LA Media First to Fly Drones Inside Celtic Park!
LA Media has been at the forefront of commercial drone production since drones have been around. Naturally, we were thrilled to be asked by 422.tv, a Glasgow-based production company, to fly drones over Celtic’s iconic football stadium.
This was a historic first in terms of drones, as previously no other drone operation has been allowed to fly over this hallowed football turf!
Making Celtic Drone History
Built-in 1888, Celtic Park is one of the biggest football stadiums in Europe. This was an exciting and challenging project for us. We were tasked with getting a 180 down shot of Celtic Park using our drones.
Our footage would then be used for the end of a video that 422.tv was directing for the marketing team at Celtic Football Club. Brendan Rodgers, former professional football player, and the current Celtic manager was to be featured in the shot too.
Image by LA Media 'Outside Celtic Park'
Too much steel for GSP Goose, I'm switching to Accro
For this shoot, we used our Inspire 1, mounted with our X5R camera. As mentioned earlier this was the first time a drone had been allowed to film inside the Celtic Stadium. Here are some surprises we encountered on location!
Our first surprise was the interference the metal of the stadium had on our drone’s GPS. This meant that our GPS was unreliable and sporadic. Lucky for us we aren’t dependent on GSP and our drone pilot John Banks is an ace at flying in Accro mode. Therefore, this didn’t present us with a problem but it was something we hadn’t thought of before.
Our second surprise was that the 12mm Olympus prime we had on the camera was not enough to get the full width/length of the stadium - top-down, even from 400ft (our legal height limit). To get the whole picture would have required hiring a helicopter!
We needed to rethink the final shot on our feet!
Image by LA Media 'Drone Filming Inside Celtic Park'
Waste not, want not!
So, while some of the team had a rethink about the final shot, the other half of the team kept working and went to capture GV’s in and around the stadium. These GV’s would be used by the Celtic marketing people in various other marketing projects. However, this threw up another surprise, wind!
We quickly became aware of how the wind would swirl around the seating creating a vortex.
Image by LA Media 'Statue Outside Celtic Park'
Don’t crash into the talent!
The final shot agreed upon was for us to fly towards and then over the head of Brendan Rodgers as he was walking off the park and back towards the player’s tunnel. We were to finish on an end frame showing the Celtic stand. With the untrustworthy GPS and random whirlwinds naturally, all were concerned for Brendan’s safety.
When you add people to the drone mix you need to be on your “A” game as you don’t want anyone getting injured. However, the shot went well, Brendan survived and it was used in the final video to end the film.
We’d like to extend a big thank you to all the staff at Celtic who welcomed us into their sacred ground and to the team at 422.tv for giving us the opportunity to fly for them.
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