ACT NOW

ACT NOW is the third output from my research with Celestial Labs. The film, created as a message to G7 leaders for Greenpeace, involved film shots from a variety of locations. My part in the project was to create the animated drone animals that were to appear in the sky for the film. This project was the largest drone flights that we had created consisting of nearly 300 drones. The animals were based on 3D meshes that were animated in slow motion. The animals were large, between 60m and 100m in size when flown in the sky and limits on the speeds of drones (up to 5m/s) means that animations need to be slowed down to enable the realistic movements of the animals to catch up.

This project was a particular challenge from the perspective of the possibility of drone collisions. Through testing we created the animal forms at full scale but with half the total number of drones we had. When satisfied, we used the full fleet of drones and flew the animals at the Celestial base in Somerset. The drones were filmed and composited onto the film shots, alongside projected animal shots. The result ACT NOW is a powerful message to the leaders of the world to act to halt climate change.