BALANCE is the latest collaboration between Brooklyn Aerials and Freefly Systems and Brandon Bray. We had a chance early on to bring along one of the first ALTA 8 prototypes and test it out on a shoot in Kenya in some of the harshest environments, but due to strict Kenyan drone laws we were unable to make a piece with it. Though on the flight back I was already thinking of ways that I wanted to use this new tool to make another aerial film in NYC.

FREEFLY ALTA 8

The three preceding collaborations with FREEFLY have all been based in New York and focused around very specific and revolutionary camera techniques and concepts:

• STREETS: Super slow-motion on the FREFLY TERO
• MOMENTS: Using the Mimic-Controller for natural camera moves
• NOSTALGIA: Infrared aerial cinematography with the ALTA 6

The ALTA 8 is the octocopter version of the previously extremely popular ALTA 6 hexacopter. The two additional motors allow for higher payloads, which means that the ALTA can reliably lift a RED CF Weapon or ALEXA MINI with bigger cinema lenses and a total payload of nearly 20lbs.




If you look at the majority of today's multicopter and aerial footage in general, you will find a lot of very stable, composed, and mechanical-looking footage. As previously described in my post about the FREEFLY MIMIC: stabilizers like the Freefly MoVI or DJI Ronin have become hugely popular in the last few years because they are such simple tools to achieve hyper-stable results. In comparison, a Steadicam rig would need a lot more experience (both balancing and operating) to get solid results - or a dolly would need much more time and manpower to set up and would limit the amount of coverage that could be shot from this one setup.

So here we are - in a time where 3-axis gimbals are accessible to nearly every level of production and have with no doubt changed the cinematography of the 21st century; for better or worse, replacing both steadicams and dollies in a lot of productions. Though I have no doubt that we are just in the beginning - there is still so much more potential yet to come. With the latest MoVI firmware update, FREEFLY opened up doors to use the gimbal as a timelapse remote head - the MIMIC translates real motion into a stabilized system or acts as a camera tracker. How amazing is that?



To get back to the point that I originally wanted to make: aerial footage these days is perfect. Maybe too perfect? The horizon is always perfectly level, shots for the most part are very straight tracking or push-ins without much life or human feel to them - in other words the technical perfection nearly adds to how removed a lot of these shots feel. By adding even slight roll motions in combinations with tilts and pans you can change footage that feels mechanical and distant to something that feels a lot more natural and motivated.

We definitely pushed the roll moves in our piece to a maximum - to further exemplify the imbalance of our modern day world. But shots like these really speak the most to me, where subtle moves change the whole feel of a shot and scene: