Our drone and ground shootings at the Circuit Paul Ricard, for Ferrari!
Video teaser of the most beautiful drone & ground images, shot at the circuit of Castellet for Ferrari in September 2020 and 2022
Drone-Pictures and the Paul Ricard circuit: a story that rolls on, since 2016
We are not going to list exhaustively all our aerial services by drone at the circuit of Castellet, in the Var, but simply remember that everything started one day of March 2016 for the WEC prologue, the World Endurance Championship, which we reported on this article of the Blog and which gave us the desire to equip ourselves, to train and thus to take sensational images, on this circuit as on so many others, for Ferrari, BMW, GT Drive, Venturi, Mazda, ZF Group and many television or production companies, for which we have captured videos by drone of motor vehicles, on circuit, road and roads!
Second Ferrari mission in September 2022, and a compilation of the best moments!
Second Ferrari mission in September 2022, and a compilation of the best passages!
In 2020, we had already covered the two days of the F1 Clienti and Ferrari XX programs at the Circuit Paul Ricard.
In 2022, we did it again: same client, same pilot and cameraman, same Inspire 2 drone, but with the Zenmuse X7 this time and a Sony FX3 ground camera with a powerful 150-600mm telephoto lens, and of course, the same place, the mythical Circuit Paul Ricard in Le Castellet, and probably, more or less, the same clients who own these dream machines!
What has changed in 2022 is first of all the sanitary conditions: more Covid19 in circulation and therefore more relaxed people.
The weather too: we had some wind, but above all very nice lights as you can see on our video and the pictures in this article.
It counts a lot to make the colors pop and to bring out the cars launched at 200 kilometers per hour on the pavement. Some new cars in 2022, to discover in pictures!
Finally, we also had a small FPV drone, the DJI Avata, which allowed us to make some immersive shots that we put in the compilation without excess. Indeed, we consider the FPV drone as a complement and not as an end in itself. A matter of taste, of course.
What makes drone photography very special at the Castellet circuit?
The very big specificity of this car circuit is the presence of a rather active airport!
So, in practice, apart from the agreement with the airport, it is necessary to inform the control tower – which is located at 500m from the track of the circuit – each takeoff and landing of the drone. Wait for their agreement for any launch of the aircraft and stay tuned to the VHF radio during the flight, because the Tower can ask the remote pilot of the drone to put down his machine while the air traffic is going on without incidents. A traffic essentially of private jets and other helicopters serving the Var coast.
And above all, once in flight, we have to follow the rhythm of these Ferraris which pass very quickly.
We have just a few seconds per car to hope to make a clean image, that is to say well framed, preferably not too wide, which requires the use of 90mm for some shots! And then the fun begins, for the driver as well as for the cameraman. This is why it is imperative to be a pair of experienced and seasoned cameramen for this kind of exercise.
Not only do you have to be in sync with the F1 car, but you have to follow it for 5 to 10 seconds at very high speed. This requires a great sense of anticipation, because it must launch the Inspire 2 drone at full speed (ie 70kms / h) well before it enters the field of the lens. Then, it is necessary that the cameraman and the pilot is well aware of the type of shot to get or improvise according to the hazards of the flight and the race that takes place!
Communicating in a sound environment of a car circuit is anything but simple, especially when we combine the tension that represents this kind of mission where we have few opportunities to achieve the useful and beautiful image, and we really do not have the right to crash, even though the speed is great and the obstacles numerous!
You will have understood, adrenaline, a great Kif, a lot of noise, but a huge pressure to manage to bring back a few seconds of bluffing aerial images that will immediately seduce the editor who has seen many others!
All in all, we always regret the shot imagined before the takeoff but almost impossible to do for all the reasons above. Nevertheless, there are some exciting sequences to realize and quite spectacular when they are well edited, right?
We put you the link to our Motorsport page and the few other references we have to our credit.
Images of the shooting
Here are few images extracted from these exhilarating and adrenaline-filled shootings!
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