ITV Emmerdale
Location: Yorkshire
We have had the pleasure of drone filming on the ITV Emmerdale set and surrounding locations several times now over the years.
Shots include hovering over a vast reservoir where putting a camera crew was too dangerous and not an option.
Replicating a model drone flight that Jacob received for his birthday plus many more technical tracking shots to name but a few.
This is always a two man drone crew with a member of the Emmerdale camera crew stepping in to handle the focus controls when needed.
As we are a Yorkshire based drone company we are the ideal choise for programs such as Emmerdale as they are right on our doorstep reducing the carbon footprint on the production.
Drone filming on ITV’s Emmerdale
Several years ago, we were asked by ITV’s Emmerdale director Tim O’Mara if we would like to fly our drones for an episode of the popular long running continual drama. He had been following our business though twitter and wanted to test the capability of the DJI Inspire 2 aircraft and the new super 35mm X7 dedicated camera which at this point never been used for any major dramas or films.
At the time only large heavy lift drones had been used on the show but with the release of the super 35mm X7 camera and larger codecs he though these new systems would fit in perfect especially if they were to be flown near to actors due to its smaller size.
We did the test flights, and everything was perfect however there were some complications on the technical side. ITV use interlaced cameras on Emmerdale and our drones are progressive. This meant the files needed to be converted by the studio which caused artefacts to be introduced into the image.
We quickly found a solution and ended up shooting at 50fps in 1080 and with a colour profile of D-Log.
The benefit of the DJI Inspire 2 drone over the heavy lift drones are numerous.
The drones be flown very slow for incredible cinematic shots or super-fast to capture high speed events such as car chases.
The aircraft is very quick to set up and once rigged, which takes just a few minutes we can be airborne within 30 seconds once the GPS has locked on to the required number of satellites.
The Dji Inspire 2 drone has all the features of the heavy lift drones but comes with its own built in dedicated camera so no need to hire in any other glass or cameras.
We have full remote control of the drone’s aperture, frame rate, focus, iso, histogram, white balance, and all the other major settings whilst we are in the air. No need to land the aircraft if any adjustments need to be made to the exposure saving lots of time.
The DJI Inspire 2 can be operated by a drone pilot, dedicated drone camera operator and when required, a drone camera focus operator. A three-man professional crew.
The images are all piped out to high quality Blackmagic screens giving the ITV production team the ability to monitor every movement of the drone.
Once the shot has been completed the drone and ancillary kit can be quickly loaded back into our 4×4 and moved to the next location with the batteries charging in the vehicle as we travel along. No noisy petrol generators for this just totally silent inverters mounted into the rear of the Landrover.
The Dji Inspire 2 drone’s most beneficial asset is the ability to fly way longer than the heavy lift drones. With a reasonable flight time of around 20 minutes the drone can perform several rehearsals on just one battery and when it comes to the actual take can be flown into position and hover until the director calls action. This gives the cast and crew plenty of time to get into position and if need be do the scene several times whilst the drone stays airborne. Only landing when the battery’s start to get down to around 30%.
Sine those early days filming on Emmerdale the DJI Inspire 2 has become one of the go to drones for filming on TV dramas and also major film.
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