It’s been a legendary year for French video artist Colin Solal Cardo.
His drone-fueled film All Away garnered the grand prize at the Cine-Drones Festival 2015 in the Music Video category in July. On Thursday, Cardo’s video all but swept the inaugural Flying Robot international Film Festival in San Francisco. The music video, performed by Art of Shades, won Best in Show as well as the Cinematic Narrative category.
Billed as “an open competitive drone film festival focused on aerial cinema created from the perspective of flying camera robots (drones),” the festival screened at San Francisco’s Roxie Theater. It is the first of its kind for the West Coast; however, the pioneer for such an event goes to the New York City Drone Film Festival which debuted this past winter.
“What got me excited about drones was seeing the footage from them, getting that bird’s eye view that wasn’t previously possible,” festival founder Eddie Codel said in a recent interview.
“In the early drone days you had to piece everything together yourself. It was much more of a hacker mentality; now you can get off-the-shelf autonomous drones. But you can also build one of your own. What you do with them is the incredible thing.”
The festival featured well-known drone videography experts including Veronica Belmont, host of Engadget’s Dear Veronica; Mike Senese from Make: Magazine and Terrence Williams from AerialSkyLab and 3DR.
Other category winners include:
Cinematic Postcard: Running into the Air – Sebastian Wöber
Runner Up: Teahupo’o, Du Ciel – Eric Sterman
Cinematic Narrative: All Away – Colin Solal Cardo
Runner up: My forest – Sébastien Pins
Drones For Good: Mark Jacobsen – The Syria Airlift Project (DRONELIFE readers may recognize Jaconsen’s project from our coverage last year).
Runner up: Mapeando las Invasiones de la Comarca Embera-Wounaan – James Cameron Ellis
WTF LOL Hello World – PRENAV
Runner up: Targeted Advertising – Mitchell Rose
Student Film Quinn Muller – Electric Africa
Runner up: Butterfly – Ryan Rizzo
Aerial Sports: Office Space FPV – Jonathon Davis aka Skitzo
Runner up: Tommy Tibajia aka Ummagawd – FPV Paradise Hawaii
I Made That!: Compilation Bart Jansen – Bart Jansen
Runner up: Chocolate Copter – Michael Niedermayr
Jason is a longstanding contributor to DroneLife with an avid interest in all things tech. He focuses on anti-drone technologies and the public safety sector; police, fire, and search and rescue.
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