Introducing the newest Hollywood star about to shock audiences everywhere: The DJI Zenmuse X5S camera aboard the Inspire 2 drone in a film called The Ascension of Ava Delaine. Oh, and also the lead actress, director, and producer of this single-take, all mobile device-shot film, complete with multiple wardrobe changes: Tonya Kay.
I had the pleasure of chatting with this seasoned performer and new director (Tonya, not the drone). As I imagine a lot of SolidSmack readers are, I was mostly unaware of how the cinema world works, but I was fascinated by Ms. Kayâs aggressive adoption of drone tech. Cinematographer and Drone Operator Andria Chamberlin was also kind enough to answer some of the more technical questions.
How It All Started
Tonya and her team decided to take on the AT&T Shape Create-A-Thon challenge in the Mobile Film category. This year, some of the mobile category rules they had to meet were: films had to be shot on smartphone, tablet or drone and it could be no more than 5 minutes long. Other constraints included having less than 4 weeks between âgreen light and deliveryâ. . . which my engineering mind takes to mean between âgo time and deadlineâ.
Something her team DID NOT have to do (but did anyway): shoot that ~5 minutes of mobile device footage in a single take. So that means no stopping the camera while Tonya changed her wardrobe 4 times. Nudity was hidden from the cameraâs view, but Tonya tells me her amazing crew braved, âway more of my nekkid (sic) body than they signed up for that day.â She also performed and changed costumes as she ran up multiple floors of a building! On each floor was a different scene representing a different decade of the characterâs life.
Some Questions with Tonya Kay
ERIN: âHow many were on your crew (besides the drone)?â
TONYA KAY: â19 altogether, including but not limited to writer/co-producer Shaula Evans, cinematographer/drone operator Andria Chamberlin, sound designer/foley artist Jamie Billings, co-executive producer Dennis Ho, post-production at Digital Jungle Post and of course crazy-eyed me doing lots of things you can read in the credits.â
ERIN: âWhy drone? What cinematic advantages does filming with a drone bring? (Pretend like we know nothing about cinematography . . . because most of us donât.)â
TONYA KAY: âI chose to make an all-drone narrative film because Iâve never seen it done and Iâm an artistic daredevil. Screw easy, boring and safe â in my art, itâs okay if it hurts, so long as itâs real.
âAlso, as my directorial debut, I was realistic about a 5-minute short not garnering much attention unless it was so risky, so renegade, so ridiculously bold that folk would watch just to see how we did it. Heck, high-level collaborators came on board for the exact same reason.
âWhy have I never seen an all-drone, single-take narrative film? Because itâs difficult af! Had we had a substantially larger budget, we might have taken three days on location to rehearse and capture the five minutes of sunset youâll see in the film, but thatâs nearly all I would have changed. It was suggested that we could have used a ($300,000/day) crane to do this, but I disagree: a crane could not have traveled over the rooftop before taking a 180-degree rotation like we did. A drone was the only equipment that could have accomplished this camera movement and sometimes it takes limited resources to recognize that.â
The Super Technical Qâs With Andria Chamberlin
ERIN: âHow was the drone controlled? Were locations and times programmed in before shooting or was it maneuvered in real time by remote control?â
ANDRIA CHAMBERLIN: âWe had two drone operators for the Inspire 2 using the X5 camera. One controller managed the droneâs flight path and the other operated the cameraâs gimbal. The shot started out handheld, so one operator held the drone while the other pulled focus and controlled the gimbal. The shot continued through the launch at which point the person doing the handheld operation switched to control the gimbal, while the other controlled the droneâs flight path. The droneâs flight path was pre-programmed prior to the shoot off-site on an app called AutoPilot using actual GPS coordinates of the location. We rehearsed the droneâs path in a field up by Paramount Ranch a few days prior to the actual shoot date. When we got to location, the alley and the location being in Downtown LA posed a problem accessing satellites â so although we had the whole operation pre-programmed, the drone couldnât access enough satellites and we had to operate manually.â
ERIN: âWhat kind of control do you have on the camera settings during filming? Did you control those in real time or was it all automatic or was one focus and aperture setting and etc. OK for the whole film?â
ANDRIA CHAMBERLIN: âWe had complete control of all camera settings throughout the 5-minute continuous shot. We had to rack focus throughout as the drone and the actor moved throughout the windows and each floor. We were shooting on a 25mm lens on the X5 which is a 2x crop factor, and at times all the way open at f2 as the sun started to go down, so pulling focus was essential. We even racked aperture at points to account for drastic changes in brightness of direct sun, shadow, interior windows, and eventually the rooftop.â
ERIN: âYou mentioned the geolocation software not working the day of filming because one of the satellites was not in the line of sight. What were some other technical limitations you ran into?â
ANDRIA CHAMBERLIN: âWe actually only had 5 satellites accessing the drone on the day of the shoot â we needed about 15 for the drone to work properly in our pre-programmed flight path. This was because we were in a tight alley surrounded by tall buildings in downtown.
