Interview with the CEO of SCP Aerials Tell us about SCP Aerials. What inspired you to start it? We began experimenting with drone filming about five years ago after winning a bid to film the world’s biggest multi-sport adventure race in Inner Mongolia. The Chinese government had invited the world’s top endurance athletes to race through the deserts and grasslands of the region and we were brought in to film it all. The terrain was vast and the scenery was stunning. Many on my film team were keen amateur endurance racers themselves and we were really excited to try to capture the amazing vistas and show how tiny the athletes appear when confronted by huge sand dunes and rivers. Exploring in this type of wilderness is the very essence of adventure racing so it was really important to capture it.
Also, we all love playing with new technology and we were sure that if we could make it work for this project we could find lots of other uses for it in the future. What are your main projects to date? We have worked on everything from Hollywood movies and TV shows to stadium concerts and construction sites. The application of drone technology is so wide-ranging that there are many areas where it can be useful. Currently, one of our biggest clients is the luxury property sector, as we can capture unique angles for video and photography that help to market new developments. We have also just started offering 360-degree immersive drone filming, which looks
really exciting in VR goggles, and are also developing a drone surveying business to create “orthomosaic” maps of plots of land to help with surveying and industrial inspections. Another development we are experimenting with is using infra-red FLIR cameras on drones to help identify structural damage and find injured persons in wilderness environments. Drone filming is a fast-growing business and a well-established industry in Hong Kong. Can you give us an overview of the industry and how it has grown? When we started five years ago I couldn’t find anyone else doing this in Hong Kong,
By Ludivine Taverne
so we were learning a lot through trial and error. Since then, drones have become household consumer products and are often in the news. Drone manufacturers such as DJI have grown into hugely successful companies and, as a result, drone technology is available to everyone. There are now many people offering to fly drones for money but very few of them are doing it professionally, with government permission, qualifications and insurance. We do a lot of work with DJI and have been meeting regularly with the aviation department here in Hong Kong to help develop regulations that can safely manage the growing industry. Hong Kong is the biggest drone hub in the world. Is the competition for drone filming tight? There is lots of competition as there are lots of people who have drones, but there are very few professional companies doing this properly and safely with permits and insurance. Also, there are very few companies that have our bigger, more sophisticated drones that are customised to carry heavy movie-grade cameras, or the 360 immersive camera rigs that we offer. It is certainly important for us to keep innovating to stay ahead, but it is even more important to keep operating safely. There are raising concerns about safety or privacy with drones. How do you address these? We have been meeting regularly with the Hong Kong Civil Aviation Department over the past few years to help communicate the type of requests that we get in a bid to help develop more comprehensive regulations. There are now fairly clear rules about drone use in Hong Kong on the aviation website, although currently it seems that not everyone is aware of them
12 JUMPSTART October/November 2016