Don’t Say Drones
[Editor’s Note: This article is excerpted from the Digital Cinema Society eNewsletter, July 2014, and is published with the author’s permission.]
The world is abuzz with talk of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles and in order to avoid conjuring up images of CIA missile strikes, or NSA spying, I’ll avoid using their more common name – drone. The technological and commercial promise of this mode of aviation seems boundless. Amazon talks of delivering packages this way someday soon. Someday you might order a pizza and a UAV will make a beeline navigating by GPS over traffic right to your door. But as things stand today, professional filmmakers in the United States are not allowed to use UAVs on a movie shoot.
