PRODUCTION
AERIAL FILMING
For its work on the recently released MCU movie Eternals, Helicopter Film Services used a range of platforms. Working in the Canary Islands, Germany and the UK, it used a mix of helicopter-mounted Shotover F1 and K1 gimbals with the Alexa Mini LF camera and Fujinon Premista 28-100mm lens to capture plates for use in several VFX sequences involving the Celestial Mothership and more. “There are very few helicopters
in the Canary Islands, so this necessitated bringing one from mainland Spain,” comments Aerial DoP and company CEO, Jeremy Braben. Other sequences were shot using the company’s Aegion drone. In Germany this involved the same camera/lens/K1 combination capturing plates at a frozen lake at the Staatsbesuch Nature Reserve (the sequences would be used as backgrounds for ice crashing visual effects). Elsewhere it used the Alexa Mini LF or Alexa Mini with a Zeiss CP.3 lenses. Each platform has its distinct
advantages and disadvantages. “Helicopters can operate further, faster, higher, longer, but you can’t always use a helicopter in some of these places,” says Braben. “Drones operate closer, quieter, and have less impact on on the filming set. But they are hampered by a lack of range and a lack of duration.” Even though Eternals has only
just had a theatrical release, the first aerial shoots on the Covid- delayed project started in 2018. As such the project has seen a few changes in the industry., The first has been the increasing use of drones and what Braben says is a welcome accompanying uptick in respect for the drone crews. “People have an understanding of them now. When a drone crew
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says it is unsafe to do something, there is generally no questioning of it anymore. “The other big shift in aerials has
been arrays,” he says. “We designed and built our own six camera, aerial array, the ‘Typhon’ which is agnostic in terms of cameras.” Their primary use is again for
VFX plates and especially the new breed of wraparound LED shooting volumes, where being able to capture a whole scene in a single pass is a distinct advantage for projection purposes. “Currently we can only give data
of where the aircraft is in space, but there’s more spatial information and data that is coming out of the military surveillance markets,” says Braben. “It’s not integrated just yet, but we’re working on the ability to provide data of where the lens is and where the shot is pointing.”
ETERNALS
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