12 Days in the life of a professional FPV Drone pilot


Hey how’s it going so today we are embarking on an adventure, an adventure, that’s gon na last about 12 days and that’s gon na, be I mean across four different countries for four different shoots. So yeah I mean I’m just gon na. Basically, take you around the life of a an pilot. That’S doing that for a living, a professional. If you will so yeah, let’s go all right, so let me tell you a little bit about all this.

The reason why I’m doing this is because I kind of want to show you the kind of behind the scenes of everything I do for work and also because I’ve been getting a lot of questions about it. So I thought it would be kind of a good way to just look at it through the insider’s perspective. Basically, so in this one we’re gon na go first in Ukraine to Kiev. So that’s what we’re doing now. It started pretty early on that day, 253.

To be exact, no time to waste, I grabbed my back down the elevator onto the uber and arriving at the airport. I realize how early it is because this Airport is absolutely empty. I go straight to the plane and that’s a very Slav plane with the critical basics we take off. I reach to Kiev at the hotel. I realized that my route is really really nice and that’s great, since I’m not gon na be working until late in the evening and it’s the morning.

I take some time just to Netflix and chill this happens quite a lot. Sometimes you will be sent somewhere and you won’t work until the evening, so you kind of have to keep busy what I do. Sometimes it’s just edit or do some stuff now passing on the mic to thinkI from the past. So that’s kind of what we’re working with today. Basically it’s for an ad and it there’s a racing scene.

So they suited me up as a is a doing racer and that’s what that’s what we do in that the track looks funny and with all these on. This shoot also acted as a bit of a consultant to help them out set up the track. Make sure that it was actually flyable and they looks like pre legit, and it did even though it’s a bit challenging to fly in such a small environment, but I think it looked right in the end, all right so on this shot. You’Re gon na get a better picture of what’s going on here. Basically, at the back over, there is the director and right next to him is the director of photography.

The director of photography holds the camera and decides for most of what the picture is going to be like on the left. There’S me and two other guys. These guys are actors pretending to be pilots, and I was here acting as the pilot, while flying as well and on the right you’ve got a group of you, three ukrainian racers, that came here for the shoot to fly actual drones. So first we do a bit of hover in where the idea was to get the drones with us in the background flying and then we started on to the flying. Unfortunately, I can’t really show that to you, because it’s not released yet, but basically, while I was in charge of doing, was to fly as the racer and film at the same time, while the other ones were just flying, and I was trying to make it look Like a competition between all of us with like crashes and all kinds of stuff, overtaking so yeah, that’s basically what happened.

We’Ve got the UDR team from Ukraine. You do you want to introduce yourself guys. Yeah yeah Alex I’m Alex under a lotion, I’m wan na lenok. One of those and action of awesome you might recognize them from something there were some of them. Actually, you were part of the rotary of episode about Chernobyl.

Is that right, yeah, yeah, yeah cool, so yeah. These were these were my co-pilots opponents for the day, and now that everything went pretty well, it’s a wrap. I think I just have to take off these clothes and say goodbye to these guys, and it was really nice meeting you thanks for the stickers. After that long evening, it’s about 11:00 in the evening and have to go back to the hotel because I’m taking off at 3 in the morning back to the airport 3 hours later, I’m well-rested I wake up, and I’m like hey, that’s not that wasn’t that bad! I got pretty easily right, so I thought hey.

You know what I’m gon na check out my phone real quick. So I check out the phone and what feels to me 10 seconds after that, the phone rings and it’s actually the receptionist from the hotel telling me that my drivers been waiting for 15 minutes and look at the clock. What fell to me, like 10 seconds, was actually 45 minutes. I had fallen back to sleep and I completely overslept. I’Ve never felt like a time traveler that much so now my driver is just sending it down Kiev and make it to the airport.

It’S perfect. Just in time for a little smoke break before the plane goes from the plane. I look at my luggage, that’s all alone, on the tarmac, and I really really hope that someone’s gon na take care of it, because no one seems to care about it. Oh God they took it. That’S great.

I arrived home in Paris, I take a quick shower and back onto the uber for the next shoot arriving in the next shoe. You might recognize something from it today. We’Re shooting a video for a martial arts Jinna this little guy and yeah. Basically we’re just gon na shoot rehearsal today and today tomorrow is the page for shooter, so that scene was pretty massive. We had over 20 extras and then a team of people working around there was about 10 people, including the director, the our director, the assistant.

I mean lots and lots of people working on that project, which was a really cool experience. So that day we spent a little bit of time rehearsing before the big day, which was on the next day. This last bit actually gave birth to the latest video you may have seen on my channel. It’S a video that we put a lot of effort into and I’m so pleased about the response from everyone. So I wanted to show you a little bit of how it went down on the next day.

The actual shooting day that day was dedicated to rehearsing the one that we just saw. We rehearsed the movements to make sure that everything would work everything would fit and then, after that, on the next day, was the actual shoot day where everything had to go right, and so what we did is that we basically cut the days in two halves. The first half of the day would be dedicating to the part that we actually see in the end, and the second part of the day would be dedicated to the part that you see in the beginning of the video. So what happened is that we did that because we had to accommodate people for their planning in it their agenda. They couldn’t stay all of them no all day.

