One of the most famous rallys of the World – Rally Dakar – is especially famous for its hard terrain, speed, weather and the huge distances, which proofs man and machine at its fullest.
In preparation of this endurance race we had been able to show how we would manage such competition. We had at least four weeks to set up a drone system, which is capable to fly over 100kph at a height of 5m with a total weight of 12kg and is capable of carrying different, heavy 360°-camera rigs.
This special production with the MINI John Cooper Works X-Raid – Rally Team was also about setting a new reference in VR/360° production which worked out great!
Besides having the estimated content and beyond we set a record with our drones – 110kph at a height of 2m over ground less than 2m parallel to the MINI rally car which we had to chase for some sequences of this commercial.
In this shots we had been able to hold this pace over several kilometers whilst offering different camera angles to the director.
For some shots we had to switch to a different 360° camera rig which was able to capture up to 120fps but with a rolling shutter only – even this content was completely steady and didn’t need any rolling shutter fixing or post stabilization even at the speed of 110kph.
The whole commercial was produced on our CDS – drone systems and outreached every expectation of our customer and director Sandro Cannova which commented our performance with – “The real Top Gun! – with a free floating camera system that can do stationary shots as well as moving shots to up to 110kph! What else could you ask for?”