FYI.

This story is over 5 years old.

Tech

Ryan Phillippe and 'Stranger Things' Kid Star in a Film Shot Entirely on a Drone

UAV Intentions.
Source: DJI/YouTube

Drones have been steadily making their way into moviemaking over the last couple years, but Chinese drone-maker DJI took things a step further with its latest PR stunt: the company made a short film shot entirely with its new Inspire 2, a camera-equipped drone you can buy for just under $3,000 USD. Is this the first movie shot exclusively by a drone? It seems probable.

The 13-minute movie is called The Circle, and it stars 90s heartthrob Ryan Phillippe and Noah Schnapp (Will Byers from Stranger Things) as an estranged father and son (respectively) in "Depression-era America," according to DJI.

It's perhaps a counterintuitive move to use a piece of very-2016 technology to tell a story set in the 1930s, but honestly, the resulting shots look pretty good! And not just the aerial shots—the closeups, too. Still, if you had come up to me a few years ago and told me that the dude from Cruel Intentions would wind up playing the lead in a drone costume drama, I would have been like "wow," followed by "…what was that other movie he was in, the one where he played the tech guy? Antitrust?"

Get six of our favorite Motherboard stories every day by signing up for our newsletter.