Montpellier 3 université : exploration of drone. Drone as a creative tool ?

Thoughts

Recently, drones equipped with cameras are accessible to the public. Ie the flying camera, previously reserved for seasoned professionals or army becomes “democratic.” This camera can produce images of the sky views and movements that no other camera could do.

We last few years of daily users images seen from above, the interactive map that accompanies us (Google maps on phones and others), offering us an augmented experience of reality. Moreover, within videos and virtual worlds (Second Life, Minecraft...) games, we handle a flying camera, which allows us to see the action from multiple angles.

This flying camera , the drone, is now in the real world. She is now at its prehistory, but it’s there. Is she going to bring us to see reality differently? A look at the real world as we look at virtual worlds ? This view superhuman , now available, will it invite us to new forms of representation, visual as well as narrative, themes? New topics of films are they born?

It is, of course, go beyond the anecdote aerial image, the beautiful landscape seen from above, but consider the aerial image at all heights. And to consider the political dimension of the appropriation of a type of perspective previously prohibited by technical limitations. Moreover, to put it simplistically, the law allows to fly drones, but not drones equipped with cameras !

Beginnings

I came to thinking applied to these “Identified Flying Objects” accompanied by the artist Agnès de Cayeux instigator of acts, thoughts and writings internet and virtual worlds, which explicitly asks these machines.

Questions

Similarly in 2005, founding the Festival Pocket Films, I proposed at the edge of a new technology, the camera in the phone, a reflection acts on its potential, it seems to me just as essential today to question the camera in the drone in action.

Work

In September 2013 I had the students work in the audiovisual Designer Pro License Director on audiovisual creation with mobile phone. I returned in January 2014 to continue work on the potential of digital. A few days earlier, Agnès de Cayeux acquired the last manufactured drone DJI Phantom 2 Vision, we have learned to fly, for the purposes of her explorations and projects.

So I asked these questions to students. We made a first test shoot, then strong viewing these first images, into four groups, they designed projects uses drone to projects, shot and edited their films, as well as produces a thought from their work.

First productions

Here are six films and their accompanying form of PDF texts : the four films of the four groups, an additional film of a student after arrival, and a movie that I did.

• Point and Line to Plane. Floriane Davin, Jean-Sébastien Colas, Simon Kounovsky, Gaël Rezé. Choreography air of a man - machine.
• Labyrinth. Alexandra Oudin, Mossi Soltan, Jean-Damien Gros, Julien Barque. A man and a woman trying to get lost in a vertical maze.
• Kluh. Emilie Georget, Clément Dumais, Pierre Bellanger, Thibaut Lozenguez. The son of Hulk at the University.
• Disembodied. Coralie Puyau, Emilie Soumah, Jéremy Stadler, Iskander Benlachtar. A soul journey through space and time.
• Here and there. Melanie Peyriat. Essay on violence under general supervision.
• I’ve seen you. Benoît Labourdette. Intimate moment in the hollow of the sky.

The first film productions and elaborations are exciting. To my knowledge, this is the first time that this type of image is questioned beyond the effect of specific style in its background, ie its potential capacity to bring to rethink audiovisual expression.

Resources

• The army of drones: Excellent article from Annick Rivoire (Poptronics) on the economy and the political dimensions of drones.
• Agnès de Cayeux: Artist in the web and virtual worlds. Instigator of content work with drones. Large creative and conceptual foundations are laid in her works.
• Heliomicro: Site handy, especially on legislative issues.
• DIY Drones Community Site (in English) for drones, founded by Chris Anderson (former editor of Wired magazine, who invented the concept of “long tail”).