Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/663382
www.postmagazine.com 36 POST APRIL 2016 Drones they're now in the limelight due to good and bad publicity." Rodriguez, who has been working in the industry for more than 15 years and whose full-time gig is director of technical operations and editorial services at LA's Technicolor, says he established the society because he found that "there was a huge need for people to understand the right way to [work with drones] and there were way too many people with input whenever anything aerial came up that was drone-re- lated. Those questions kept coming to me, and I kept getting in the middle of it. I realized that with the lack of informa- tion, no one person had all the answers, and I knew I personally didn't, so I started putting workshops together. I got the pros in every relevant field and asked them to do presentations and get their questions answered in one live forum. Basically, I cre- ated a place to come to and not depend on hearsay, but to get it from the horse's mouth, from all the relevant departments." DRONES GET A BOOST Another lift to the drone market, and a move that simply screams, "we're taking this seriously," was the National Association of Broadcasters' decision to partner with Mannie Francis and the Drone Media Group (www.dronemedi agroup.com) to officially add the Aerial Robotic and Drone Pavilion to its annual NAB show in Las Vegas last year (www. nabshow.com/attend/drone-technolo- gy-nab-show), complete with educational sessions and an enclosed "flying cage." "I think [its success] surprised us to some degree," says Chris Brown, exec- utive VP of conventions and business operations, NAB. "We were actually almost coming in a little late in terms of how there was a buzz already around drones, so we weren't sure that we hit it with the right timing. But I think the Pavilion was extremely successful. If you were at the show, you certainly saw that we had GoPro right at the front of the hall and DJI with a big presence. And we had four or five other major drone companies taking their own space, separate from the Pavilion. It all sort of just came together with perfect timing last year." According to Brown, NAB launched the Pavilion because it was, in part, "trying to stay ahead of those trends. I think we saw that buzz building — that real interest and focus building around drones in terms of the great potential and possibilities it would represent for the feature-film side of the equation, but certainly for the broadcast and news gathering application as well. There was a really strong surge in interest that we saw, and knew, one way or another, that we had to be able to high- light that at the show." At the same time, Brown says NAB was also speaking with exhibitors involved with drone-related solutions in one way or another that expressed interest in doing more at the show. According to Brown, this year's Pavilion, which has sold out, promises to be bigger and more prominent, grabbing a key spot in Central Hall. What's more, manufacturers throughout the show floor all seem to be talking drones. This includes countless companies manu- facturing drones for both consumer and professional use, as well as compa- nies making peripheral products such as transmitters, batteries, and more, while camera manufacturers — ranging from the more obvious GoPro to the higher-end professional Canon, Sony, Blackmagic Design, Arri, and Red — are all getting hooked up to fly. (More about cameras and other drone-related solu- tions in upcoming issues.) B&H (www.bhphotovideo.com), one of the industry's largest resellers, is exhibit- ing in the drone Pavilion as well. Christian Domecq, senior pro-user marketing rep for the company, says his store has seen a steady increase in sales on an "almost weekly" basis. "The number of new brands that we're picking up and the amount of sales that we're seeing — we're definitely getting a want from the crowd, if you will. To be fair, probably more on the consum- er side than pro, but not that the pros aren't embracing it wholeheartedly." Domecq points out there are produc- tion companies out there that do nothing but aerial work, so there are companies "making their bread and butter with this," he says. "[They're] probably not doing any favors to the Professional Helicopter Pilots Association, but you know, what a drone can do, maybe a helicopter can't, and may- be what a helicopter can do, a drone can't. One of those things is carrying multiple shooters in the air for an hour — a drone can't do that. But a drone can get under a canopy of a tree, and a helicopter can't." Specifically addressing the post mar- ket, Domecq agrees that drones offer someone such as a VFX supervisor a lot of options to do 3D mapping of the en- vironment. "It's a really neat and exciting tool to have in the toolbox. But because of the FAA restrictions on who can make money with their UAVs, it's probably not as widespread in terms of everyone having a drone in their production closet. It's not happening yet. Everyone has, Team Scorpion leader Walter O'Brien (Elyes Gabel) recently faced off against weaponized drones in the CBS series Scorpion. DJI's Inspire 1 Pro features Zenmuse X5 and X5R Micro 4/3 cameras designed for aerial shooting and capable of capturing 4K video.