âOther technical limitations probably would be the drone itself. The drone on a 25mm lens trying to hold a closeup mid-air is tough, especially when you add wind, an alley into the equation, and a 5-minute single-take altogether where everything needs to be spot on or the whole take doesnât work. Drones are brilliant for wides and always look very steady, but as you start to film subjects closer and closer it becomes more challenging to hold a shot in place.
âWe really wanted to the drone to start off handheld and then seamlessly launch from our hands â but the Inspire 2 has incredibly dangerous blades that could seriously injure someone. We wouldâve needed to purchase specially made handles for the drone, and other protective gear for our bodies but we had limited time due to our deadlines and couldnât get the handles in time. So what we did instead, was built a launch platform the same height as where the camera needed to be during the handheld portion, and pulled back to a wide where we set the camera seamlessly down on the platform. We launched from the platform without cutting. Some launches were smoother than others . . .
âWe also were using the X5 camera which has its own picture limitations. The limited dynamic range of 9 stops on the camera made it tough to go from shadow to interior windows to direct sunlight all in one shot. As such, some highlights are more blown out than say an Alexaâs 14 stops would have.â
ERIN: âIf you could wish a feature or gizmo into existence, what would make your job of filming with a drone easier? (This will be read by a bunch of hardware enginerds â maybe they can make it happen!)â
ANDRIA CHAMBERLIN: âFor this particular shoot, a satellite mesh network or ground stations to fill in the gaps in the satellite network caused by the cityscapes wouldâve allowed us to use our pre-programed flight path without problems. Better wireless protocols wouldâve helped that as well. If the drone didnât have those problems that day, we basically couldâve sat back and just pulled focus and aperture and let the drone fly the path we had programmed for it automatically.
âHand launching made easier for the Inspire 2 wouldâve helped this shot as well. If ever a shot needs to start handheld on a personâs feet, follow them in a close-up through some action, and then end up on a rooftop (as ours did), the ability to hand launch safely and with ease, wouldâve been amazing!â
More Questions for Tonya:
ERIN: âTell me more about those crazy costume changes! How many did you do? How much did your athleticism factor into you pulling that off? How did you hide it from the camera?â
TONYA KAY: âWhat you see from the drone front is the movie. What was happening behind those walls was a whirlwind of rambunctious nudity and focused determination. Itâs a good thing I was a professional dancer for 26 years before I acted in this shoot, because we treated the staging of The Ascension of Ava Delaine more like choreography between the drone and lead actress. I literally changed clothes while running between floors of the building to meet our drone on a new floor in a new decade of time, in new wardrobe with a new set of emotions. âThe drone, meanwhile, was navigating its own choreography on the outside of the building between our meetups, as well.
âI couldnât have done it without the crew, braving way more of my nekkid body than they signed up for that day. I had one person on each floor assisting the wardrobe changes. I had another crew member on each floor on walkie communicating with the camera department things like, âEyes on Tonya floor 2. Sheâs out of her head piece. Pulling up gown. Exiting onto balcony in 3 .. 2 . . .â Then, get this â Iâm the director, too, right? Then Iâd hit my mark, yell âactionâ for the camera to find me and my 1st AD (Assistant Director), SaraAnne Fahey, would yell another âactionâ to me when she saw I was in frame. It was more like theatre with the energy of real-time everything.
