Capture spectacular long takes with a drone
This guide gives you the keys to successfully shooting a single FPV drone shot: choosing the right equipment, piloting techniques, post-production, and lessons learned from the best examples - from the viral bowling video in Minneapolis to the stunts in Ambulance.
Summary
Introduction: The drone has changed the rules of the long take
Why FPV Changed Everything
Equipment: Which drone for which sequence shot?
Flight techniques for a successful sequence shot
Post-production: the heart of the matter
Three drone sequence shots that have left a lasting impression
Common mistakes to avoid
Pre-flight checklist
FAQ
Conclusion
1. The drone has changed the rules of the long take
In 1980, Stanley Kubrick opened The Shining with an aerial tracking shot over the Montana forests—Jack Torrance's tiny car swallowed by the landscape. This shot required a helicopter, an experienced cameraman, and a substantial budget. The result: one of the most iconic opening shots in cinema.
Today, a first-person view (FPV) drone costing a few hundred euros can do better. It can not only fly over a landscape but also enter a building, cross a room, slalom between obstacles, follow a character close to the ground, and then soar back into the sky. All in a single, continuous shot.
In 2021, an 87-second video shot in a Minneapolis bowling alley proved to the world that the drone long take was a new cinematic language. In 2022, Michael Bay released FPV drones into the streets of Los Angeles for Ambulance. In 2026, at the Milano-Cortina Winter Olympics, 25 FPV drones followed the athletes live. The film drone market surged by 340% between 2023 and 2025, with creative applications (film, TV, advertising) now accounting for 31% of commercial flight hours in the United States.
The drone long take is no longer a technical curiosity. It's a fully-fledged storytelling tool. This article is for those who want to master it: videographers, independent filmmakers, and film enthusiasts who want to put it into practice.
2. Why FPV changed everything
Before FPV, film drones filmed "from above." Wide, majestic shots, often static or slow tracking shots. Think of the flyovers in Skyfall (Mendes, 2012) or the aerial shots in The Revenant (Iñárritu, 2015). Beautiful, but predictable.
The FPV (First Person View) drone has changed the game for three reasons.
Freedom of movement. An FPV drone flies on three axes with an agility that no Steadicam, dolly, or crane can match. It flies under a table, through an open window, and follows a character up a spiral staircase. When a commercial director in Scottsdale needed to navigate the atrium of an office building with its tight turns and aggressive angles, a conventional stabilized drone couldn't keep up. An FPV drone captured a 45-second interior single-take shot that eliminated three days of crane and dolly rental. The single-take shot is no longer limited to the ground; it's three-dimensional.
Speed. An FPV drone can go from 0 to 100 km/h in seconds, then brake sharply. This dynamic range creates sensations that the viewer physically feels: acceleration, sharp turns, vertical dives. In Ambulance, Michael Bay's drone dives from the top of a building, passes under a police car mid-jump, and ascends in a single movement. Try that with a helicopter.
The cost. An FPV drone equipped with a GoPro Hero costs a few hundred euros. With a RED Komodo, a few thousand. For Ambulance, pilot Alex Vanover (DRL world champion at 19) produced shots that a helicopter could never have captured for a fraction of the budget. The price-to-performance ratio is unparalleled in the history of filming equipment.
Pro tip : FPV doesn't replace traditional techniques, it complements them. A single take that begins with a Steadicam and continues with a drone (via an invisible cut as the camera ascends) is a formidable combination. Think in terms of transition, not replacement.
3. Equipment: Which drone for which sequence shot?
The Cinewhoop, the drone from “Right Up Our Alley”
Jay Christensen flew a Cinewhoop, a small 3- to 5-inch drone protected by propeller guards, through a crowded bowling alley. It's stable and relatively quiet. This drone is designed to fly close to people and objects without endangering them. It skims past customers' heads, weaves between lanes, and dives into the inner workings of the bowling pins. No other format would have allowed for this safely.
Typical setup for a similar result: 3-inch Cinewhoop frame, GoPro Hero 12 Black or DJI O3 Air Unit, flight controller with Betaflight. For beginners who don't want to build a custom drone, the DJI Avata 2 is a solid entry point, with built-in stabilization, intuitive controls, and sufficient quality for web and social media use.
The 5-inch Ambulance Drone
This is the format that allowed Alex Vanover to dive from the top of a Los Angeles building with a RED Komodo mounted on it. More powerful, faster, capable of carrying a cinema camera. But also more dangerous and more demanding to pilot. It's the benchmark format for professional outdoor FPV cinematography.
