DRONES IN FILMMAKING

A Over recent years, drones — an informal term to describe remote controlled or

autonomous aircraft — have experienced a sharp rise in popularity in the film production
industry. Because they are inexpensive, portable and readily available, they have opened up
a compelling new way to shoot from the sky.
Before drones, there were two options for capturing aerial shots: cranes and manned aircraft
(e.g. helicopters or planes), both of which are still widely used in the film industry but are not
without their limitations. Cranes are fairly cheap, costing around one thousand US dollars
per day for rental, yet are limited to ground-level shots. For higher aerial shots, manned
aircraft have long been the filmmaker’s only option. However, the costly nature of this has
often automatically excluded it as a possibility for many. Renting a helicopter with pilot will
cost several times the average amount a drone team with their own filming equipment would
charge for a whole day of shooting. For this reason, low-budget filmmakers who want the
advantages of aerial shots without the high price tag are flocking to drone technology.

B In the film industry, drones are most frequently used to break new ground in the
documenting of natural phenomena (a permis d'innover dans le domaine de la
documentation des phénomènes naturels) creating dramatic and never-before-seen
perspectives on the world. For the TV series Planet Earth 2, the BBC used specially-adapted
drones to capture (to film) the Costa Rican jungle from previously unreachable heights. In
one sequence of shots, the viewer is carried from the shaded forest floor to drift seamlessly
up and around tree trunks and finally burst through the leafy canopy. Likewise, pioneering
National Geographic filmmaker Sam Cossman flew a drone right into the centre of an active
volcano to film the lava flow as never seen before — from mere metres above the boiling
crimson lake of the spectacular Marum Crater. Thanks to the impressive flexibility of the
technology, countless possibilities exist for new and exciting shots. A drone can easily
encircle a skyscraper to capture the sweeping vista of a dawn cityscape, and just as easily
pursue a skilled skier down a perilous black run with no risk to the cameraman and it is
undeniable that drone use has skyrocketed within the film industry. They have been
employed to shoot television dramas, wildlife documentaries, sports coverage, wedding
videos and feature length films, to name just a few examples. Award winning films featuring
drone shots include Spectre, whose startling opening sequence swooped around Mexico’s
Day of the Dead festival; The Wolf of Wall Street; Dheepan; and Lion, which used a drone to
shoot from a small child's point of view.

C Filmmaker Ben Sheppard, an expert in piloting these quadrotor drones, believes this
technology offers unique benefits over the alternatives. He argues that drones produce shots
which allow viewers to build a better mental image of the world within the film. A single drone
shot, for example, can begin inside a building and end metres above the ground outside,
which would be impossible with any other technology. However, other members of the film
industry are less enthusiastic. Film critic Jason Anderson believes drone shots are often little
more than a flashy gimmick, used by the inexperienced to give their films a glossier, more
impressive look. He berates “the typical drone shot” saying that, in most cases, such shots
are underdeveloped and do not contribute any unique artistic interest.

D Drones are not the first technology to be adopted by the filmmaking community with such
all-encompassing enthusiasm. Brian Jacobson, a film historian at the University of Toronto,
explains that drones are simply the latest in a long line of new technologies used for such
purposes. "Throughout film history," he says, "filmmakers have always adopted new ways of
seeing. Of course filmmakers are going to embrace any technology that will make that
possible.” Just as happened with colour celluloid, computer generated imagery and, more
recently, action cameras, the use of drone shots will become more sophisticated as
cinematographers get to grips with the technology. Eventually, it will become just another tool
in their ever-growing toolbox.

Wildfires

Wildfires are fires occurring either in the countryside or an area of wilderness. They are
different from other fires in that they are uncontrolled, are much larger, and are able to
spread out rapidly from the original source at speeds of up to 23 kilometers per hour.
They are also able to ‘jump’ over gaps such as roads and even rivers. Wildfires occur in
countries that have a lot of vegetation and a hot, dry climate. They are most commonly
found in Australia due to the weather conditions of the country. They pose a danger to
human and animal life and the infrastructure throughout the year, but are especially
prevalent in the warmer months of spring and summer. The United States also has a
huge number of wildfires with an estimated sixty to eighty thousand a year, resulting in a
loss of between three and ten million acres of land annually. In 1910 a single wildfire
burnt over three million acres of land in the US.

