Some Intriguing Drone Movements: 24 Hours in Los Angeles

I saw the first minute of this video on Instagram and walked away from it thinking to myself, wow. The flying in this video was very good, the choice of lenses stood out, and it was filmed in some rather tough lighting conditions. I went back to the video on Instagram, found out who made it, and watched the full thing on Vimeo. While I was watching it again, I realized that this video was way different from what I had expected it to be. At first it began with straight forward camera movements along with flights through some tight spaces/buildings that would require a really good pilot. After a few clips of that, the movements began to get very unique and had me wondering what they were doing to achieve these looks.

One of the first things I noticed was the use of a zoom lens on the Inspire 2, which I own myself and absolutely love. The shots they were able to capture were very inspirational to me and hopefully to many others out there because of how smooth and creative they were. Some of the shots were very slow and smooth, other shots were very quick, but everything was put together very well. Aside from the flying and shots captured, there was a lot of postproduction involved with scaling and rotation that made this video far more unique than other aerial videos out there. On top of all of that, there were a few really impressive drone time-lapses that pulled the video together even more.

Believe it or not, this two and a half minute video took three months to film and took up four terabytes of space as it was filmed in Pro Res 422HQ. The video was also filmed in 50 different locations at specific times of day, inspired by location and architecture. At the end of it all, only the best of the best shots were selected to be used in the final video. You can tell that this video took time to make and that there was no way they got a majority of those shots on the first try when they were out filming because of how complex they were and the amount of time they had to achieve those specific shots when out filming. Overall, I am really impressed with this work as I find it very different from a lot of other aerial work out there. 

For more, check out Beverly Hills Aerials on Instagram.

I am a huge nerd when it comes to drones and have been flying for over 4 years. I enjoy doing aerial photography as my personal work but shoot tons of video for work as well. I am a part of Simply Visual Productions and Simply Sounds, working my way into an industry I couldn't be happier to be a part of.

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7 Comments

Wow! This is so far beyond what I thought possible with a drone.

Amazing footage, awesome music, great video

Yeah that was pretty cool to watch

Well done. Makes me want a drone.

It's ok. I dislike the movement speed changes between normal shots and dronelapse ones, makes it look amateurish.

How do you go about getting permits to fly at those locations.. through the buildings..

Not a bad question, I'm not even really sure but I would assume its a pretty long process and not that easy to go about