The trade-off is clear: cinematic image quality (LOG, high resolution, large sensors), but high risks of damage. During a commercial shoot in South Africa, a pilot mistakenly sent a 5-inch camera equipped with the first available RED Komodo into the ocean, skimming the waves at high speed. The camera didn't survive. Neither did the budget for the single-take shot.
Stabilized drones, the heirs of Kubrick
The DJI Inspire 3 or the Freefly Alta X remain the benchmarks for wide aerial shots with a stabilized gimbal, landscape flyovers à la The Shining, and slow aerial tracking shots like those in Skyfall. Less spectacular than FPV, but essential when stability and framing precision take precedence over agility.
Pro tip : Use a LOG profile (D-Log, Flat) on your action camera. Drone footage is subject to abrupt changes in lighting, such as indoor/outdoor transitions, shadows/sunlight, and backlighting. LOG gives you the necessary latitude during color grading to even out the lighting throughout the entire shot. Without it, you'll end up with unrecoverable blown-out sections.
4. Flight techniques for a successful sequence shot
Fluidity before speed
The beginner's trap: flying too fast. A drone sequence shot isn't a freestyle FPV race. Stick movements must be smooth and progressive, no jerks, no sudden corrections. The viewer should never feel the drone. They should feel a camera that's floating.
Set your rates (rotation speed) lower than for freestyle. In Betaflight, lower the RC Rate and increase the Expo for smoother stick movements. Watch the shots in "Right Up Our Alley" : despite the tight turns between runways, the movement remains fluid and clear. It's the settings that make the difference, not just the pilot's skill.
Reconnaissance: flying blindly is not an option
Jay Christensen conducted five training flights in the Minneapolis bowling alley before filming with the actors in place. In total, he shot ten takes, ultimately selecting only one. Pilot Gabriel Kocher (Gab707), who specializes in fly-throughs of casinos and hotels in Las Vegas, systematically scouts the location on foot before each flight, photographing narrow passages and areas where the light changes.
For indoor flights: be aware of doors, cables, ceiling fans, and mirrors (which reflect the drone and can interfere with FPV piloting). For outdoor flights: be aware of wind, power lines, and changes in altitude. In the city center, be mindful of electromagnetic interference. During the filming of "Believe Chicago," buildings and radio equipment in the city center created interference that disrupted the FPV signal. The team had to conduct dozens of preliminary tests to ensure the safety of each flight path.
Coordination with stakeholders
A drone shot with people in the frame requires precise choreography, just like a Steadicam shot. The bowler in "Right Up Our Alley" had to release his ball at the exact moment the drone arrived directly in front of him. A one-second delay, and the take is ruined.
Practical tip: designate an assistant to communicate with the actors and the pilot via earpiece. The pilot cannot give instructions; they are focused on the flight, their eyes glued to their helmet. In Ambulance, the crew included more than 20 assistant directors coordinating the cars, stunt performers, and drones simultaneously.
Battery management
A Cinewhoop lasts 3 to 5 minutes in flight. A 5-inch drone, 4 to 7 minutes depending on the battery charge. Your single-shot sequence must fit within this energy budget. Plan your trajectory with a safety margin; if the shot lasts 90 seconds, allow at least 3 minutes of battery life for the return trip and unforeseen circumstances. And count on one battery per take: if Christensen needed 10 takes, that's 10 batteries.
Pro tip : Record your FPV goggles' video feed in parallel with the GoPro. Jay Christensen used a digital VTx system as his main feed and the GoPro as a separate recording source. If the VTx signal glitched, the GoPro continued to capture cleanly. And in post-production, the FPV feed helps you spot transitions for potential seamless edits.
5. Post-production: the heart of the matter
Raw drone footage straight from a GoPro is rarely publishable as is. The camera shakes, the horizon sways, and colors jump between indoors and outdoors. It's in post-production that the magic happens, and it's a step many beginners underestimate.
Gyroscopic stabilization
FPV drones do not have a stabilized gimbal. Stabilization is achieved after filming, using data from the gyroscope built into the camera or flight controller.
Two tools dominate the market:
GyroFlow (free, open source) became the industry standard in 2026. It reads the camera's gyroscopic data and recalculates each frame to smooth out the movement. Compatible with most action cameras and flight controllers, the result transforms shaky footage into fluid movement, as if the drone were equipped with a gimbal.
