for him please list them here. If we run short then I'll come up with a few more of my own!

 

[textilet]

I have a couple :
Do you charge a premium for flying over water/from boats?
Do you usually do any post to your footage or turn it over to the client completely raw?
I feel as though it's perhaps gauche to ask what you charge but how about this- how many work days does it take you to pay off an aerial rig?
Have you had much demand for 4k as of yet or is 1080p the way to be?

 

[Bartman]

another of mine for Ben;
In your opinion is it better to have the best gear possible or to be very familiar with the gear that you have?

 

[econfly]

I have plenty of questions -- feel free to edit:

In 35mm full-frame terms, what is his ideal lens (e.g., 24mm?, 35mm?). Does he shoot most aerial shots at the aperture that produces the best combination of sharpness and depth of field (e.g., f/8, f/11) or are there other considerations for the best aerial shots? Does he ever shoot aerials at fast apertures? What about focus -- infinity? hyperfocal distance? Does he ever use auto focus? Is shutter speed always at half the frame rate (e.g., 1/48 or 1/50 if shooting 24fps)? What frame rate does he usually use? Finally, does he use ND filters routinely and if so, how do they work into his ideal exposure settings?

 

[SMP]

Hiya Ben,

Top 3 Lessons Learned?

 

[Motopreserve]

another of mine for Ben;
In your opinion is it better to have the best gear possible or to be very familiar with the gear that you have?

I have one related to Bart's: When first starting, did you go out and buy the top dollar rig (perhaps stretching/overextending your budget), or did you start modest and let demand make the decision for you, for more expensive gear?

thanks!

 

[Benjamin Rowland]

Time to start answering some of these questions!

I'll cover a common one first... camera exposure. The easiest solution to getting good exposure is to shoot a subject that is well lit. When I shoot ground based, this usually means that I bring in some HMI lights to create or add to the existing sunlight. There are other light modifiers I use as well. But in the air, it's a different story. You're usually counting on the sun to do most of your lighting for you. We've filmed a couple of college campuses, and in those cases we consult with the school (typically their staff photographer) to find out what time of day that buildings look their best. Some will look better in the morning and some will look better in the late afternoon. One campus we filmed had a row of beautiful buildings at the front of campus, but they were only lit well at sunrise, so we covered them then. Beyond mid-morning they were in shadow, and that's something you typically want to avoid when filming a building.

A scouting session can be very helpful in determining what time of day a subject should be filmed. I sometimes use an app called Sun Seeker to determine what time of day the sun will be at its best for a scene. Check out a demo someone posted on YouTube:

While you can't schedule every shot at golden hour, with some planning you can make the best of good light. I talk more about lighting in this post on our website: http://www.yonderbluefilms.com/blog/2014/3/27/aerial-ingredients-lighting.html

So good lighting will make setting exposure easier. If you're still faced with a fairly contrasty scene, here are some more things to think about. Choosing a camera with good dynamic range can be very helpful. This is where a camera like the Red Epic excels. But you don't always want to be flying a camera that is that heavy or expensive (though in the grand scheme of things, the Epic is fairly light compared to something like an Arri Alexa or Panavision film camera). I've found the Blackmagic Pocket to have great dynamic range, especially for the price. The GH4 is pretty good in this regard too. Both of these cameras are light and deliver great picture quality. Each has a pretty different feel to the image, so you should pick the one that makes sense for the project. With the most recent firmware on the Pocket, it clips the highlights fairly well without being too harsh. I need more experience with the GH4 to really compare the two (in another post), but I'm really digging the features that the GH4 offers.

Wow, starting to get off topic. Sorry.

So, exposure... Good lighting, camera with good dynamic range, what else? You want to use the exposure tools available to you to set your camera properly. Zebra bars, histogram, waveform, etc. These are some of the tools available for getting your exposure right. I won't go in depth on these tools as there is plenty of info out there. I like Zebra bars set at 100%, as this lets me know where I've clipped my highlights. Specular highlights, the sun, lights - those are things I may let clip, but everything else I try to keep from clipping. I like using a waveform monitor too if a monitor has this tool.

Whatever your subject is, that's the most important thing to expose for. So if your subject is in the shadows, you may want to open up a bit. But try to put your subject in the light (if it makes sense), then expose for that. We never use auto-exposure for video. We sometimes use auto-exposure for still photography. We set exposure on the ground, then get to flying.

Hopefully that is helpful. If something wasn't clear, let me know and I'll try to explain it better.

More coming soon...

 

[Benjamin Kenobi]

Awesome! More please! :nevreness: