June 8th, 2020Design with Indre – Looking through the lens
To gain mastery you must have passion. You require hours of dedication and without a love for your subject or career, you just can’t fake it.
I want to introduce you to a school mate I admire – simply because he has dedicated himself to looking through a lens. He started as a photographer but he was always a first adopter of technology. He enrolled at Australian Film and Television school to study film editing and worked hard to get himself through. Link: www.montyphotos.com
The grass was greener for Ian in America, so opportunities were sought in San Francisco, the Bay Area, where Ian Montgomery still lives. A client challenged him many years ago to learn ‘one of those drone things’ as they were just gaining public attention. Ian spent many hours and many (four) cheap drones later, chasing the dog around the backyard, gaining footage whilst mastering the drone. The footage ended up being edited by Ian and becoming a GoPro video of the day. It happened to go on to win the Bay Area Drone film festival.
Much has changed since those days as Ian must now be licensed and insured. He has been able to work in many different countries flying his drones, for films, advertising, TV shows and his art.
Along the way Ian explored ways of using this tool as an artist. In particular, he combined the developing LED lighting technology with his drone and has had some extraordinary results. Ian now has a heavy-lift hexacopter with LED aerial lighting that outputs around 130k lumens of light. It is able to light approximately half a football field and is currently the world’s brightest drone.
Ian says his first film shot with this light was in Utah where their rock formations are unique to the world. Ian set to challenge his viewers’ sense of scale and reality. Link www.sfdrones.tv/#5
Last year Ian used the drone to film glaciers in Iceland and Greenland, which to his knowledge, hadn’t been done before, and makes for a fabulous snapshot in the melting of the ice sheets. Making those films has been very rewarding for Ian and is a way for him to stay fresh for his commercial work. Staying fresh is something every artist needs to be able to do.
He collaborates with a core group of specialists, including colourists, audio engineers and composers. “Film is the most collaborative form of art and you have to have people on board who believe in the project because usually its a labour of love.” Link: www.sfdrones.tv/#0
Many an artist works for the labour of love. Fortunately, drones have a financial, environmental and statistical contribution to make. Not only are farmers embracing them for a view of their boundaries, troughs and stock but for mapping, government analysis and the CFA has started using them. Add infrared technology and you can see the extent of fires in hard-to-reach areas as well as hot spots on fire grounds.
With privacy laws firmly in place, learning to fly a drone can be used for good and not evil.
Indre Kisonas – principal designer – iok design
indre@iokdesign.com.au
www.iokdesign.com.au
Images: Ian Montgomery
Image copy: Ian says his first film shot with this light was in Utah where their rock
formations are unique to the world. Ian set to challenge his viewers’ sense
of scale and reality.