Ninety per cent of wildfires are ignited by people, the remaining 10 per cent by lightning.
Common human-generated causes of wildfires include arson, camping fires, careless
disposal of lit cigarettes, bonfires lit to burn rubbish and children playing with fireworks or
matches. Three components are necessary to start a fire: oxygen, fuel and heat. These
three make up the so-called “fire triangle” that fire fighters use to put out blazes. The
theory is that if they can remove one of the triangle pillars, they can take control of and
eventually extinguish the fire.

The speed at which wildfires spread depends on the fuel around them. Fuel is any living
or dead material that will burn. Types of fuel include anything from trees, underbrush and
grassland to houses. The quantity of inflammable material around a fire is known as “the
fuel load” and is determined by the amount of available fuel per unit area, usually
measured in tons per acre. The dryness of the fuel also influences how fires behave. Dry
fuel burns quickly and makes the fires much harder to control. Basic fuel characteristics
affecting a fire are size and shape, arrangement and moisture, but with wildfires, where
fuel usually consists of the same type of material, the main factor influencing ignition
time is the ratio of the fuel’s total surface area to its volume. The surface area of a twig,
for example, is not much bigger than its volume, so it ignites rapidly. However, a tree’s
surface area is much smaller than its volume, so it requires more time to heat up before
ignition.

Three weather variables affect wildfires: temperature, wind and moisture. Temperature
directly influences the sparking of wildfires, as heat is one of the three pillars of the fire
triangle. The sun heats and dries sticks, trees and underbrush, turning them into
potential fuel. Higher temperatures can cause fuels to ignite, burn more quickly and add
to the speed of a wildfire’s spread. Consequently, wildfires tend to rage in the afternoon,
when temperatures are at their hottest. The biggest influence on a wildfire is probably
the wind. This is also the most unpredictable variable. Winds provide fires with extra
oxygen and more dry fuel, and make wildfires spread more quickly. Fires also create
winds of their own that can be up to ten times faster than the ambient wind. Winds can
spread embers that generate additional fires, an event known as “spotting”. Winds also
change the course of fires, and gusts can take flames up into trees, starting “crown
fires”. Humidity and precipitation provide moisture, the last of the three weather
variables. Higher levels of humidity mean fewer wildfires. It is hard for fuel to ignite if
moisture levels are high and humidity slows fires down and reduces their intensity.

Topography can also have a huge influence on how wildfires spread. In contrast to fuel
and weather, topography barely changes over time and can help or hinder the spread of
a wildfire. The principal topographical factor effecting wildfires is slope. Fires move uphill
much faster than downhill, and the steeper the slope, the quicker fires move. This is
because fires move in the same direction as the ambient wind, which generally blows
uphill. In addition, the fire can preheat fuel further uphill as smoke and heat rise in that
direction. However, once a fire reaches the top of a hill, it has to struggle to come back
down.

Each year thousands of fire fighters risk their lives when dealing with wildfires. There are
two categories of elite fire fighters: hotshots and smokejumpers. Operating in 20-man
units, the key task of hotshots is to construct firebreaks (a strip of land with all potential
fuel removed) around fires. As their name suggests, smokejumpers jump out of aircraft
to reach smaller fires situated in inaccessible regions. Their aim is to contain these
smaller fires before they turn into bigger ones. As well as constructing firebreaks and
putting water and retardant (a red chemical containing phosphate fertiliser) on fires, fire
fighters also create “backfires” which burn towards the main fire, incinerating any
potential fuel in the wildfire’s path. Fire fighters on the ground also receive extensive
support from the planes and helicopters which drop thousands of gallons of water and
retardant to slow and cool fires.

The History of Papermaking in the United Kingdom

The first reference to a paper mill in the United Kingdom was in a book printed by
Wynken de Worde in about 1495. This mill belonged to a certain John Tate and was
near Hertford. Other early mills included one in Dartford, owned by Sir John Spielman,
who was granted special privileges for the collection of rags by Queen Elizabeth, and
one built in Buckinghamshire before the end of the sixteenth century. During the first half
of the seventeenth century, mills were established near Edinburgh, at Cannock Chase in
Staffordshire and several in Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire and Surrey. The Bank of
England has been issuing bank notes since 1694, and ones with simple watermarks in
them since at least 1697. Henri de Portal was awarded the contract in December 1724
for producing the Bank of England watermarked bank-note paper at Bere Mill in
Hampshire. Portals has retained this contract ever since but production is no longer at
Bere Mill.

