Emanuel
Cross-Examiner
How can anyone guess your purpose? ; -)
New DJI Mavic Mini- No FAA registration required
- Thread starter firehawk
- Start date
Vultch
Well-known member
I will buy one of these. Yes, I know the camera and codec is not stellar but it will deliver a usable clip for the land of the corporate video I am happy. There are occasions when I cannot bring my Phantom 4 to a shoot but this little guy will fit nicely in one of my main equipment cases. Being able to grab an aerial shot when unplanned is a nice option.
I would be more likely to buy this https://www.yuneec.com/en_US/drones/mantis-g/overview.html
Well, if you're constantly flying for "hobby" purposes and that footage is getting used in commercial productions over and over it doesn't take a rocket surgeon to figure out that you're not really flying for pure recreation.
It's also going to be pretty hard to convince an FAA inspector that you just happened to be flying for purely recreational purposes and just happened to get great footage of the pipeline that's the subject of your newest documentary. Especially if it happens more than a few times.
Why does everyone think that the people in charge of enforcing compliance with these rules are somehow stupid or required to ignore common sense when applying the rules?
Here's an idea... why not just follow the law and register your drone and get the required certificate?
scorsesefan
Veteran
I know this thread has been dead for a while, but just a FYI if you're considering buying a Mavic Mini. If you're in the US make sure your unit is an FAA/US unit. I purchased one from Micro Center here in NYC and it was a CE (European unit) for some reason. The US version has much better range/power. Not sure why Micro C is selling CE version. I returned that one and picked up a US unit from BH Photo. Otherwise, with the new firmware version (24p, manual shutter and ISO control) I'm very happy...
puredrifting
Major Contributor
It's telling that me and a lot of my colleagues were saying almost the same things back in 1998 when the Digital Revolution was taking off. We are just here 20 years later at the end of the cycle. The full Democratization of video is almost complete, almost anyone can cobble together the resources
to create professional looking, albeit cookie cutter style productions with their phone and a free editing application. Social media has brought us the era of "good enough" video and sound quality.
We can piss, moan, complain and lament all of this, as many of us have for decades, quite a few of us made a very robust living with video production in the late 90s into the early 2000s and now, we all scramble for scraps in comparison. I had to educate a client last week who was low balling me on an already "minimal" budget for a 3 minute social media spot for their client. I told her that twenty years ago, the average budget for a 3-5 minute marketing promo for a company averaged around $50k. Some were much higher, but back then, if we had a client expecting us to produce a piece for them for much less than that, we passed as we had so much business who was willing to spend more than
$50k. Today, we are struggling to even get $10k for a video with much higher overall quality and production values than the $50k video from back then and clients are expecting that for $3k or $5k. It's kind of become a joke.
That's just the way it is though. No use complaining or whinging, the next step is that, other than Hollywood, most production will continue to move toward DIY, for "free" other than the client's time. IMHO, the future of professional video and or digital cinema production doesn't look positive overall although there are still plenty of niche
opportunities if you can search them out.
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scorsesefan
Veteran
@Dan, I can see this possibly happening with ENG. During the covid-19 crisis networks have been using web based options to broadcast the news. Reporters have been "broadcasting" from home. I can see some network execs saying "Hey, let's cut staff -- who cares about quality, it's disposable anyway..."
Run&Gun
Veteran
CBS already did.
puredrifting
Major Contributor
I wish it was just ENG and EPK. But this aesthetic and mindset has permeated marketing, corporate, PR and many of the other little niches that many of us have existed in for years as well.
It's funny, I was asked to review three existing videos for a brand who we are targeting in the pro sound space. I reviewed their videos they are showing at the "Virtual" Infocomm website. It's almost as if many organizations have no idea of the basics of visual communications. At all. No story, no testimonials, no use cases, just essentially,
brochures put on video with page after page of text builds, all of which violate the rule of having 6-7 lines of text on a video screen maximum.
There is nothing in these videos that I, as a viewer who was interested in their product, would watch for more than :15, even if I was interested in their product. The loss of real budgets is just one aspect of it. This lack of even knowing how to use the medium
properly is even more of a problem. People seem to think that you can just cram a bunch of specs and bullet point lists onto a video screen with a bad VO and that people will actually engage with it. That's sad.
Run&Gun
Veteran
Yes. We've discussed this several time recently, but to reiterate, IT IS A LOOK, now. It's a version of 'conspicuous consumption'. Related to the crappy shot on cellphone look at times, they want viewers to also see how conscious the company is of safety because the reporters are always seen with their masks. My reporter was told to always have the mask around his neck on-camera during LS's, the implication being that he was always wearing it and only pulled it down during the actual LS. Before one of the hits, the AD asked him to take it off. He said he couldn't, he was told to always have it visible and it came down from the bosses bosses.