âI decided early on to scrap all shoe changes for time, so you will only see me with footwear in the very first vignette. I under-dressed everything I could. So the lingerie, for example, in the 4th vignette, was worn under 3 vignettes prior. I wore hats or headpieces to account for the lack of hair style change-time. When I finally got to the rooftop, my chest was heaving so hard, I had to absolutely meditate myself clam in the two seconds it took for the camera to find me.
âAs an actress, Iâve never done anything like this. Iâve seen continuous-shot films, but the actors werenât doing real-time quick changes or ascending entire buildings through five decades in five min. It was insane and ridiculously fun.â
ERIN: âIf you could explain to me in general more about how the filming worked, that would be great. I was a bit confused with you saying it was a 5-minute single-take but then you also had to do a segment shot on-location at the WB studios.â
TONYA KAY: âThereâs the movie you pitch, then thereâs the requests studios/network place on your movie. In this case, it was the AT&T SHAPE competition which made the request. This is just like the real-world film/tv-making process, by the way. A producer, writer, director, actress â every artist can expect their initial concept to change and change again every step of the way. If you want your work to be seen by more than your pets, you gotta be able to collaborate. Iâve always said: a true artist isnât someone who has brilliant creative ideas, itâs someone who has those ideas, takes the notes, includes revisions, even makes mistakes and then still creates brilliance incorporating all the twists and turns. I find it absolutely thrilling.
âYes, the competition requested (required) we use a shot from Warner Bros, which threw us for a loop when they also unleashed the news that Warner Bros wouldnât be allowing drones. Our green lit pitch was for an all-drone, single-take film and my ego felt a battle! Instead of going berserk, I decided this was a lesson more about who I am going to be as a filmmaker and less about the project itself. As the director, am I going to cry about the integrity of my film or am I going to craft a way to stay true to the filmâs original concept while showing AT&T and Warner Bros that I play well with others? I genuinely crave teamwork and incorporating this request actually challenged me to be even more creative with a solution AND taught me how to keep cool and treat people well even when under considerable artistic and deadline pressure. A successful filmmaker = solutions.
âYouâll see I chose to include a separate shot filmed at Warner Bros right at the top of the film for the production companyâs title card. It actually sits in nicely, incorporates the competitionâs request and is a creative way to honor the production company, Danger Arts.
âAnd if I want, I can remove the requested clip for future cuts. You know what Iâm saying.â
More Items on the Technical Wish List
Tonya told me there were 2 other camera/drone features from a post-production view that would have made making this film easier.
One was not having compression automatically placed on the video files. While the film was shot in 5k, and while the format appeared to be RAW, Tonya tells me there was still noticeable compression applied. In editing, her team didnât have full access to colorizing options. She says sheâs not unhappy; they still were able to perform a lot of colorizing effects. This aspect was vital to the artistic storytelling of the project as the team colorized the different vignettes representing different decades to reflect the colors and tones we associate with those time periods. They would have liked to do even more, though!
The other thing on Tonyaâs wish list was even more image stabilization. While the way these camera-drone combos are built is fantastic for far-away scenery views, itâs not as great for close-ups. Iâm told that means any filming done 10 feet away or closer. Because this film was entirely shot in that close-up range, and also shot outside in the wind, adjustments made to the droneâs positioning are much more noticeable.
If you happen to be working on developing hardware for film production that pushes the technical envelope, and youâd like to have it tested out with this production company â Danger Arts, Tonya will be happy to chat with you. To get general feedback or even to get a sample film produced with your stuff, you can talk ideas with Tonya Kay through the contact page on her website.
When Can We See the Film?
The crew will be submitting The Ascension of Ava Delaine to every upcoming film festival they possibly can! Keep watch on SolidSmack for updates. Once those are over, the film will be available online to view. In the next few weeks, a trailer is expected to be available on the filmâs website: The Ascension of Ava Delaine
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