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Tech

This Is How You Do Drone Cinema

Now imagine what Kubrick could've done with a hexacopter.
Flip to HD, will you?

A low pass over a slender fishing boat. A night crawl through a deserted city street. A gradual, dizzying ascent from a string section and pianist, all balanced precariously on the cliffs of some mossy jungle ruin. This is what the new drone cinema looks like.

I'll be the first to say that this sort of first-person view, of which more and more hobbyists and cinematographers are seeking from small, moderately-priced quad- and hexacopters and imagers, is inherently arresting. It almost can't not be arresting. With a solid stabilizer, shooter and viewer alike collide in the ultimate God's eye. It's tough to fuck up FPV, in other words, if you know what you're doing. Team Green Gorilla, the crew behind this gorgeous video, not only seem to know what they're doing, but get some help from a number of downright stunning locations in and around Michoacan, Mexico.

It doesn't have the thrill of inadvertantly filming nature porn. It doesn't bear the intimacy of the new home video. And yet its exacting sweeps burn slow enough to the point that I can't help but think a film titan like Kubrick, whose freak perfectionism staunchly embraced new time-saving technologies, would've used mini drones for aerials and tracking shots if given the opportunity. Can you imagine the vertiginous opening shot in The Shining, to which Michoacan's ruggedness is slightly reminiscent, though the eyes of a drone?

Reach Brian at brian@motherboard.tv. @thebanderson // @VICEdrone