The Circle is a narrative short film
set in the great depression era
It’s a father-son story
about a starving artist
the father who makes a living
of sketching street portraits of people
He is reunited with his son
when he finally has the means to support him
or so he thinks he does
Today was a very good day!
So here we have the father
who is a creative person
who lives his life based off of creativity and artistic endeavors
as opposed to monetary, materialistic endeavors
and he picks up his son
and he tries to instill those values in him
Draw a circle
Just ... Just a circle?
Yes.
With one stroke
How big?
You decide
I haven’t seen my father in a long time
My mother’s died and he can...
he’s a really good artist
It’s kind of like I find the kids and I beat them up.
I know what you stole from my dad.
Give it back!
Filmmaking has been tethered to the ground for so long
We’ve done things relatively the same way for the last 20-30 years
and DJI with their equipment and their technology
is sort of allowing filmmaking to be freed
What’s unique about this particular film shoot
is that we’re using new technology
to really push the limits of camera language and storytelling
Every single shot in this film
is shot with the Inspire 2
It was kind of interesting way
to figure out a new way to shoot this spot
and I’m always up for a challenge
so I think it’s kind of an interesting way to do it.
Then we figured out ways of moving the camera
We put the drone on dollies
and I have this almost like a free remote head
which is an interesting way too
We’ve done some shots of coming down into a bed
where I just tilt down
and it has this lightweight remote head
and you just need a couple little pulleys
and then made this really simple shot easily
and if it had been a bigger camera
that actually would have been a lot more difficult
We did a shot yesterday
where we just transitioned a shot
and people kind of wonder how you did it
the drone’s coming in for landing
So we made 3D printed handles
a specialty made just for this shoot
and these handles allowed an operator
to catch the Inspire 2 out of the air
and smoothly in the same shot transition
into a normal handheld platform
You have the operator for the bird
that kind of brings it down
and then you have an operator that can grab the bird
we safely turn it off
and then we bring it into the shot to finish it off
a seamlessly one orchestrated shot
You almost couldn’t tell the handle at all
even though you look from the outside
the handle is pretty obvious
but from the camera
I feel it’s pretty seamless
It’s been so exciting
to see the innovative and imaginative ways
Sheldon and Claudio have been using the drone
especially when it comes to interiors
and we’re shooting dialogue scenes on it
which is awesome.
Laws change and money disappears and buildings fall…
Giotto!
There’s the obvious plus side that comes with a drone
in terms of the freedom of movement
and the beautiful wide open landscape visuals that you get
but then you can have the consistency of that same image
if you’re using the drone in ways
that it’s not typically considered to be used
I think we are both entitled to an ice-cream
The dynamic range on the camera on the drone itself
and being able to shoot in lower light
and using it for both day scenes and night scenes
interiors and exteriors
to me that’s something I haven’t really seen before
I hope that people who watch this short film
walk away feeling empowered
Seeing that the Inspire 2 was crafted to be
such a set friendly professional cinematography tool
inspired us to create this short film
We saw the Inspire 2
we saw the form factor
we saw how small the camera was and said:
‘hey, let’s tell a story with it.’
If you’re not working for a studio
and you don’t have a 40 million dollars plus budget,
you’re so limited in terms of what you’re able to do
and everything that DJI is putting out in the market
reverses that whole trend
and then it on it’s head to some degree
We're going to have young filmmakers
with not a lot of money
making really incredible visual pieces
and a company like DJI makes that possible
With all this new technology
all these new features
all these new things
that you can do with the Inspire 2
it still serves one thing: storytelling.
I hope that talented people who watch this film
go out and tell their own stories