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Some movement with the FAA on aerial photography with drones
Sounds like we have good lobbiests in Washington pushing for video production use of drones. At the same time it is the news gathering and privacy guidelines that are the hold up. Private productions on controlled sets should be an easier situation to pass legislation. But flying your drone over a bad accident or for malicious reasons has the FAA in a quandry.
Plus there are these things that the production companies are asking for:
“The production companies reportedly are asking for exemptions from general flight rules, pilot certificate requirements, manuals, maintenance and equipment mandates, as well as airworthiness certification requirements.”
Good luck getting those thru legislation! See the article here:
https://www.tvtechnology.com/news/0110/faa-considering-drone-use-for-professional-production/270738
Rich Rubasch
Tilt Media Inc.
Video Production, Post, Studio Sound Stage
Founder/President/Editor/Designer/Animator
https://www.tiltmedia.com -
5 Replies
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I want a news station’s drone operator to have at LEAST as much training, certification, and insurance as their station’s ENG remote truck operators. Preferably MORE, based on anecdotes of local van mishaps I’ll save for another time. TV chopper pilots have spent years and thousands to learn how to do their work safely. TV stations see drones as a cheap replacement for expensive choppers but unless they come with a parity level of operator skill and judgement, especially in situations where they might SHARE airspace with full-scale aircraft, you’re creating the potential for disasters in public spaces.
NASA and the FAA are currently still perfecting the guidance systems and electronics interfaces to make such a sharing of airspace safe and reliable, ( a development “contest” for this is happening at an arsenal proving ground in Indiana this summer) but they are by their own reports still a couple of years off from delivery of something that’s bulletproof.
On a private movie set, I agree, it should be possible to clear that now. In public for daily newsgathering, no, not NEAR ready yet.
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searching youtube and vimeo you can find both pro and hobbyist “drone” or “quadcopter/octocopter” videos. On the pro side you see some beautiful results, though possibly not fully in line with FAA rules (ie, flying over populated areas).
On the hobbyist side you see every manner of things. There is a video of someone flying a camera from the lawn next to the Eiffel Tower. Cool but potentially dangerous.
There are all sorts of malicious uses of a drone with or without a camera – the FAA and local police are well aware of the privacy and public safety concerns.
I too would be worried about a drone with an amateur operator hovering over a highway or flying near electrical wires. While you can control the drone via a remote video monitor, you don’t exactly have air to air radar or communication with local ATC to know who else might be in your airspace.
I read over the weekend about a scheme in NY whereby drones carrying wireless transmitters can insert software into over the air broadcast signals into smart TVs and subsequently get onto unprotected wifi networks and steal data or plant spyware. One so equipped drone could access one square kilometer which in NYC could be 100,000 people.
Caution, I believe, is entirely prudent here.
Mike Cohen
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This just in! First commercial drone flight legally in the US!
Let the floodgates open!
https://www.cnn.com/2014/06/10/us/faa-commercial-drone-approval/index.html?hpt=hp_t2
Rich Rubasch
Tilt Media Inc.
Video Production, Post, Studio Sound Stage
Founder/President/Editor/Designer/Animator
https://www.tiltmedia.com -
and a related article about production specifically
https://www.cnn.com/2014/06/04/tech/innovation/movies-drones-faa/index.html?iid=article_sidebar
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