Ludovico Einaudi & Greenpeace "Elegy for the Arctic"

Through his music, acclaimed Italian composer and pianist Ludovico Einaudi has added his voice to those of eight million people from across the world demanding protection for the Arctic. Einaudi performed one of his own compositions on a floating platform in the middle of the Ocean, against the backdrop of the Wahlenbergbreen glacier (in Svalbard, Norway). We provide aerial filmography services for TV shows and Film and we also design and build our own equipment. We do a lot of work for the Spanish office of Greenpeace, covering their activity. It is very different from Film and Television work – live action, often working against the clock. It’s very exciting! We covered stories involving the Greenpeace Flagship, Rainbow Warrior in Ibiza, protesting against oil exploration. We documented activity off the Canary Islands on board the Arctic Sunrise where Greenpeace activists protested against a Repsol drill site getting ready to soil clear waters. We captured the denouncement of phosphogypsum spills into the marshlands of Huelva and illegal hotel construction at Cabo de Gata-Níjar Natural park in Almeria. When they told us about the Arctic project, we said Wow! Two days of shooting a highly creative and beautiful piece ... Cool! Somehow we wanted the viewer to hear the voices of 8 million people who have signed up to protect the Arctic. Ludovico Einaudi embodied those voices in a poetic way. The aim was to find iconic imagery outside of Arctic stereotypes, which would represent the man / nature scale and juxtapose it against the stark beauty of the surroundings. The subtlety of Ludovico’s compositions is the perfect soundtrack for such a delicate environment and as such, a live sound recording was crucial to capture the majesty of the occasion. Aerial shots were key for the narrative of the video. We wanted to close with a picture of loneliness; of humanity’s insignificance against nature but at the same time the paradox of our destructive capacity. We originally planned to include more aerials in the final cut, but during filming we discovered that Ludovico was so powerful in front of the camera that the aerials almost paled by comparison. We think that the use of drones must be justified within the narrative and not used just because they can be used. Drones allow for impressive visual appeal when used correctly. We were concerned about low temperatures, GPS coverage, and compass errors. At low temperatures, the battery performance is reduced, so we had to take special care when handling them. We had prepared some covers with resistors powered by a Lipo battery to keep them at 25o Celsius, but couldn’t use them because as they got delayed in customs. Upon reaching Longerbyern, we calibrated the compass, and we did our first test flights. We were receiving signals from 14 satellites, and there was no fluctuation, but we noticed that the positioning of the aircraft was not rock solid and was drifting to the right, so we quickly turned to manual control to avoid any possibility of ‘flyaway’. We had a lot of setbacks on this expedition. We sent 180kg of equipment ahead of us but it was delayed at customs and was not delivered on time. Included in that shipment was our coaxial Multirotor X8, our favorite tool which has a heating system for batteries and a self-inflating flotation device! We always carry a back up, and on this occasion it was necessary to use it. We flew one S-900 modified with a telemetry sensor for voltage, current consumption, and RSSI signal and a self-inflating attachment. As payload we used a Zenmuse z15 gimbal and a Panasonic Lumix GH4 camera. We modified the gimbal to accommodate an Olympus M.Zuiko 25mm lens instead of the recommended 12 mm, with this we avoided any wide angle distortion of the frame, and added more depth of field to the image with a 35mm optical equivalent of 52mm. On land we used two Futaba 14SG radios, mounted on a Tx Tray for the gimbal operator with a 7′′ monitor, and for the pilot we used two 5” monitors, one for FPV camera and Telemetry, and the other for the image captured by the GH4. For the boat shots we used a Movi gimbal with a Blackmagic Production 4K, a Canon L 16-55mm and a Canon 5d MKIII with a C-100 as support. We were in Svalbard for 5 days in total. The filming was done in two days. We arrived at the Wahlenbergbreen glacier at 5:40pm. After a briefing, we prepared the pontoon and lowered the piano and began filming the close- ups and location sound at 00: 30am. The first block of shooting from the Zodiac with the Movi gimbal lasted about 2 hours. We took a short break to warm up and then we started with the aerial shots of Ludovico on the platform. There were two flights of around 8 minutes. Everything was fine, take offs and landings from the zodiac were impeccable. We ended the first day at 4am, very happy with what we got without any incidents. The second day of shooting began at 04:00pm with aerials of the glacier while the platform and the piano was being prepared. We could only stay in the air for about 10 minutes before we were interrupted by rain, so we had to break and resume filming at 01: 30am. The Movi shots from the Zodiac lasted about three hours before it was time to shoot the last of the aerials with Ludovico on the platform, but the ice kept falling and the surface of the water was completely covered, making it difficult to move with the boats. So it was decided, for safety, to finish the shoot early. There was so much ice floating, we had difficulty getting back on to the ship. The next morning we returned to Longyearbyen Port, where we began the two-day editing process. We were all ready to go home at this point. If you want to know more about, please read the Skytango Interview: https://skytango.com/aerial-filming-ludovico-einaudi-in-the-arctic-behind-the-scenes/ Making Of: https://www.airvuz.com/video/Never-before-seen-images-of-Ludovico-Einaudi-in-the-Arctic?id=5a0ad4d0a160a823bd661c4d A Great Teamwork: https://www.airvuz.com/video/Ludovico-Einaudi-%E2%80%9CElegy-for-the-Arctic%E2%80%9D-A-Great-Teamwork?id=5a0ad293760a7562cda42209