ReelSteady GO (paid, GoPro only) The original tool, specifically designed for GoPro cameras. It uses the gyroscopic metadata built into GoPro Hero cameras for near-perfect stabilization. It remains the benchmark for GoPro users, but GyroFlow has caught up in quality and surpassed it in compatibility.
A critical point: image stabilization crops the image (it "cuts" the edges to compensate for movement). Film in at least 4K if your final product is 1080p, or in 5.3K if you're aiming for 4K. Without this margin, you'll lose too much resolution.
Color calibration
If you filmed in LOG (and you should), color grading is essential. The specific challenge of drone footage is lighting transitions. In 90 seconds, your drone can go from a neon-lit interior to a brightly lit exterior. Use windows in DaVinci Resolve to adjust white balance and exposure area by area, without cutting the shot.
Occasional touch-ups
Erasing the drone's shadow on the ground, removing a propeller's reflection in a mirror, correcting a tilted horizon for two seconds—these micro-interventions make the difference between an amateur and a professional shot. Tools like After Effects (content-aware fill) or DaVinci Resolve (object removal) handle this without interrupting continuity.
Pro tip : Create your post-production workflow in this order: 1) Stabilization (GyroFlow/ReelSteady), 2) Horizon correction, 3) Color grading, 4) Spot corrections. Never grade before stabilization; cropping changes the perceived exposure and would force you to redo everything.
6. Three drone sequence shots that made a lasting impression
"Right Up Our Alley" - Jay Christensen & Anthony Jaska (2021)
87 seconds. A Cinewhoop enters a Minneapolis bowling alley, flies over the lanes, dives into the pin mechanisms in the back room, flies through the bar, returns to the lanes, and finishes with a strike, the drone crashing into the pins. Shot in 10 takes with a GoPro and a digital VTx system: 5 training flights without actors, then 10 handheld takes. The video has been viewed millions of times. James Gunn shared it. Todd Vaziri (ILM, VFX artist on Star Wars and Marvel) said that this type of innovation enriches the vocabulary of cinema. Jay Christensen was then invited to film a fly-through of the White House for the 2024 holiday season.
Key takeaway: a successful drone sequence shot tells a story. The bowling alley isn't just a backdrop; it's a character. The drone explores it with a curious gaze, from the entrance to the inner workings of the machine.
Ambulance - Michael Bay (2022)
Michael Bay wanted action shots that no existing technology could capture. He recruited Alex Vanover, a 19-year-old DRL (Drone Racing League) world champion, and gave him a 5-inch drone equipped with a RED Komodo camera. The result: the drone dives from the top of a Los Angeles building, passes under a police car mid-jump, follows an ambulance through traffic skimming the asphalt, and soars back up. No helicopters, no cranes, no cables. For one scene, Bay had entire streets in downtown LA closed so the drone could fly between buildings at full speed. The result is raw, organic, the antithesis of CGI.
Key takeaway: FPV drones allow for trajectories physically impossible with any other technology. But this requires an exceptional pilot and the logistics of an action film.
"Believe Chicago" - Urban Fly-Through in the City Center:
One of the most complex urban FPV shoots. The drone dives along the Chicago Board of Trade Building, catches up to a car chase just feet above the ground, turns the corner, flies through a film set tent, and exits through a cloud of smoke. The main challenge: electromagnetic interference from downtown Chicago—radio antennas, Wi-Fi, and building communication equipment—disrupting the FPV signal. The team had to conduct dozens of tests and R&D to secure each section of the flight.
Key takeaway: in urban environments, the biggest enemy of drone footage isn't a physical obstacle, it's the signal. Test your FPV connection before filming.
7. Common mistakes to avoid
Flying without prior reconnaissance is the surest way to crash your drone and ruin your shoot. Christensen: 5 practice flights. Kocher: reconnaissance on foot + photos. Do the same. 2-3 passes minimum before filming.
Don't neglect the sound. A drone makes noise, a lot of noise. Plan for a separate audio recording (ambient microphone, boom mic off-camera) or be prepared to work on the sound design in post-production. Dialogue in a drone shot is virtually impossible.
Filming in bright sunlight without an ND filter. The variations in light within a continuous shot are drastic. Without an ND filter, your image will be overexposed in places. Carry several ND filters (ND8, ND16, ND32) and choose according to the available light conditions.
