An Interview with Lucas Zanatto, “Featuring Drones” Category…

Lucas Zanatto‘s “Drone Cake Baking” video (proven above) received the Featuring Drones class on the New York City Drone Film Festival, and he was form sufficient to grant us an interview following the pageant. To create the video he labored with Tilt to handle flying and aerial pictures, and each Animasjonsdepartementet (or A-dep) and DDB Oslo assisted with manufacturing.

Lucas is an amazingly gifted man. He is a designer, animator, and director based mostly out of Helsinki. Although his work is finished in a wide range of mediums, from movie to nonetheless images to a sequence of apps for kids, he manages to maintain an identical whimsical tone all through all the things he does.

In addition to profitable on the NYCDFF this 12 months, Lucas has received the Golden Lion in Cannes, Gold at BDA Promax International, Main Price at ITFS, Best Promotional Animation at Ottawa Animation Festival, and the YCN Professional Award.

Follow Lucas @lucas_zanotto.

The artist at work

Begin Interview:

UAV Coach: You’ve received numerous awards on your work (we’ve listed a few of them above). What have been a few of your favourite tasks, and why?

Lucas Zanatto: I take pleasure in just about the entire jobs I do. You get into the temper, and also you consider your concept, and all of a sudden issues begin coming collectively, and that’s all the time fairly satisfying.

Two tasks I actually loved doing had been a quick movie I made for Google, and one other one I did for Amazon. I group these  two collectively as a result of they’re each quite simple and graphics-based, however they’re additionally each hand-made.

When you begin crafting issues by hand to make movies like these, you begin having little imperfections, little errors. And it’s these analog issues which you can’t management that I all the time take pleasure in rather a lot.

This analog or imperfect side comes up in all of the work I do, however particularly in these two movies for Google and Amazon. I really like that they’re imagined to be tremendous slick, tremendous good, however the truth is they’re not due to these little errors, and that offers them a sure appeal.

Here are the 2 movies Lucas is speaking about:

Amazon Kindle Paperwhite Video

Google Video

I’m additionally actually pleased with the apps I’ve been creating for kids underneath the model YATATOY. We created YATATOY all ourselves, and now we have full artistic management since we’re promoting the app immediately via the app retailer. We don’t have a 3rd social gathering telling us what to do creatively, and I can create the model nonetheless I need. If I wish to change the colour of the brand tomorrow, I can do it, and that’s simply superb.

I’m pleased with YATATOY as a result of it’s top quality content material for teenagers, and I wish to give youngsters one thing with numerous coronary heart, ardour, and high quality.

The Drawnimal app from YATATOY

Something else I actually loved doing was creating the opening video for the Pictoplasma Festival in 2015. I’ve a aspect undertaking the place I put paper plates onto stones and different issues to create faces, and the video is all time lapse footage taken over an entire day at this superb spot in Seaside on the southeast of Finland.

It took fourteen hours to make these time lapses. It was very Zen simply to be there ready with the digital camera and nobody round, having fun with the quietness and the peacefulness, after which with the ability to create a movie out of the expertise.

Thinking again now, I wish to have carried out that movie with drones. It would have been good to have some aerial pictures of the stones with the paper plate eyes on them. Maybe subsequent time…

Pictoplasma Festival 2015 Opener

UAV Coach: What had been among the greatest challenges you confronted in creating the “Drone Cake Baking” video? Did something sudden come up?

Lucas Zanatto: The massive problem was that the drones can solely be managed inside a sure vary. If you’re attempting to select up a tiny hook with a drone, it’s fairly tough to get it, and requires numerous pilot expertise. Fortunately the Tilt group was very expert at flying, and so they had been in a position to pull that off.

Another factor that was difficult was attaching issues to the drones, since in fact that results the equilibrium of the drone. When you begin hanging one thing from a drone, the motors get actually scorching as a result of they’re continually working to stability the drone out.

We additionally had a problem on set with the blowback from the drone rotors. We had a white background for capturing, like you’d use in a photograph shoot, and each time a drone flew close to it the paper would begin flying round.

To repair the issue we hooked up the paper a bit bit within the again, however we additionally simply let it occur. We figured the wind from the drone was a part of what was taking place, so we simply let it keep and add to among the chaos of drones attempting to make a cake.

UAV Coach: Someone from the Tilt group advised us on the NYCDFF that Telia initially wished the drones to maneuver in straight, robotic strains for the video. How did you persuade them to alter their thoughts, and the way do you handle shoppers in order that your imaginative and prescient aligns with theirs?

