Chasing a car at road speed
The director asks for the camera to overtake the car, cut in front and pull away behind it without a cut. It is the most requested shot and the least understood.
Why it is hard
The first mistake is assuming you just need a drone faster than the car. A drone matching its subject's speed cannot compose a shot: it can only follow. Overtaking, entering and leaving frame needs a real speed margin over the car, and that margin is paid for in endurance.
The second mistake is time. A cine FPV platform carrying a cinema camera flies about five minutes. Take-off, approach and recovery eat part of that, so the usable take is short and you need to know which part it is before the car moves. You do not discover it in the air.
The third is that an FPV rig has no gimbal. On a stabilized platform the airframe's pitch is absorbed by the gimbal and the shot stays clean. Here it is not: what the aircraft does is exactly what the image does. A gust of crosswind at a hundred kilometres an hour is visible.
How it gets solved
The shot is solved before flying, on the route itself. You decide where the camera enters, where it overtakes and where it leaves, then time that figure. If it does not fit the usable battery window, it gets split into two takes and cut in the edit. That is cheaper than burning the day attempting the whole move.
The car's speed is set by the shot, not by the car. It is common to shoot below real speed and gain the sensation from flight height and distance to the vehicle, which is what actually reads as speed on screen. Flying low and close at eighty looks faster than flying high and wide at a hundred and forty.
Talking to the driver is part of the rig. You agree a start signal, a target speed and an abort point. On a circuit you also check radio coverage before the first take: not all of the track is flyable from one operating position.
What it takes
- Platform
- RAW FPV Drone
- Cameras
- Cinema camera payloads
Where we have done it
What goes wrong
- Dust. In desert or unpaved locations it gets into motors and optics and changes the image between takes. Shot order gets planned around where the air comes from.
- Arriving without a recce. If the location cannot be walked beforehand, assume the first take is reconnaissance and budget it as such.
- Radio link. On long circuits or between buildings the usable range is shorter than the nominal figure, and where you operate from decides which part of the route is usable.