The Drone Dish: Gianlo Ferretti

On this episode of The Drone Dish, Tyler talks with Italian native Gianlo Ferretti. Gianlo has been involved in photography and videography for several years, and the addition of drones into his arsenal has greatly expanded his creative skillset. 

Gianlo's work has been featured across many social media platforms, and justifiably so!

Be sure to check out Gianlo's AirVūz Profileto see more of his videos! 

And to see more videos from the world's best drone pilots, click HERE! 

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:

Tyler Mason: Joining us from Minneapolis, via Italy, we have Gianlo Ferretti on The Drone Dish. Gianlo, thanks for coming on the show.

Gianlo Ferretti: Oh, thanks for inviting me.

Tyler Mason: I know you're a college athlete, you did track in college, but you're also big into photography and aerial photography. How did you first get started in photography and how did you add a drone into that?

Gianlo Ferretti: Well, as you said Tyler, I've always been passionate about sports and I thought I would get a camera when I was doing track. So I started by just taking sport photography and then I got into landscapes and cityscapes. And once I added a drone to the collection, it was a game changer because now I didn't have to look for a perfect spot to take the perfect cityscapes, but I could just fly over the city and that was amazing.

Tyler Mason: For sure. And as I mentioned, you live in Minneapolis now but you grew up in Italy and you've been flying there a few times. What's it like to fly in a country like that? I've got to imagine it's pretty cool.

Gianlo Ferretti: Oh yeah, it's amazing. Its amazing when you see that kind of landscape from above, and you can see all the history that's there, all those classic red rooftops. It's definitely a unique experience to be able to see and share with other people those historical places. It's kind of cool.

Tyler Mason: Yeah, you've done some really cool stuff from Italy. I know it's been pretty popular on AirVūz and elsewhere. Pisa and Florence were a few of the top ones there. Aside from just the regular drone photography and videography you do a lot of timmelapses and hyperlapses, which you've been doing that since before the Mavic 2 made it easy. You're kind of one of the OGs of that, I guess you could say. Why did you start doing that in the first place?

Gianlo Ferretti: I thought timelapses and hyperlapses were always cool. You see a lot of timelapses in movies, they're very cinematic and you can see something that would take two hours, like a sunset, you can see it in five seconds. So they've always been really interesting to me.

Tyler Mason: Yeah, and the end results if really cool, as you can see in some of the stuff that you've done. What advice do you have for people who maybe want to do either timelapse or hyperlapse on their own, and just from maybe both a shooting standpoint and an editing standpoint?

Gianlo Ferretti: Well, I feel like if you have a Mavic 2, doing hyperlapses became really easy now. And if you don't have a Mavic 2, you can still do amazing hyperlapses basically by just shooing at a two-second interval. So you're shooting pictures and you can use waypoints in the DGI GoPro app. If you take about 200 to 300 pictures, what I do usually is I edit them in Lightroom first and then I export all the JPEGs into either After Effects or Premiere, and you create this really cool video that usually lasts 10 to 15 seconds.

Tyler Mason: Yeah, it's pretty cool stuff. I've only tried it once or twice, it didn't quite work for me. I wanted to ask you about another kind of creative editing thing that you've been doing recently. You've been using some of your drone photography and videos either in Photoshop or different ways to incorporate them in other images. How did you get the idea to do that and how fun has that been for you?

Gianlo Ferretti: I usually just look at other people, like just creative geniuses on Instagram or YouTube. They have all these cool edits, sometimes they even have tutorials for you, and sometimes you're just discovering how they did that edit by yourself. And then what I do is I get those ideas together, look at my library, and usually I have a lot of stuff that I shot in the previous month, and I try and mix all of that together until it looks cool, and then I post it on social media.

Tyler Mason: How important is social media for you, as a drone pilot, and how can that help drone pilots promote their work?

Gianlo Ferretti: I think it's really important now. It's like you are having your portfolio on Instagram and people look at Instagram more than they look at maybe your website. So I think it can get you a lot of visibility that helps you a lot, I feel like especially in getting your work out there.

Tyler Mason: Well, Gian, you do great work. I've been loving your Italy stuff, it makes me want to go back there and bring my drone with me next time. But anyway, thanks so much for coming on the show, and keep up the great work.

Gianlo Ferretti: Oh, thank you guys. Thanks a lot, appreciate it.

Tyler Mason: You bet.