For the last six years I’ve had the privilege of being the drone pilot on Canal Boat Diaries with Tv presenter Robbie Cumming capturing the UK’s waterways from above.
It’s a unique role working as a very small team just myself, Robbie and producer Stuart Woodman travelling along the tranquil canals of the North to the bustling waterways of the South.
Although a simple concept to film it’s extremely challenging with the team based on a small narrowboat, “The Naughty Lass” keeping our kit to the bare minimum.
Aerial Cinematics from the Narrowboat
Working days on the shoot are like most filming days, they are long and very hard work often shooting 12-hour days and staying away from home for many days at a time. But it’s worth it!
There’s no other show I’ve ever worked on that gives you the freedom to film what we film. Miles and miles of walking behind the narrowboat capturing images that are seldom seen by the boaters as often the canals are tree lined. Visibility is just looking straight down the front of the boat, but we see everything from the air.
Distant castles, Stately Homes, lakes, countryside, towns and cities. It’s just spectacular. Plus, it keeps you very fit averaging 12 miles a day on foot
Not giving too much away about how we film on the show but from a drone pilots perspective I keep the kit to just a small backpack containing enough batteries to last around 4 hours, several drones, usually three as back up and a lithium battery charger (Ecoflow Mini) to keep the batteries topped up for the day so we never run out of power.
This way we keep everything independent from the narrowboats power supply as we wouldn’t want to in accidentally blow the boats fuses which happened on the first series, Ooops!
You’ve always got to be careful flying from a boat even one just moving at 4 miles per hour so most of the time we used the tow path to fly from, with kind permission from the Canal and River Trust however there are times when we travelled along rivers with no tow paths and its then that you have to have your wits about you.
Luckily Stuart was a great help and often does a hand catch of the drones freeing up myself to pilot the drone back to the boat. It works a treat, and no fingers lost so far.
The Drones Behind the Shots
We used a real mix of drones over the last six series initially flying the DJI Inspire 2 aircraft with the X5s camera set up however as the years have gone by the drones have got smaller and smaller and generally, I use the DJI Mavic 3 pro for 90% of the filming.
In extremely busy towns and cities or when I need to fly closer to the narrowboat but there are public close by, I’ll fly the little DJI Mavic 3 pro as its under the 250g weight limit and keeps things safe and legal.
For more details of the kit we use check out our website https://www.halovue.co.uk/drones-aircraft-dji-inspire2/
For the first four series on BBC4 each one took around 20 drone filming days with Robbie and Stu filling in the gaps as they travelled along the waterways to make four half hour episodes per series.
When the show switched channels to U&Yesterday the program was expanded to ten, 60 minute episodes meaning the filming days were increased to around 50 drone filming days again with Robbie and Stu filming on non-drone flying days. An incredible effort all round
If you’d like to know more about Robbie Cuming and his boat The Naughty Lass, why not pop over to his website and see what he gets up to. So much more than just a boater.
Navigating the Waters of Series 6
Series 6 has now been filmed and is almost ready to be shown with a broadcast date of the 19th of May at 8pm on the U&Yesterday channel.
I’m not going to give anything away, but this is by far the best series of Canal Boat Diaries so far. All the usual incredible views with the usual calamities thrown up by Robbie’s boat The Naughty Lass.
You don’t want to miss it!
Canal Boat Diaries Series 6:
For more behind-the-scenes insights and to see our work in action, visit our Canal Boat Diaries production page.
