Get Your Copter On

Source: www.innersection.tv
Author: NM

A few months ago I saw these cool RC helicopters in a duty free shop — $50 or something — and I started dreaming about the unique angles you could get by attaching a GoPro camera to the front of this thing. The dream eventually ended when I crashed the copter into heavy local who paddled in all bloody and pissed off and made me eat my own remote control device.

A few months later, I met the COPTER KIDS. These two kids from Reno, Nevada had barely ever been to the beach, but a few hours at Indo reef break filming for Billabong’s new boardshorts campaign was all they needed to start dominating the world of aerial surf photography.

I told Copter Kids they were just poaching my idea (I was actually trying to goad them into a fist-fight) and they showed me some footage from an early GoPro QUADROCOPTER MOUNT. “Too shakey,” they explained. “Not enough control in the camera either.” They’re shots were still pretty rad, but they explained it had taken a lot of work and post production to get these.

Their new rig was about 5-feet long, mounted with a nose-mounted 7D camera on a full gyroscope. Copter Kid #1, Trent Palmer, is a world class pilot (I saw him teasing dogs on the beach with his helicopter and taking off in the middle of crowds he could have killed them all). Copter Kid #2 has real-time remote viewing and full control of the camera. Between the two of them, they pretty much nail every shot.

Copter Kids been out shooting car commercials and Discovery Channel footage, but now that the surf world is getting a glimpse of their potential I imagine Copter Wars is going to be a theme for 2011/2012. Until someone gets killed that is. Right now, the FAA doesn’t quite know what to do about these things…but as soon as some rookie chops some 12-year-olds off on YouTube filming his buddy’s Innersection…well, you’re going to have to move your chopperation over to Indo, where they don’t have things like “rules” and “regulations.”

In the meantime, you should buy a chopper…or better yet, hire the Copter Kids. It’s only 4-grand a day (including rentals) and they make everything look like a James Bond movie. —NM

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