Following the Altitoy story article from our March 2018 experience, we’re glad that the next 2022 edition shows that we have evolved. Not only our gear or our ski technique (very useful in this kind of event !) but our work approach.

Gear choice

I’ll start by compare our backpacks: the purpose not exactly the same as our mission was to provide quality action/aerial footage for TV for the saturday and sunday evenings, contrary to 4 years earlier when we had to summarize the full event. In few words: less quantity, more quality ! Even if the TV only requires Full HD, we focused on shooting 4K on Mavic 3 Pro, FPV Drone with GoPro, and Red Komodo at 60 fps. With a challenge goal to fit a Red Komodo with RF-EF adapter, a GDU 40mm F/2.8, a Samyang 14mm T3.1, a Mavic 3 Pro with its controller, V-mount batteries and a backup 5D mkIV, in the first bag, the other one contains almost only FPV drone gear. And our good old Ronin will follow when possible. The quality/weight ratio is always the priority !

FPV is the new black

We followed the “aerial footage” client need to the letter as something like 80% of the footage returned was taken from the Mavic drone, FPV drone, or taken from an helicopter using Ronin + Komodo combo. Several cameraman disposed all along the race allows to get ground footage, but we secured some ski shots handheld or with Ronin (like race start !)

Since we have embarked in the drone world in 2016, it becames now easy and almost normal to display aerial footage in a video. Our solution to stand out was to make the FPV turn, which was managed by Quentin, and it was a real mission ! We ca forget anything about our Phantom/Mavic habits, there’s nothing in common… I’ll detail the FPV establishment in another loooong article, here the purpose was to use the beautiful snowy mountains as a playground for landscape and action images of skiers going up or down.

The main difficulty was the battery: the custom drone can normally handle 5 to 6 minutes flights as its widely more dynamic than a DJi, but with altitude and cold, we didn’t pushed the batteries more than 3-4 minutes. In the 8 batteries in the backpack, 2 were long

Organization

As we focused on quality over the

Colorimetry

Another huge challenge while shooting from RED, GoPros and DJi gear: balance it all in post-production, and quick enough to be used the same day on TV ! Since last year I tried to update my strategy about it: we made the C-log update on the Canon 5D mkIV, then theoretically can use LUTs to put all our footage in REC709: RedCode allows it naturally, Canon provides the appropriate LUT on its website, I’ve found one for GoPro when shot in Protune, and D-log on the Mavic 3 pro can be also transformed.

BUT… This works when we don’t forget to shoot on the right mode ! We unfortunately crashed the Mavic 3 on January, and when returned from DJi workshop all shooting modes where back in default… And our mind at 6:30AM was visibly not focused enough to get that point. We’ll have also to check that Protune on GoPro 6 (used on FPV for post-stabilization and weight optimization purposes) and GoPro 10 is the same and is managed by the Protune-to-REC709 the same way. Conclusion: the REC709 solution is not satisfactory yet, but should be digged.