Gunwharf Quays reopens: drone photos show the shopping centre’s preparations
With bustling crowds, fairly tight thoroughfares, and very few ideal spots for take-offs and landings, shopping centres aren’t the easiest places to fly safely and legally. When Gunwharf Quays offered us the chance to fly around freely during the COVID-19 lockdown, we were ecstatic.
We assembled a team: our Jan operated the aerial camera and snapped ground photos, Billy from Film Crew 4 U shot behind-the-scenes visuals, and I took on piloting duties.
Before preparing for take-off, we ensured site-wide security were aware of our flights, and spent an hour walking around the outlet mall conducting a final last-minute survey.
Our main take-off area was down by the marina, where there were no surrounding or overhead obstacles to hamper our DJI Inspire 2’s launch. We used a 16mm lens for wider shots, and a 50mm lens to capture tighter parallax-style footage.
Using wireless Eartec headsets gave our crew the freedom to split up and adopt different vantage points while staying in constant contact. Ideal for maintaining sight of our drone and keeping the area under control.
Harbour seagulls made a few landings a little tricky! They have a penchant for dive-bombing drones. Usually, flying straight up scatters them, but landing requires constant lowering, so that’s when they take their chance to strike. We always manage perfectly, though. Maybe we should start bringing chips to distract them!
After expending a few of our Inspire 2 batteries, we switched over to the Mavic Pro 2 to capture long shots of the roofed streets in the centre of Gunwharf.
Every time we fly over Portsmouth, we aim to snap aerial photos of the city’s layered architectural history. This shot was a good’un. The old pubs of The Hard can be seen to the left, framed by the relatively new Spinnaker Tower, and to the right, you can see rooftops covered in solar panels, and the ongoing Brunel House renovation.
And in this picture of the repair work being carried out on No. 1 Gunwharf Quays (AKA: The Lipstick Tower), there’s a real mix of the old and the new in the background: historic structures like Portsmouth Guildhall and the University of Portsmouth’s Park Building are beginning to look dwarfed by blocky, brightly-coloured accommodation high-rises.
As if our footage wasn’t already ‘never-before-seen’ enough, we used a third drone — our first-person view (FPV) cinewhoop — to get some truly unique fast-paced shots. A GoPro mounted to the FPV drone captured the video, and we used ReelSteady to stabilise the results.
Enormous gratitude to Gunwharf Quays for allowing us to fly through their beautiful shopping centre! It was a truly rare opportunity. We’re proud to have documented this strange moment in history.
Core Equipment List
- DJI Inspire 2: Our industry-leading, cutting-edge, top-of-the-line beast. The DJI Inspire 2 allows us to capture aerial footage at 6K RAW quality — the kind of blisteringly sharp cinema-ready crispness every project deserves.
- Mavic Pro 2: The Inspire’s nimble little brother. Pocketable, lightweight, and less of a head-turner than the Inspire, this nifty bit of kit is ideal for flying in tighter indoor and outdoor spaces.
- Zenmuse Lenses: We have the full Xenmuse X7 kit. For video, this means 6K CinemaDNG and Apple ProRes, with several quick-swap lenses of different focal lengths for varied environments and shooting styles.
- Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 6K: To match the impeccable quality of our Zenmuse lenses, we shoot ground videos and photos using Blackmagic’s 6K ProRes-enabled camera. Breathtakingly crisp visuals.