NAB snapshot: "Flying-Cam"
My friend Wayne de Geere is in Vegas this week for NAB, cruising the halls for cool stuff. He shares this snapshot of one of the more interesting products on display -- the "Flying-Cam," a methanol-powered aerial vehicle with on-board camera, used in the production of such films as Harry Potter (3 of 'em), 007 (at least 3 of 'em), Van Helsing, and The Kite Runner. The company's website contains a bunch of groovy Quicktime movies that show the device in action.
the latest
latest episodes
Copseyes.
A shout out to all you Ron Coles out there.
http://www.larryniven.org/stories/cloak_of_anarchy.shtml
I have been dreaming about a flying cam for a long time and I predict it will not take much longer until we can get a cheap CCD into one of them nifty mini helicopters you can buy for 29$ online ..
We have already cams in sunglasses now .. so ..
You can find a couple of DIY examples on youtube where people have even used RC models fitted with gyroscopes to create an RC UAV homemade predator. If only it came with hellfire missiles. Some of the new flash memory based HD camcorders would probably work fine for amateur filmmakers.
I saw another company called Coptercam that does a lot of this type of work and they've even made a proprietary 16mm camera to work with their gyroscope stabilized RC copters.
Which is the big question, if you have a prosumer camera, it'd have to be a relatively large rig and cost as much as the camera to make it safe for DIY aerial shots. I suppose a helium balloon rig could work but you wouldn't be able to do flair-y THE SHINNIN' style shots.
I've seen numerous tutorials for taking stills with your RC plane but have yet to see one for people who might want to get cheap aerial footage with rented or owned big boy cameras.
Or you could say screw it and hire yourself a helicopter for an hour from the local airfield.