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m a r c h . a p r i l 2 0 1 6 c g w 2 7 A CONTINUING SERIES ON HOW THIS ADVANCING TECHNOLOGY IS REVOLUTIONIZING THE POSTPRODUCTION INDUSTRY BY LINDA ROMANELLO ast summer we spoke with Holger Voss, VFX supervisor at Cinesite, on the visual effects work his studio completed for the opening sequence of the then soon-to-be-released disaster film San Andreas. The scene called for the Cinesite team to create a cliff, which didn't actually exist, alongside a road where a car and driver would tumble over the edge as the first tremors of an earthquake began. According to Voss, the production team used a crane to capture footage of a real cliff on which Cinesite based the CG version, but he com- mented that a drone equipped with a camera would have been "very beneficial," as it would have been able to reach areas the crane just couldn't, giving the VFX team more comprehensive data to work with to complete the scene. The use of drones, or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), in film, TV, commercials, and all other areas of media is hard to miss and growing at a steady pace – in front of the camera as well as behind it. For instance, CBS recent- ly aired an episode of its series Scorpion that featured a story line around weaponized, drug-delivering drones. But behind the scenes, they are infiltrating production and post projects at increasing levels. Director Gil Green is using drones, recently capturing footage for Pitbull's Fun music video with a UAV from manufacturer Freefly, while CBS's The Amazing Race, along with a number of other reality TV shows, relies on drones to offer aerial or other unique views of its cast. ABC's Good Morning America sent DJI drones on a mission to capture rare and hard-to-get footage of an Icelandic sinkhole and into an erupting volcano for sev- eral live broadcasts. And major studio film productions, such as Disney's Into the Woods, Marvel's Avengers: Age of Ultron, and, more recently, the James Bond blockbust- er Spectre, all relied on Intuitive Aerial's UAVs. L FREEFLY'S ALTA HAS BEEN USED ON SUCH HIGH-PROFILE FILMS AS MAD MAX: FURY ROAD AND THE WOLF OF WALL STREET.