There were two major developments around the middle of the eighteenth century in the
paper industry in the UK. The first was the introduction of the rag engine or hollander,
invented in Holland sometime before 1670, which replaced the stamping mills that had
previously been used for the disintegration of the rags and beating of the pulp. The
second was in the design and construction of the mould used for forming the sheet,
solving the problem of early moulds, which had straight wires sewn down on to the
wooden foundation. The early moulds produced an irregular surface which had
characteristic “laid” marks and, when printed on, the ink did not give clear, sharp lines.
James Whatman the Elder developed a revolutionary woven wire fabric, and produced
the first woven paper in 1757.

Increasing demand for paper during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries
led to shortages of the rags needed to produce it. Part of the problem was that no
satisfactory method of bleaching pulp had yet been devised, which meant that only white
rags could be used to produce white paper. Chlorine bleaching was being used by the
end of the eighteenth century, but excessive use produced papers that were of poor
quality and deteriorated quickly. By 1800 up to 24 million pounds of rags were being
used annually to produce 10,000 tons of paper in England and Wales, and 1,000 tons in
Scotland, the home market being supplemented by imports, mainly from the continent. In
1765, Jacob Christian Schäffer had carried out experiments using other materials, such
as sawdust, rye straw, cabbage stumps and spruce wood, and around 1800, Matthias
Koops carried out further experiments using straw and other materials at the Neckinger
Mill, Bermondsey, but it was not until the middle of the nineteenth century that pulp
produced from straw or wood was utilised in the production of paper.
By 1800 there were 430 (564 in 1821) paper mills in England and Wales (mostly single
vat mills), under 50 (74 in 1823) in Scotland and 60 in Ireland, but all the production was
by hand and the output was low. The first attempt at a paper machine to mechanise the
process was patented in 1799 by Frenchman Nicholas Louis Robert, but it was not a
success. However, the drawings were brought to England by John Gamble in 1801 and
passed on to the brothers Henry and Sealy Fourdrinier, who financed the engineer Brian
Donkin to build the machine. The first successful machine was installed at Frogmore,
Hertfordshire, in 1803. The paper was pressed onto an endless wire cloth, transferred to
a continuous felt blanket and then pressed again. Finally it was cut off the reel into
sheets and loft-dried in the same way as handmade paper. In 1809 John Dickinson
patented a machine that used a wire cloth-covered cylinder revolving in a pulp
suspension, the water being removed through the centre of the cylinder and the layer of
pulp removed from the surface by a felt covered roller (later replaced by a continuous felt
passing round a roller). This machine was the forerunner of and model for the
present-day cylinder mould or vat machine, used mainly for the production of boards.
Both of these machines produced paper as a wet sheet, which required drying after
removal from the machine, but in 1821 T. B. Crompton patented a method of drying the
paper continuously, using a woven fabric to hold the sheet against steam-heated drying
cylinders. After it had been pressed, the paper was cut into sheets by a cutter fixed at
the end of the last cylinder.

By the middle of the nineteenth century the pattern for the mechanised production of
paper had been set. Subsequent developments concentrated on increasing the size and
production of the machines. Similarly, developments in alternative pulps to rags, mainly
wood and esparto grass, enabled production increases. Conversely, by 1884, despite
the increase in paper production, as production was concentrated into fewer, larger
units, there was a decrease in the number of paper mills in England and Wales to 250
and in Ireland to 14 (Scotland increased to 60). The geographical location of mills also
changed. Early mills were small and had been situated in rural areas, but larger mills
were built in or near urban areas, closer to suppliers of the raw materials (esparto mills
were generally situated near a port as the raw material was brought in by ship) and the
paper markets.

