Lights, drone swarm, action! Future movies may not be shot by lumbering cameras on rails, but drones that automatically fly around a scene, grabbing the best possible angles, without the need for human intervention.
One project that aims to make this happen is by cinematography firm and the French . In recent experiments, the team began by scanning a mock film set in 3D using infrared sensors. This data was then fed to algorithms that told the drones the position of any obstacles. Physical markers on the actors, which can be edited out later, allowed the drones to visually recognise when they had them in their sights.
The director could then simply draw a route for them to follow on a digital map of the set. The drones are smart enough so that if the path sketched out by the director accidentally conflicts with an obstacle or actor they automatically adjust their route, keeping a safe distance to avoid crashing.
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鈥淪lave鈥� drones were also programmed to automatically position themselves near to a 鈥渕aster鈥� drone in order to take shots of, say, two people interacting from complementary angles. As a result, the swarm of three drones could then be safely manoeuvred around the action by a director-pilot.
鈥淩ight now, flying drones by pilots is quite tricky,鈥� says Quentin Galvane at Inria. Rarely do drone pilots film actors at close range as they are worried about losing control, automating the process changes that.
Droning drones
While drones are noisy and potentially problematic for the filming of dialogue scenes, Galvane says that for action sequences, film-makers often re-record audio in the studio later anyway. Techncolor hopes to demonstrate the system to movie-making clients in the near future.
鈥淰ery encouraging and exciting stuff,鈥� says Dan Kanes, a cinematographer and co-founder of lens-maker . He thinks AI and robotics in film-making will lead to 鈥渘ew modes of expression鈥�.
Jim Scanlan at the University of Southampton, agrees. 鈥淚 think it鈥檚 great, it makes absolute sense,鈥� he says. He uses drones and optical sensors for organisations that do somewhat different work 鈥� mapping. But such applications could also benefit from this kind of automation, he says. 鈥淔or instance, automatically following landscapes and terrain without the tedium of putting in a detailed flight plan.鈥�
Reference:听
