Zayed International Airport’s recent launch event combined drone visuals of its new Terminal A on mega-screens, drone-powered orbs and butterflies wafting through its lofty interior.
It also included a breathtaking celestial falcon comprised of 1,750 show drones that morphed into a spectral A380 over the new terminal’s runway.
Helmed by People, familiar to Abu Dhabi denizens as producers of the National Day Celebrations, the event inaugurated the airport’s new identity and expanded capacity.
Observers of the launch noted the seamless deployment of ‘small aviation’ to punctuate a massive milestone in ‘big aviation’.
“We took a fresh new look at aviation to align with the new era for the airport and Abu Dhabi,” said Rachel Sweeney, Project Director at People.
“Rather than filming the swarm drones as they morphed from a falcon into an A380 from the ground, we created an almost immersive film by effectively ‘gamifying’ the filming.
“Piloted drone cameras flew through the formations which allowed our viewers to experience the show from a new perspective. This filming technique drew an incredibly positive response from the aviation audience – a key target group as part of the campaign.”
Filmmaster MEA provided the drone-powered activations in the atrium via Airstage, and aerial filming of the airport’s formidable architecture and interiors via Motivate x Surface Aerials.
“We knew that in order to capture the architectural beauty, the daily operations and workings of the airport and the runway, it had to be through an aerial aspect,” said Filmmaster producer Faiza Abubaker. “Hence we decided to film with drones.”
For Surface Aerials’ Director of Photography Jonathan Gainer, who shot Terminal A for Filmmaster, the choice of drone tech was a natural outgrowth of narrative intent.
“In the end it’s all about telling the best possible story, which can mean aerial pyrotechnics with a racing pilot or the emotional intimacy of a very long lens from an angle people aren’t used to.
“For the Terminal A exteriors they gave us an unprecedented altitude limit for an operational airport, allowing us to literally fly over planes as they taxied from hangar to runway. The agility and optics of the Inspire made it an easy choice.”
If the AUH event united different branches of the drone industry under a larger aviation canopy, it was also a milestone marking how far the industry has come, and how fast it’s moving.
Since first swooping into cinema production in 2006’s Casino Royale, drones have not only become staples of media production, but also of constructioneering, Digital Twins, VR, gaming, security, agriculture and war.
Better tech, smaller craft, lighter cameras, extended battery lives and precision guidance systems have colluded to enable 8k sensors to fly kilometres through waypoint flightpaths.
UAE skies now ritually fill with ethereal light shows heralding aviation’s latest leap upwards.
Cutting edge
With the number of drone companies ever increasing, survival means keeping on the cutting edge – and the drone edge is ever evolving.
‘Classic’ aerial cinematography has matured into a common visual language when a new edge was cut by mounting gimbals on FPV heavylifters to grab the best of both worlds.
Yet while specialisation is key to innovation, diversification in the drone industry’s various branches enables both stability and cross-pollination with other evolving tech.
Surface Aerials’ evolution is a case in point. Pioneers of aerial cinematography in the UAE since 2012, they’ve partnered with Motivate Media Group and Lithuanian show drone experts Light A Sky to produce aerial light shows in the UAE and KSA under the new moniker Motivate x Surface Aerials.
Award-winning show designer Armands Blumbergs has produced hundreds of shows globally, most notably for Super Bowl LVI in the U.S.
They also have a mapping division set on digitizing entire cities from fixed-wing aircraft.
“Forget the metaverse,” added Gainer. “How about digital-twinning Jeddah or Abu Dhabi and georeferencing your calendar of real events in a 3D interface? We’re talking about intuitively navigable 3D spaces crafted from real photographs, with live sensors, hyperlinks to sponsor data, chat interfaces, even weather.
“Brilliant new optics on the world we already inhabit, not something fake or artificial.”
Ubiquitous as they may be, drones can’t see the future – yet – but when it arrives we’ll certainly want an aerial view.