COD IN TROUBLE

In 1992, the devastating collapse of the cod stocks off the east coast of Newfoundland
forced the Canadian government to take drastic measures and close the fishery. Over
40,000 people lost their jobs, communities are still struggling to recover and the marine
ecosystem is still in a state of collapse. The disintegration of this vital fishery sounded a
warning bell to governments around the world, who were shocked that a relatively
sophisticated, scientifically based fisheries management programme, not unlike their
own, could have gone so wrong. Prior to this, the Canadian government had ignored
warnings that its fleets were employing destructive fishing practices and had refused to
significantly reduce quotas, citing the loss of jobs as too great a concern.

In the 1950s Canadian and US east coast waters provided an annual 100,000 tons in
cod catches rising to 800,000 by 1970. This over-fishing led to a catch of only 300,000
tons by 1975. Canada and the US reacted by passing legislation to extend their national
jurisdictions over marine living resources out to 200 nautical miles and catches naturally
declined to 139,000 tons in 1980. However, the Canadians began fishing intensively
once more, and catches rose again until, from 1985, the Canadians were landing more
than 250,000 tons of northern cod annually. This exploitation ravaged the stocks and by
1990 the catch was so low (29,000 tons) that in 1992 (12,500 tons) Canada had to ban
all fishing in east coast waters. In a fishery that had for over a century yielded
quarter-million ton catches, there remained a biomass of less than 1,700 tons, and the
fisheries department predicted that, even with an immediate recovery, stocks needed at
least 15 years before they would be healthy enough to withstand previous levels of
fishing.

This situation arose from massive investment poured into constructing huge “draggers”.
Draggers haul enormous nets held open by a combination of massive steel plates and
heavy chains and rollers that plough the ocean bottom. They drag up anything in the
way, inflicting immense damage, destroying critical habitats and contributing to the
destabilisation of the northern cod ecosystem. The draggers targeted huge aggregations
of cod while they were spawning, a time when the fish population is highly vulnerable to
capture. Excessive trawling on spawning stocks became highly disruptive to the
spawning process and ecosystem. In addition, trawling resulted in a physical dispersion
of eggs, leading to higher fertilisation failure. Physical and chemical damage to larvae
caused by trawling also reduced their chances of survival. These draggers are now
banned from Canadian waters.

The media in Canada often cite excessive fishing by overseas fleets as the primary
cause of the fishing out of the north Atlantic cod stocks. Many nations took fish off the
coast of Newfoundland, all used deep-sea trawlers, and many often exceeded
established catch quotas and treaty agreements blatantly. There can be little doubt that
non-North American fishing was a contributing factor in the cod stock collapse, and that
the dynamics that were at work in Canada were all too similar for the foreign vessels and
companies. But not all of the blame can be put there, no matter how easy it is to do, as it
does not account for the management of the resources.
E

So, who was to blame? As the exploitation of the Newfoundland fishery was so
predominantly guided by the government, it could be argued that a fishery is not a
private area, as the fisher lacks management rights normally associated with property
and common property. The state had appropriated the property, and made all of the
management decisions. Fishermen were told who could fish, what they could fish and,
essentially, what to do with the fish once they were caught. Viewed from this angle,
much of the blame for the collapse of the Newfoundland fisheries can be placed on the
government.

Following the 1992 ban on the fishing of northern cod and most other species, an
estimated 30,000 people, who had already lost their jobs after the 1992 Northern Cod
prohibition took effect, were joined by an additional 12,000 fishermen and plant workers.
With more than 40,000 people out of work, Newfoundland became an economic disaster
area, as processing plants shut down and vessels from the smallest dory to the monster
draggers were made idle or sold overseas at bargain prices. Several hundred
Newfoundland communities were devastated.

Europeans need only look across the North Atlantic to see what could be in store for
their cod fishery. In Canada they were too busy making plans, setting expansive goals
and then allocating fish, and lots of it, instead of making sound business plans to match
fishing with the limited availability of the resource. Cod populations in European waters
are now so depleted that scientists have recently warned that all fisheries that target cod
in this area should be closed. The Canadian calamity demonstrates that we now have
the technological capability to find and annihilate every commercial fish stock in any
ocean and do irreparable damage to entire ecosystems in the process. In Canada’s
case, a $2 billion recovery bill may only be part of the total long-term costs. The costs to
individuals and desperate communities now deprived of meaningful and sustainable
employment are staggering.