The Little Mermaid (2023)
The Brief
Filming took place in June 2021. We were asked to film a lot of visual effects plates to capture background plates for the build of Ariel's caslte, water plates, landscapes and cliffs - which were all filmed in Sicily using both drone and helicopter. We filmed plates to be able to show Ariel's ship running aground. We also filmed the ship which was mounted in a hydraulic gimbal to show it wrestling with the water's movements, for which we used just the drone. A lot of sequences were captured at dawn or dusk. These included a sequence which we needed to film so it could be matched to certain musical cues, which were played through our headsets whilst filming using both drone and helicopter.
Live action sequences involved using both helicopter and drone, with the same being true for crowd sequences.
The Alexa Mini LF was the camera used on both the helicopter and the drone. The lenses used were Leitz Thalia 70mm on the drone and the Fujinon Premista 28-100 on the AS350 Squirrel Helicopter.
Challenges
There were only a few challenges which were handled beautifully by collaboration with our Italian colleagues. That said, Covid was a big one - i.e working around the restrictions, people catching it, thus delaying productions and so on. There were also some location challenges for our team on the ground who needed to hike up steep rocky outcrops in order to set up equipment.
Night Time, Live Action etc.
On the various locations, Giles Dumper was our film pilot, along with Francesco Comensoli, flying the AS350 Squirrel helicopter with our Aerial Cinematographer, Jeremy Braben, who was operating the Shotover F1 gimbal rigged with the ARRI Alexa Mini LF camera and Fujinon 28-100 Premista lens.
The helicopter was also used for capturing photogrammetry.
Our drone work caprtured both live action and VFX plates in the day and nighttime, whereby we used out Aerigon heavy lift drone rigged with the ARRRI Alexa Mini LF camera and the Leitz Thalia series prime.
