May 20 2008 / by Alvis Category: Entertainment Year: General Rating: 3 Hot
Back when I lived in LA and worked on reality TV shows I would
often ponder the future of low-cost video production (which is what
enabled both the genre and the explosion of online video content)
and imagine a variety of camera placements that would soon be
enabled by new technologies. I was particularly excited about the
potential for aerial drone cams that could follow characters in new
ways, allow for low cost establishing shots and get to previously
unreachable positions. And so I was psyched to come across this
demo video of a hovering Microdrone camera that allows for
all of the aforementioned:
Of course, it’s been around for about a year (yet another awesome
technology that I’ve missed at inception) and is already being used
for surveillance, exploration, television and more. It currently
runs about $40,000 U.S. but as it drops in cost I expect that
reality TV producers, documentarians, news producers and low-budget
movie producers across the globe will employ it to shoot previously
unthinkable footage. (cont.)
I can just imagine the tracking shots, shots of people in moving
vehicles and on skateboards, shots of people climbing, etc. that
will soon become feasible for videographers of all sorts. A
moderately cheaper Microdrone will transform the way we capture
local sporting events, gatherings, nature shots, and more.
Longer-term, when the prices drop more significantly, battery
life increases, and size decreases, these cameras will enable more
pervasive coverage of borders, war situations, entire swathes of
territory, and so forth.
Eventually, it’s possible that we’ll each have the option to
enlist a small swarm or cloud of micro-Microdrones at all times to
lifelog and stream from a variety of angles.
Thanks for the video. The number of possible applications is both exciting and a little frightening. It’ll be interesting to see what happens when the cost of the technology comes down and if the company can create new powers sources to keep the device afloat for a longer period of time.
