PDG Film Services were tasked with aerial filming in Ireland for the new Origin Green Commercial working with the award winning photographer and film maker Olivier Staub.
The shot list was extensive and featured some of the most stunning scenery in Ireland. Olivier needed every location to be filmed fully vertically which made the choice of aerial camera system a very easy decision, it had to be a Shotover!
The Shotover’s unique design allows it to film vertically whilst remaining completely controllable. The system is also ultra stable so getting the camera precisely lined up for the shots wasn’t going to be a problem.
In addition to shooting the Origin Green commercial in 4k, the client also required high resolution vertical stills of all locations for its marketing campaign. Many options for capturing both formats were considered but only a Red Helium sensor camera offered the unique capability to deliver both video and stills at the required quality and within budget.
The next challenge was capturing 4k video at 50 FPS with a 1/100s shutter and at the same time capturing an 8k still with at least 1/200s shutter.
Pete Jones PDG’s Aerial DOP was tasked with the shoot and all testing prior to the job, “Although it is possible to extract stills from the Red video footage it wasn’t an option for this shoot due to the required shutter speeds so I began testing with our Shotover F1. The system is equipped with a brand new Red 8k Epic-W with Helium sensor. This is controlled via Foolcontrol serial”. “Foolcontrol is a IOS app that can be used on an iPad or iPhone, it provides a touch screen graphical user interface to control every parameter of the Red camera menus and also allowed me to create custom presets for motion and stills modes. These presets can be accessed and activated within seconds so were the perfect solution for this project, I simply swapped between them as requiredI. I don’t think the job would have been possible without Foolcontrol”.
This method of capturing simultaneous video and stills is now a tried and tested method for PDG Film Services and it works extremely well, so if you have a similar challenge you know who to call!
PDG Film Services provides aerial filming in Ireland from our base in Dublin.