Capturing drone shots of Fratton Park renovations for Portsmouth News
Fratton Park, the home ground of Pompey Football Club and the stadium where Solent Sky Services — a Portsmouth-based business — cheer on ‘the blues’, is getting some exciting renovations.
As long-time collaborators with Portsmouth News, we were invited to shoot exclusive drone imagery for their story about Fratton Park’s upgraded seating.
Habibur Rahman, Head of Video at Portsmouth News, has hired us as the publication’s drone specialist a number of times, so we were ecstatic when he called us up and asked us to capture the ongoing project — a milestone in the stadium’s history — from the air.
Sara promptly (but meticulously!) prepared a flight plan, and once it was approved, we joined Habibur at Fratton Park. Neil Allen, the chief sports writer at Portsmouth News, was also present, along with Bethany James, a Portsmouth University student who’s in her second year of studying TV Production.
When we arrived, we saw lots of old seating lined up outside, and learned you can actually buy the replaced furnishings! Including the North Stand seats and directors’ chairs.
Habibur advised us that we only had one hour on the site, so Emmie and I got airborne with haste while the Portsmouth News team headed off to shoot interviews and B-Roll.
We could easily spend days capturing every angle of the historic renovations in granular detail, so honing our focus down to a single hour of shooting was a challenge, even with a pre-written flight plan and a certain degree of familiarity with Fratton Park from past projects in the stadium!
First in the sky was our DJI Mini 3. We shot a range of establishing shots, detail-focused pans, and eye-catching reveals, all in 10-bit D-Log for crisp, vibrant colours.
After burning through a couple of batteries, I donned my FPV goggles and took to the air with a ‘naked’ GoPro Hero 10, recording Fratton Park in a way it’s never been seen before.
Sub-250g drones were an ideal choice for this job, what with the quick turnaround not giving us the chance to plan for heftier models.
Once we’d landed, we rejoined the Portsmouth News team and prepared a quick video edit, plus some stock footage and lede-ready stills.
Here’s a cut of some of the footage we shot, including some thrilling FPV sweeps over the seating areas!
The whole shoot was very spur-of-the-moment, but we delivered the high standards we’re known for, and are thankful to Habibur and Portsmouth News for reaching out! Read their story here.
