What could be more appropriate for drones, than a festival that has a tag line “Head in the clouds”. Set in next to LA’s China Town, in the recently built Los Angeles Historic park the the DTLA skyline as a back drop you couldn’t ask for a more picturesque place to get some amazing aerial cinematography. As you can see the producers used our footage liberally. What this video doesn’t show is the high pressure approval process we went thru with the city of LA Parks and Recreation and Film LA the two days preceding the festival. Thankfully, we have been getting drone flights approved since back in the days when Part 333 and a pilots license was required and we had to submit directly to the local FSDO. We’ve been on shoots where the Fire marshal actually complimented our paperwork as the nicest that he had seen. (it was the Wayfair – “Way Day commercial shot in February of 2018) I’ve heard is said that drone pilots aren’t good at paperwork, thankfully that idiom doesn’t apply at Dronewrx. We are exceptionally good at paperwork and do our very best to work with the authorities to get jobs approved the first time. Plus having a pilots licence helps us speak their language and when you’re dealing with people who work in that industry they can tell you know your stuff.
This was the start of a beautiful relationship! We’ve shot the Head in the Clouds festival now for four years, as well as other projects for 88 Rising such as the video for Rick Brian’s Bali. Now Amazon is producing the festival so our work can be seen on the live broadcasts on Amazon Prime.
The head in the clouds festival was a whole lot of fun, but super challenging. First off we had narrow corridors in which we could fly in order to avoid flying over people. But as in all productions, you want to get the producers the most dynamic shots you can. Plus, they had all these balloons floating around the park. Festivals are always a challenge for many reasons. This one had it’s own set of challenges which we were able to overcome and in the end everyone was happy with the footage.
