FPV drones — and remote-controlled cars! — at Waylands Volvo dealership

When drone operator Jay Christensen’s one-shot FPV fly-through of a bowling alley went viral in March 2021 and Hollywood talent such as Star Wars visual effects artist Todd Vaziri said things like “this adds to the language and vocabulary of cinema,” we knew demand for aerial ‘oners’ would rocket.

We’d already been flying FPV for a number of years at that point, so we were fully prepared with our fleet of small cinewhoop drones and custom quadcopter builds! So when Waylands, a new Volvo showroom in Bristol, called to commission a video with a similar style, we jumped into first gear.

Previous jobs with Burberry in their flagship London store, Praga at Anglesey Circuit (a racetrack in Wales), and estate agency Bushnell Porter (flying inside a £1 million house they had on the market) had given us plenty of experience with shooting FPV in hard-to-control and physically tight spaces, so we had the confidence to get a little bit creative with this one.

And so, we started the promotional film with a fun added touch: a first-person view from a remote-controlled car! One of our GoPro Hero 10s did the trick perfectly, and it’s a great eye-catching intro to the video.

Our FPV one-shot runs for one minute and 45 seconds. It takes the viewer from the dealership’s entrance to the showroom floor, onto the main meeting spaces and then into the garage space, where we flew our drone above and below — and through! — beautiful Volvo motors before gliding back outside.

There are natural situational beats in each of the building’s main areas — a deal going down in the showroom; business being discussed in the meeting spaces; mechanics tending to cars in the garage. The video concludes with an all-important wide exterior shot to offer geographic context to the business.

The flights were incredibly fun! We also used a GoPro Hero 10 to record all of the aerial footage, but decased it to maximise the nimbleness of our bespoke-built tiny ‘whoop’ drones.

For the opening shot, we neatly cut from the GoPro mounted on the remote-controlled car to the camera affixed to our FPV drone — but they’re separate instances! We didn’t want the camera to be visible atop the RC car, so we drove it into Waylands twice. The devil’s in the details.

Eagle-eyed viewers might notice that the remote-controlled car pops up in the video a number of times. We’ll never pass up an opportunity to drop some easter eggs into our work!