Working with the Golden State Warriors (NBA)

[Eric]

Now that all of the contractual stuff is out of the way I can announce this publicly. The Golden State Warriors reached out to me directly through Instagram and asked if I would like to work with them on creating new footage that will be used both for the jumpbotron during the opening lineup announcements and on social media.

I agreed, went through all the contractual stuff and began filming. As you may know they didn't make the playoffs this year but I expect my footage to be in use at the beginning of next season. Here is the demo reel containing most of what I made for them, just over 4 minutes but it has chapters for easy scanning. All 4K and the quality looks great on the big screen, the cameras on the latest drones are fantastic.

 

[Citysnaps]

Outstanding and overall gorgeous. Congratulations on snagging the Warriors, Eric!

Did you get a new drone/camera? The results look sharper than previous vids of your work.

 

[Eric]

Outstanding and overall gorgeous. Congratulations on snagging the Warriors, Eric!

Did you get a new drone/camera? The results look sharper than previous vids of your work.

Thanks, yeah I actually have three of them now (soon to be four). I've suffered a couple of losses because I take a lot of risks but the fleet is all back in order. The cameras now are actually really good, that and I've learned a lot about post processing to bring it all to life. I could never do this if I weren't retied because every single shot you see here (and others) takes several hours to process and work with. Definitely a labor of love.

 

[rdrr]

Thanks, yeah I actually have three of them now (soon to be four). I've suffered a couple of losses because I take a lot of risks but the fleet is all back in order. The cameras now are actually really good, that and I've learned a lot about post processing to bring it all to life. I could never do this if I weren't retied because every single shot you see here (and others) takes several hours to process and work with. Definitely a labor of love.

Curious what you have for post processing? What is the slowest aspect of the process, e.g. transfer off of the drone, GPU/CPU, storage, and/or then upload to Youtube?

 

[Eric]

Curious what you have for post processing? What is the slowest aspect of the process, e.g. transfer off of the drone, GPU/CPU, storage, and/or then upload to Youtube?

Bar far the slowest is rendering after I'm done with my edits, I rarely ever use YouTube because I have never gotten traction there but it's nice to have for uploading demos for clients and that's where it ends. I always shoot for social, each video is between 10 and 20 seconds. So end to end each video can take anywhere between 4 to 8 hours just for that short of a clip.

Most of my work goes on Instagram, where I have over 50K followers now and am now getting several offers a week from local businesses (some pretty well known) asking for my services. I'm really picky though and will only take jobs I think will be best suited for my style. So I'm in the process of making this a full fledged business right now, the last couple of months have been a whirlwind.

 

[Buntschwalbe]

Congratulations! Love the Part on Lombard street. Reminds me of Marble constructions i played with as child.

 

[Citysnaps]

Eric... Something I've always wondered about drones and cameras.

Do the vibrations caused by spinning (multiple) propellers (guessing 5,000 to 10,000 RPM) propagating through the drone frame and potentially into the camera through the camera holding apparatus (don't know what the correct word is) play much of a factor with respect to image sharpness? Or is it so small it doesn't play a role?

Also... for video editing, what are you using? Final Cut Pro, DaVinci Resolve, or ???

 

[Eric]

Eric... Something I've always wondered about drones and cameras.

Do the vibrations caused by spinning (multiple) propellers (guessing 5,000 to 10,000 RPM) propagating through the drone frame and potentially into the camera through the camera holding apparatus (don't know what the correct word is) play much of a factor with respect to image sharpness? Or is it so small it doesn't play a role?

Also... for video editing, what are you using? Final Cut Pro, DaVinci Resolve, or ???

Props do not get into the shots with these drones at all so you never have to worry about it, fortunately. Your biggest enemy is wind though, especially in low light because you can't keep the camera 100% steady so you use manual settings, faster shutter speed, higher ISO, etc. to compensate, just as you would a normal camera.

I use Adobe Premier Pro most of the real heavy work and Topaz Video AI from time to time if/when things need some sort of correction.

 

[Roller]

Now that all of the contractual stuff is out of the way I can announce this publicly. The Golden State Warriors reached out to me directly through Instagram and asked if I would like to work with them on creating new footage that will be used both for the jumpbotron during the opening lineup announcements and on social media.

I agreed, went through all the contractual stuff and began filming. As you may know they didn't make the playoffs this year but I expect my footage to be in use at the beginning of next season. Here is the demo reel containing most of what I made for them, just over 4 minutes but it has chapters for easy scanning. All 4K and the quality looks great on the big screen, the cameras on the latest drones are fantastic.

Great work, Eric! Were the shots with clouds and fog more challenging in any way?

 

[Eric]

Great work, Eric! Were the shots with clouds and fog more challenging in any way?

Thanks. Yes, those shots where the clouds/fog is moving like a river are hyperlapses and very challenging, I would say I have about a 70% failure rate with them. It takes around 10 or 12 minutes of shooting to get 10 seconds of video, one wrong kick from the wind and it blows the entire shot. I get a ton of drone enthusiasts asking me how to do them, exact settings, etc.

 

[Yoused]

Do the vibrations caused by spinning (multiple) propellers (guessing 5,000 to 10,000 RPM) propagating through the drone frame and potentially into the camera through the camera holding apparatus (don't know what the correct word is) play much of a factor with respect to image sharpness? Or is it so small it doesn't play a role?

Image stabiliation logic these days is amazing. I have a 5+ minute iPhone video taken from the car on the freeway, intended to capture the fall colors, and it is rock-steady. In some parts, you can see the passenger-side mirror bouncing up and down for a quarter of the frame height, but the passing scenery flows straight past. It was shot in landscape, which renders 16x9, as opposed to stills, which are 4x3, so I am certain it is bringing in the upper and lower margins and cropping the frames to align to a baseline image. But, even a cheap Android phone does that quite well. Eric has good quality UAVs with cameras that are going to be designed to stabilize the capture in much the same way.

 

[Eric]

Image stabiliation logic these days is amazing. I have a 5+ minute iPhone video taken from the car on the freeway, intended to capture the fall colors, and it is rock-steady. In some parts, you can see the passenger-side mirror bouncing up and down for a quarter of the frame height, but the passing scenery flows straight past. It was shot in landscape, which renders 16x9, as opposed to stills, which are 4x3, so I am certain it is bringing in the upper and lower margins and cropping the frames to align to a baseline image. But, even a cheap Android phone does that quite well. Eric has good quality UAVs with cameras that are going to be designed to stabilize the capture in much the same way.

Pretty on point here. One thing I always have to struggle with though is stabilization, particularly because wind is always a factor and they drone tends to bob around quite a bit so it's always something I have to try to stabilize in post, much of the time it's too far gone to save but does okay for smaller jitters. One thing I've learned is to shoot the same thing over and over several times and hope you get one you can keep, especially with the wind in San Francisco.

 

[Herdfan]

Image stabiliation logic these days is amazing.

Yes it is. I have had almost every odd year Go Pro and the stabilization gets better with each one.

But wish they would show the differences between years/generations instead of just On and Off.

Show me a difference and I will upgrade every year if it’s better.