FILM & PHOTOGRAPHY · Action Cameras & Drones

FPV AND THE CHASE: CINEMATIC PURSUIT SHOTS

13 min · Full library · written from fifteen years in the terrain

The point

After this lesson you understand what an FPV chase shot requires, the honest training path to being able to fly one, and how to plan a chase sequence with a rider so both of you know the plan.

Half the answer, free

The Technique

  1. An FPV chase shot is different from every other aerial shot because the camera is the aircraft. There is no gimbal isolating the frame from the machine, so when the quad banks, the horizon banks, and when it accelerates, the frame surges. That is the whole appeal: the shot has weight and intent, it moves the way a thing with momentum moves, and it can go through gaps, drop off cliffs and dive down a fall line with the rider. It also means every input you make is visible in the picture, so smoothness is not a setting, it is a skill in your thumbs. A single nervous correction is in the shot forever.
  2. The control model is the thing to respect. In acro mode there is no self levelling and no position hold. Let go of the sticks and the aircraft does not stop, it continues on its current attitude and accelerates toward the ground. There is no obstacle sensing. Failsafe on signal loss is generally a disarm or a crude return, not a comfortable hover. Every part of keeping the machine in the air is you, continuously, which is why an experienced camera drone pilot with hundreds of hours can put an FPV quad into the dirt in the first five seconds. The transition is not an upgrade, it is a different sport.
  3. The honest entry path starts in a simulator, and there is no shortcut around it. Buy a controller, fly a simulator for tens of hours until you can hold a line, do a smooth orbit, dive and recover without thinking about it. Then fly a tiny indoor quad where crashes cost nothing, then a cheap freestyle build in an empty field a long way from people, roads and livestock. Only after that do you go near terrain, and only after a great deal more do you go anywhere near a human being. Anyone who tells you they skipped this either has not flown near people yet or has been lucky so far. The simulator is where you buy your mistakes cheaply.
Still under the glass
  • Pursuit lines, spotter protocol, safety distances and how to brief a rider before a chase
  • 6 more technique steps
  • The 5 mistakes that undo it, with fixes
  • The drill that builds the reflex
  • The safety non-negotiables

It opens when you book a trip that runs film & photography - these are the exact drills you run with your coach out there. Your booking unlocks this whole library.

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These sports kill people. Not rarely, and not only the reckless - every season they kill riders who were experienced, fit, well equipped and doing everything properly. That is the honest starting position and everything else we do sits on top of it.

The mountain does not know who you are. Snow releases on people with twenty years in it. Machines roll on riders who have done that line a hundred times. Water, rock, trees and other people are indifferent to how good you have become. Every time you go out you are accepting a real chance that it goes wrong, and no amount of skill removes that chance - it only changes the odds.

What that looks like in these disciplines, plainly: avalanche burial and asphyxiation, being crushed under a machine, head and spinal injuries from falls and impacts, drowning, hypothermia, and collisions with trees, rocks and other riders.

We work in remote country, so distance is part of it. A serious injury usually means hours before a helicopter can reach you, and weather sometimes means no helicopter at all. Help being close is not a feature of any trip we run.

This is exactly why we prepare the way we do. Training before you ride, gear standards, minimum party sizes, people who know the ground, and a willingness to call a day off. All of it is about improving your odds and making the group capable of looking after itself. None of it makes anything safe, none of it makes anyone competent, and passing our training is not a qualification. Anybody who tells you they can make this safe is selling something.

Everyone out there is relying on everyone else having been honest about what they can actually do. If reading this has made you hesitate, that is worth listening to rather than talking yourself out of.

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