The web have been sizzling with Kaveret’s drone footage of a bride walking the aisle. It is a gorgeous cinematic footage of a wedding at Pelican hill at Newport beach, California.
The footage was taken using a Phantom 4 and it is quite different from any drone wedding video you have seen to date. We sat down with Adam Rubin, Kaveret’s CEO and drone operator to break this shot down.
Filming The Walk
Adam tells DIYP that this was not a trivial shot, and that there was a few factors contributing to the complexity of the shot.
The hardest thing for me was to make this shot in a single cut. You are telling a different story with a single long take than when you’re combining several short cuts. The impact of a single cut creates a significantly more impactful experience. In terms of storytelling it feels as if everyone is waiting for the bride to arrive at the alter. The audience, groom, family and guest are all waiting until the bride arrives.
I tend to agree, and while Adam will probably never admit it, this scene can be easily connected to the Goodfellas Copacabana long steadicam shot which again sets the narrative of the story to revolve around Ray Liotta.
The other issue that Adam had to deal with is that the walk was not scripted or orchestrated by him, and while the general flow of the walk was pretty obvious, the timing of it was not planned. Adam says, that while he had the camera movements script built, he still had to be alert and adjust according to what was actually going on.
About Noise
We asked Adam about the issue of motor noise. Adam tells us that between the height of the Phantom and the 4 monitors the noise was barely noticeable.
Cinematographic breakdown
Adam says that
while sometimes just getting a different angle with a drone provide a good story element, adopting the same camera movements that have always worked can bring a lot of added value to a drone shot. The only difference is that there are now 5 axis to consider: X, Y, Z tilt and pan. This makes a shot immensely more complex, and as with all wedding footage there are no second takes
Adam was kind enough to provide a movement by movement breakdown exclusively for DIYP
using phones at a weeding is completely lack of respect…
It looks as though the bridesmaids were using phone cameras too
It’s a new generation. The current generation isn’t as hung up on the whole phone thing…
Wow. That’s just.. Epic.
In the sense of cinematics, that was truly fantastic. At the same time, had he filmed this using a drone with a rotating gimbal, & landing gear that could be raised, such as the Yuneec Typhoon H, DJI Inspire 1, etc, he would have had more advanced/professional filming options available to be used. This would have led to an even greater cinematic “experience”.
The trouble with this epic drone footage, and it is epic, fantastic job framing a live event like that, the trouble is it makes the bride small and insignificant in the story, and it’s almost detached from the moment. Is this just the opening and maybe the closing of the video, that may work, but for me this lacks emotion.
I see a fish at the end.
Epic video, illegal under current drone laws, but awesome just the same. (It’s illegal to fly over people, especially crowds).
Not true. Drones of this size just have to stay 20 feet above the crowd and 10 feet away laterally.
However, flying is banned at many big events such as sports — but in that case the FAA actually establishes a temporary no-fly zone.