Lucas Zanatto: The unique concept was to program the drones so they might do all the things themselves. They wished to press a button and all the things would occur from there, all the things deliberate out. They had seen a video with drones balancing and throwing sticks backwards and forwards, and that was their preliminary reference level for this concept.

But realistically it will have taken half a 12 months to program the drones and get all of it working robotically like they had been describing.

Once we confirmed them how lengthy it will truly take, it was fairly straightforward to persuade them to let the Tilt pilots fly the drones as an alternative, which I feel ultimately was extra enjoyable. It makes the video extra chaotic, extra wild, and it simply has extra appeal in it.

UAV Coach: Before Telia requested for this video to be made, had you ever labored with drones as a director? If so, how, and if not, what was your first expertise working with drones like?

Lucas Zanatto: No, this was my first undertaking I ever did with drones. Before this I didn’t know something about drones.

It was positively a superb expertise. We all did a second video the place we embellished a Christmas tree with drones. Creating that one was rather a lot smoother than the primary one, and I may see doing extra undertaking with drones sooner or later.

UAV Coach: You’ve been profitable in numerous mediums (we love the brand new YATATOY Loopimal app!), and also you handle to impart an endearing whimsicality in the entire work you do. How do you obtain this constant tone while you work as a director, given what number of elements are concerned in making a video? Do you see your inventive voice and tone come throughout extra in post-production, as you’re filming and directing, or each?

Lucas Zanatto: When I begin a undertaking I attempt to construct myself a sure idea for it, and outline sure guidelines for the undertaking.

This is a part of why I like industrial work, as a result of they offer you sure limits, like solely working with a sure shade palette, or in an outlined context. Also you’re restricted budget-wise, so you need to discover artistic options inside these restrictions.

A sure fashion and look is available in via the options you discover to handle the assorted limitations arrange by the corporate you’re working with, and even on my own if I’m working by myself undertaking. I actually take pleasure in problem-solving like this.

I additionally attempting to arrange some form of aesthetic idea for every undertaking at the start, as a way to present a transparent stylistic boundary for the undertaking. I usually like together with some form of analog factor, and I additionally like mixing medias. As I stated earlier than in regards to the movies I did for Google and Amazon, I like when there are little errors within the work.

I’ve a sure fashion, possibly it’s a toddler in me—I like issues to be playful, a bit bit foolish. That’s the stuff I take pleasure in. Ever since I used to be a child I appreciated to construct little bizarre issues, and that has actually caught with me as a director and creator.

But I wouldn’t divide this aesthetic up as one thing that seems both solely in post-production or solely whereas filming. It’s actually a mix.

Lately I’m attempting to do extra whereas filming slightly than in submit. I like when you might have such a easy however good concept that you are able to do it with simply the digital camera, even when it’s only a bouncing ball on a white background. You movie it and also you grade it, and it’s carried out. If I have to begin masking out or enhancing different stuff and including numerous post-production, then I begin not having fun with the work a lot. I favor it to be extra sincere than that.

Of course, animation is a very totally different factor, which I additionally actually take pleasure in doing.

This video shows Lucas’ Loopimal app, which we point out within the query above

UAV Coach: Do you might have any ideas on how drones may change cinematography, or any predictions for the long run associated to using drones in making movies?

Lucas Zanatto: I feel drones will change rather a lot basically, not simply in cinematography.

From customers to execs, persons are utilizing drones increasingly more. They’re inexpensive now, the standard is nice, and so they’re not overly troublesome to fly, which I feel means much more folks can be flying them.

I don’t know when you bear in mind, however when the primary DSLRs (Digital Single-Lens Reflex cameras) got here out, all of a sudden everybody had these lenses with blurry depths of fields and backgrounds, and all of a sudden all the things appeared movie-like. Suddenly each documentary or quick movie, all the things you noticed, had a sure cinematic look.

And I feel the identical factor will occur with drones. Previously you had to make use of a helicopter or a crane to attain an aerial shot, however now you need to use a drone. I feel drones are going to have a huge effect on how we make movies and flicks.

Here is a glance behind the scenes of the making of the “Drone Cake Baking” video:

Zacc Dukowitz

Zacc Dukowitz

Zacc Dukowitz is the Director of Marketing for UAV Coach. A author with skilled expertise in training expertise and digital advertising and marketing, Zacc is keen about reporting on the drone business at a time when UAVs may help us stay higher lives. Zacc additionally holds the rank of nidan in Aikido, a Japanese martial artwork, and is a extensively printed fiction author. Zacc has an MFA from the University of Florida and a BA from St. John’s College. Follow @zaccdukowitz or try zaccdukowitz.com to learn his work.

Zacc Dukowitz

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