houses on a hillside that would be difficult to shoot without aerial photography. “We showed it to them, and they said, ‘Fantastic. We love it. When can you start?’” he says.
Getting a shot Stateside, aerial photography companies are still patiently awaiting approval to tap into this booming business opportunity. HeliMalibu got its start a year and a half ago, initially operating in Peru, where company founder Daniel Garate is from. Both he and HeliMailbu’s operations manager, Giancarlo Ushella, have worked in film before, Garate as a videographer and cinematographer and Ushella as a production assistant and cameraman. Garate had seen some online videos of people experimenting with aerial UAV photography and was intrigued to try it himself. Ushella helped him
start up the company and focused on the business and marketing end. HeliMalibu got the idea to work on California real estate by perusing magazines and finding there were few aerial photos of houses in the area. “You see these tremendous, $8, 9, 10 million homes, and you don’t see any real great photographs from the air,” say Ushella. “Most of the magazines, only one out of 100 homes were being shot form the air. And we knew those guys were using big helicopters that were expensive, so we thought it would be a great market to approach that would work really well with the technology.” The pair contacted a Malibu Realtor they knew, asking if he knew of any great homes in need of bird’s eye shots. “He was more than happy to let us be his guinea pig,” he says.
However, in January, the Los Angeles Police Department issued a warning to photography and videography companies using UAVs to take photos of real estate. “The LAPD has never spoken to us directly,” says Ushella. “They did send out a warning to all the Realtors not to use companies like ours.” With the U.S. market on hold, the company has focused its efforts in South America and Mexico, often doing much more than real estate photography. “Music videos, short clips for independent movies, car chase scenes or what not. … Actually the projects that pay the most are the ones in the movie industry,” says Ushella. Many of the company’s clips have appeared on Spanish-speaking television channels, though the company’s copter was used for a dance scene in the movie “Moves” and for a clip in a Red Bull commercial.
A sample of HeliMalibu’s aerial photography work. Photo courtesy HeliMalibu.
Mission Critical
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Summer 2012
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