In terms of I mean these martial artists. They just came here to do the video like graciously, so we can. We can take too much other time. It was a lot of questions as well regard in the video and I’m gon na try to answer them right now. Basically, we combine handheld movements with actual flights from the squirts and there is only one cot in the video, as you are going to see now from the behind the scenes.

So once they salute the girl, word gets up and she’s got that she’s got the squirt around her neck and then the one guy picks it up and turns, and that’s when the squirts takes off and then, as the the squirt moves forward, everyone comes out and Every time we go around someone that person actually leaves the frame, so there we go another person, that’s left and then on to the fighting, and here we spin it’s really fast so that we can go forward and then we keep going as we keep going. That guy actually had the back was supposed to be here to make sure of the alignment of the okey doke cause at the end, and also in the real shot that we use. He actually picked up the to make him more like to make it simpler for everyone to kind of frame and do for the very last movement that he was seeing right now, and that was done for separate issue, which is a martial arts gym in Paris. It was, it was a lot of work, but I’m so pleased by the way it actually came out and these these guys that came up to me with that project. I had like such a good idea and I was really impressed by it.

So that’s why I decided to go and work with them. It was. It was just a really great project. They really understood the whole situation and how I mean how we could make something right with the FPV he drew, and that was great, so big shout out to Roma’s partner the director also ferried Mulkey, the art director and everyone. I worked on our project.

There is a list in the description of the actual video if you want to go and check it out, everyone did a fantastic job and I’m so pleased that I was part of that project. Are you tired, already cuz, it’s just the third day and we still have 10 days to go? Yes, so, on the next day, right after that shoot, I took off and went to so another one. Then I took this first plane where there was no one in the first three or four rows except me, which was super super weird but kind of funny. At the same time, and then once I arrived in , I was I mean, take it away as usual: it’s such a cool place at such so much so much beauty over there.

I arrived in the room in Gehringer, which is a field in the south east west of , beautiful place, and just I mean the room was just breasts. They’Re breathtaking. On the next day, we shot some stuff with tom, erik ryan, that you may remember from the shoot and escape video in california. So yeah we went down, we did the liver of down hill and then, on the same day, we actually found this really cool cliff. To do some shots on was so.

He took them, took a bunch of shots over there and they took a really cool one. That I’ll show you the next day we had to go to a different place in Norway, so we took a ferry to go there and enjoy the view after a long drive, and we just went to sleep on that day. We went on to another ferry another. Really cool view as well, and then we drove down to meet with a guy called truce to us. Something like this he’s through a Datsun which is basically belly-flopping their Norwegian version of belly-flop in his super EXTREME.

So we went there in a week and he kind of we we we got a few shots and I approached it on my Instagram. You may remember these. I mean eras, eras, so fun to shoot with them. That way, because and it’s something that you don’t see every day, guys jump in from 22 meters and just belly-flopping on purpose, it’s it’s pretty crazy. The day after it was another early morning, we woke up at 1:00 in the morning and to hike for about two hours to reach.

A very famous stone called Prague is stolen and that’s the famous flat squarish stone and we went there to take that shot. And after that it was back home in Paris and it just felt great to be back home. But we had to move on to the other shoot that was supposed to be in Portugal to shoot a rap music video. But it turns out that one got canceled and it’s actually great for the foot for this little story, because this really shows you a clear picture of what I mean an fpv professional does every day, and this is actually part of what happens a lot of time. Sometimes you’ll have cancellations, I’m not going to get into the details of why in this consolation?

Well, yeah it just it just happens. Sometimes the time you get some stuff days booked and then all of a sudden, it’s not anymore, it’s something that you have to prepare for. What I do is until I’m not in the plane. I don’t. Oh at least I have like the plane tickets.

I think it’s not going to happen even happen recently that I, even even after all this, I still thought I wouldn’t go. Even when I was there. I still thought it. Wouldn’T it wouldn’t happen somehow well yeah. This is part of the things that you have to prep, for, especially if you really interested in this job just think about it, and I mean don’t stress too much over it, and that is basically it for this little tour of the behind the scenes of, and Then why it’s like to be a professional, fpv, pilot.

The reason why I wanted to show you this is because I get this comment quite a lot about the living, the dream thing and it’s it’s true. It’S definitely a dream, and it’s it’s something. That’S I’m! So grateful about it, I’m so happy that I can do every day now, but it comes with a lot of other things. Then you have to think of it’s not about just ripping packs on packs on packs.

Every day you actually fly them even less than you do when you’re just a hobbyist, but the real thing is that it’s also gon na be a lot of late nights, early mornings, a lot of hurry up and wait a lot of walking, sometimes four or four Hours to take one shot, sometimes it’s going to be cancellations. Sometimes it’s going to be time away from your family. So if you are interested in doing this, just just know what you’re getting into it’s, it’s not just gon na, be all like ripping packs with your friends all the time. It’S actually going to be quite a lot of work, and, but with that said, I wouldn’t exchange it for anything else in the world. I love what I do and I hope to do a lot more in the future and turns out this was not even my longest streak of just like working seven days a week for four for a long time.

I recently did 15 days of working non-stop like that with basically were waking up every day around 3:00 and and doing a lot of stuff across like different countries as well, but this will be and then revealed in another video, maybe so yeah here it is for This one, I hope that you like to I hope now you enjoy that format. Maybe I’ll do a bit more of these behind the scenes kind of things. Let me know in the comments, if you liked it see you next time: oh geez, [, Music, ],

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