Drones are great for filmmaking — unless you want footage that looks better than film. The best cinema-grade cameras are basically just too damn heavy to fly. The Phantom Flex4k high-speed digital camera, for instance, weighs almost 7kg. But that didn’t stop the drone hackers at Brain Farm from taking it airborne.
Known for capturing impossible drone footage in unlikely placers, Brain Farm recently mounted a Phantom Flex4k ultra HD camera on a beastly Aerigon drone. The Aerigon is a heavy-lift drone, but it’s not quite powerful enough to take the Flex4k — and its 1000 FPS capabilities — up into the air.
So, the drone makers boosted the power output by an additional 40-per cent and retooled the Aerigon Gimbal to accommodate the super advanced (and very expensive) camera. All things told, Brain Farm figured the rig was worth a quarter of a million dollars.
Against all odds, it worked. The footage looks damn good. But that slow motion is insane.
GIFs: Michael Hession