Hey guys, it's Nathan McBride here.
I'm an adventure filmmaker and avid drone pilot for the last five years.
And we're here to give you a sneak peek of how we made the official launch video for the Mavic 3.
When I first got to lay my eyes on the Mavic 3
I was pretty impressed with the modern design,
the slim arms with the battery just slides into the back.
It seemed like a refreshed version of the Mavic 2 Pro.
And as the first Mavic to have Pro Res,
which is revolutionary and it's so important
when it comes to getting the highest quality out of your footage.
Sometimes on location, we were shooting in non-ideal lighting conditions
and the Mavic 3 honestly surprised me
The difference between the highlights and the shadows was really balanced.
So when I thought of a concept for this video, it dawned on me.
DJI has always been a company focused on improving its own product, every launch,
and that's exactly what they did with the Mavic 3.
I saw similarities within creatives,
as we were constantly evolving and building our own skills to better own creative work.
I took these elements and built out two juxtaposing storylines.
They would cut back and forth storytelling the journey of two versions of myself and contrasting landscapes.
The two mirroring journeys contrast in a way that represents an internal battle
to go further each and every adventure.
When contemplating on locations that we would choose for this project
we didn't just have to find stunning landscapes, but ones that were off the beaten path,
which meant we were venturing off into the unknown and hoping for the best.
As we begin to narrow down the countries that could potentially represent the tropical side of this video,
I was really intrigued with the country of Brazil. I just hadn't seen much content from it.
Bolivia being Brazil's close neighbor. It was an easy decision to spend a quick week roadtriping,
all the unique landscapes that you can't find anywhere else in the world.
Namibia was one of those countries I had seen some images from,
but I knew there was so much more to explore.
Surprisingly, I saw aspects of it that reminded me of the Southwest of the United States,
which is consistently offering me locations that look truly out of this world.
As we all know the DJI Mavic 3 has been highly anticipated amongst the filmmaking community in the last couple of years.
The new 4/3 CMOS sensor allowed me to capture beautiful 5k footage with amazing dynamic range
and extremely well-performing low light even at 1600 ISO.
Weâ€™re pushing our settings to 1600 ISO and the sensor is holding up
pretty nicely with very minimum grain.
Letâ€™s see how the shot turns out.
Mavic 3â€™s extended flight time up to 40 minutes came in super handy
when I had to wait for the conditions to align
high frame rates at 4k at 120 FPS and a 7x zoom camera,
this unlocks so many different shot possibilities that would have not been possible in the past.
Now, some would say that camera resolution is the most important feature on a drone
but the second part to that question is how are we storing and transferring that footage?
My favorite feature was the internal 1 terabyte of SSD storage that's on the Mavic 3.
Having this really saved the day,
allowing us to make quick transfers and running backups while we were on the road.
So one of my favorite shots from the whole entire campaign was probably
when we met up with our local Brazilian high-liner
in this infamous canyon that was known for these inversion clouds that would roll in all the time.
We showed up there and we had four days in the region.
For three and a half days, everything was clear skies,
and the day that we were going to set up the high-line
we had everything set up, ready to roll, and there was not a cloud in the sky.
I was pretty disappointed because we were looking for the iconic shot.
And in the distance, I did see one little cloud on the horizon,
as we decided to have them walk the line one more time.
The clouds from a distance started rolling in and when we were shooting,
I did this like perfect spiral rotation as these clouds just enveloped all over him.
Sometimes the circumstances look like they're not aligning,
but it's our job to put ourselves in the right place at the right time
and wait for the magic to happen.
So with every big project comes a lot of challenges obviously.
We had a very intense itinerary with four countries in six weeks,
which made it hard because there was very little room for error.
Starting off the trip in Bolivia. It didn't go smooth right off the start.
From barely being led onto my flight to Bolivia, to actually losing my bags.
I can't lose, I can't lose those check bags.
Where we had to rearrange the whole week of travels at Bolivia.
But sometimes in the hardest points, I realized how overwhelmed I was,
because I knew that I had six weeks left of such an intense travel itinerary.
And then in Brazil, the story was no different.
We started out in Rio, literally getting rained out every day
where we would maybe have 20 minutes of good weather.
So we actually utilized some of those moments
to shoot some of my favorite community scenes that are seen in the video.
We had booked four internal flights throughout
traveling all the way from the Northern part of Brazil to the Southern part.
Even during our 35 hours flight to Namibia,
I actually ended up getting a text.
That said there was an intense wind storm that
had blown through the south of Namibia the last couple of days.
And it was creating conditions that were not shootable whatsoever.
And our one month of planning with my local contact in Namibia completely fell apart.
And we had to rearrange our road trip throughout Namibia,
starting from the north, going down south,
spending 10 days in a rooftop tent, to different ecosystems around Namibia.
There are hundreds of many stories of mini failures
and places that we had to overcome
and things that we had to do to get those shots.
That we're not a guarantee, but we put in the work and made it happen.
And that one was a true testament to the team,
just pulling together in a really hard time and making the shot happen.
To summarize all this,
The Mavic 3 is a perfect tool to do just that.
It allows you to capture unparalleled quality,
like no other drone in the market
while pushing you to expand your creative eye