Forget the regulations. In Europe, indoor drone flights (enclosed spaces, without public access) are not subject to regulations. Outdoor flights are. The category is Open, Specific, or Certified, depending on the context. Check BEFORE filming.
Ignoring post-production. Raw GoPro FPV footage isn't a finished product. Stabilization, color grading, and retouching are what give the sequence its final form. Allocate as much time to post-production as you did to filming.
Trying to do everything in one take. Christensen: 10 takes for 87 seconds. Vanover: dozens of takes on Ambulance. Bring batteries (one per attempt), plenty of time, and accept that the first attempts will be disguised reconnaissance.
Don't underestimate interference. Indoors, fluorescent lights and electrical equipment can disrupt the signal. Outdoors in urban areas, it's even worse: antennas, Wi-Fi, communication equipment. Test your FPV connection in a real-world environment before the big day.
8. Pre-flight checklist
Reconnaissance completed (minimum 2-3 training flights, photos of critical sections)
Planned trajectory with checkpoints and timing of the actors
Batteries charged (one per attempt, minimum 5)
Camera settings (LOG profile, minimum 4K resolution, frame rate, appropriate ND filter)
FPV stream recording enabled as backup
Communication between pilot and existing stakeholders (earpieces, dedicated assistant)
FPV link test in a real-world environment (interference?)
Identified and secured obstacles (cables, fans, mirrors, power lines)
Regulations verified (authorizations, flight zone, category)
Up-to-date insurance
Weather conditions verified (wind, rain, brightness)
Planned post-production workflow (GyroFlow/ReelSteady installed, sufficient disk space)
FAQ
Do you need a pilot's license to film a sequence shot with a drone?
Outdoors, yes, in Europe, you need at least the Open category (A1/A3) training for drones under 250g, and the A2 license to fly near people. Indoors (enclosed spaces, without public access), drone regulations do not apply. However, you remain responsible for safety if your Cinewhoop hits someone; that's your problem.
What budget is needed to start FPV drone sequence filming?
Three tiers. Entry-level (€500-€800) : DJI Avata 2 or custom Cinewhoop with a GoPro, sufficient for indoor tracking shots and web/social media content. Mid-range (€1,500-€3,000) : Custom 5-inch Cinewhoop + GoPro Hero 12 + DJI goggles + remote controller, sufficient quality for advertising and corporate work. Professional cinema (€5,000-€15,000) : Custom 5-inch camera + RED Komodo or Blackmagic camera, the Ambulance setup. At each tier, add approximately €200 for ND filters and approximately €100 for additional batteries.
Is it possible to film a drone sequence shot lasting more than 5 minutes?
This is the natural limit of FPV batteries (3-7 minutes depending on the format). To go beyond this: a tethered drone (powered by a cable, used for some sports broadcasts), a relay between two drones with an invisible connection, or a stabilized drone like the Inspire which has a battery life of 20+ minutes but with less agility.
GyroFlow or ReelSteady GO?
GyroFlow is free, open-source, and became the industry standard in 2026 if you're using any camera (not just GoPro). ReelSteady GO is for GoPro users only; it offers native integration and excellent results. In both cases, film at a higher resolution than your final product to compensate for cropping.
Can a drone sequence shot replace a Steadicam?
No, they are two different languages. The Steadicam has a human presence, a human perspective, a walking rhythm. It stays close to the character. The drone has three-dimensional freedom and speed. It hovers, dives, takes flight. The best long takes combine the two with an invisible cut: Steadicam on the ground, the shot rises, the drone takes over.
Conclusion
The drone sequence shot is not a gimmick. It's a new visual language just waiting to be explored.
Jay Christensen invented a genre with 87 seconds in a bowling alley and a GoPro. Michael Bay pushed the boundaries of action cinema by handing a RED Komodo to a 19-year-old drone racing champion. The Milan-Cortina Olympics brought the FPV single-shot live to millions of viewers.
The technique is accessible. The equipment is affordable. What separates an ordinary drone sequence shot from a breathtaking one is what has always made the difference in the art of the continuous shot: the obsessive preparation, the meticulously choreographed sequence with the people on the ground, and the ability to release the sticks at the right moment, letting the drone glide, float, breathe in space.
The drone didn't replace the cameraman. It gave him wings.
On plan-sequences.com, you will find detailed analyses of iconic sequence shots, and technical sheets for each film.
