Hello. This is Ochiai, the designer.

The other day, I had the chance to film the tea fields at a senior colleague's family home.

Thankfully the weather was fine that day, and since it was early morning there was no wind.
Everyone apparently showed up before seven o'clock—I'm truly grateful (;_;)

So, after setting and checking the drone's status, up it went! The higher it rose, the smaller we all became…!!!!

Speaking of drone status, there's compass calibration—but spinning around all alone holding a drone is pretty embarrassing ( ﾟДﾟ)

It was clear skies with no wind, making for great conditions, but there was one problem.

These steel towers. There were several of them, and while there was no risk of collision, I was worried about the connection between the transmitter and the drone. So even though it was within visual range, I decided flying far away or too high would be dangerous and gave up on it.

So this time I flew around relatively close by.

Then I edited the footage on my computer a few days later.

Here's the video.
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I filmed tea fields in Kikugawa City, and seeing from above just how many tea fields there were nearby was really moving!
I would have loved to capture the tea character drawn on the mountainside too, but that was tough with a wide-angle lens…

After the shoot, the challenge I feel I still face is operating both sticks together when the drone isn't facing forward.

When the drone faces the opposite direction, the controller inputs are reversed too.

If it were simply reversed that would be fine, but when it's facing a subtle angle like diagonally, I still get confused sometimes (;^ω^) That's something I need to keep practicing!

Also, aerial compositions all end up looking similar unless you get creative, so you need to put thought into framing.

If the footage is ultimately going to be edited into a video, I realized you need to imagine the finished result and decide the composition, shooting method and usage to some extent from the start.

To do that, you have to grasp and understand what kind of shots you get when you move the drone in a certain way, so I felt that's another point I should study.

I'll keep looking for filming locations and do my best to get better and better! I plan to post videos on Instagram too, so please check them out (^^♪

Here's our Instagram account
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https://www.instagram.com/merci_producees/?hl=ja