If you’ve been watching any professional sports games lately, chances are you’ve seen some incredible drone cinematography in action. Drone cinematography has become a popular way to capture footage of sporting events, and for good reason—it provides an amazingly clear and steady aerial view that can’t be replicated with traditional cameras. In this article, we’ll discuss what drone cinematography is, how it’s being used to broadcast an array of different sports games, and the top three benefits of using professional drone cinematography for sports!
What Is Drone Cinematography?
Before drone technology entered the scene, directors and filmmakers were relegated to hiring manned aircraft to capture their aerial footage. Nowadays, however, drones are being increasingly relied upon in film and entertainment industries as a lower-risk, more affordable way to get quality high-definition aerial footage or photography. Today, drones are typically used to capture action sequences as well as take shots following a target or establishing setting.
Drone cinematography is prized for its unique, bird’s eye perspective on an event, jobsite, or landscape, and the ease with which data, footage, and photographs can be quickly collected. This makes it useful for all sorts of industries—from real estate, construction, and marketing professionals to drone cinematography for sports!
What Professional Sporting Events Use Drone Cinematography?
If you’re an American football fan, you’ve undoubtedly enjoyed the benefit of steady, high-definition drone footage over the course of a high-action game. In fact, the NFL was the first major sports organization that began permitting drone cinematography through the FAA. However, there are many other types of sports utilizing this powerful form of technology to broadcast their events as well. Some examples of professional sporting events that rely on drone footage include, but are not limited to:
- Golfing events
- Olympics events, such as the Tokyo Summer Olympics
- Baseball games
- Soccer matches
- Rugby games
- Basketball games
However, as drone technology continues to improve, it is likely that more and more professional sports organizations will get on board with the evolving industry. Given the quality and unique perspective drone cinematography provides viewers, many sporting industries have already begun using a three-angle filming method, using two aerial drones and a fixed camera to offer multiple vantage points of the same field, course, pitch, or court.
Experienced drone cinematographers will be able to cut from drone to drone, changing up the perspective to flow with the progress of the game. Drones not only capture superior aerial footage, but can also offer zoom, follow, and action shots as well.
Top 3 Benefits of Professional Drone Cinematography for Sports
Aside from the unique aerial perspective and unparalleled entertainment potential, there are other enormous benefits of drone cinematography for sports. Whether you employ professional drone pilots to capture an epic halftime show or to keep up with the movement of the ball as it travels down the field, there’s a lot to be gained by adding drones to the sporting cinematography mix. Here are the other top three benefits of using drones to capture and broadcast live sporting events.
Improved Analytics and Performance Statistics
Especially as you get into college-level sports and beyond, a player’s stats play a huge role in their career. Aside from helping recruiters gauge a certain level of talent of an individual player, drones can also help us to keep track of plays that went well, and plays that went awry. It can be helpful during training to watch aerial footage of an important match and observe individual and team behavior. The more tools a team has under their belt for tactical analysis, the more likely they are to win—and the more likely they are to win, the more likely they are to make money and enjoy successful careers!
Clarified Officiating
If you’ve ever been to a live sporting event, you understand how fast each play can go—especially in the world of professional sports. The pace of the event—whether it’s track and field or football—is at its peak, and it can be easy for referees and officiants to blink and miss a pivotal call. It’s not easy being a ref at a professional sporting event—between keeping up with incredible athletes in their prime to being jeered at from both sides of the stadium. Drone cinematography for sports can help officiants in their role of making just and accurate play calls, improving the experience and authenticity of a match and the consequential score.
Safety and Crowd Control
There are more benefits to having a real-time aerial perspective on a public sporting event than just pure entertainment purposes, however—in fact, drones are increasingly being used to keep people safe. While they are utilized more each year in disaster relief and search and rescue efforts, drones are also being used to sterilize and sanitize stadiums after a game, as the NFL first did as a response to Covid-19. Drones can also be used to monitor crowds and collect evidence should anyone have one too many Honey Deuce cocktails over the course of the event and decide to start a fight. This not only helps security in their efforts to protect fans and sports enthusiasts but to help those seek justice in the event of a crime or inappropriate behavior.
Professional Sport Event Drone Cinematography with Xizmo Media
If you’re thinking about taking the coverage of an upcoming live athletic event to the next level, consider investing in drone cinematography for sports with an experienced team like those at Xizmo Media. Drones have proven to not only improve the experience of viewers and fans, but also to better the sport by offering players improved review opportunities for plays and officiants and security personnel to be safe and fair hosts. Whether you’re a player or a self-proclaimed fan, investing in professional aerial drone cinematography of your favorite sport can be a literal game-changer, moving the next generation of talent into even higher reaches of expertise and ingenuity.
Why trust coverage of your big rivalry game to anyone less than the best? Contact the experienced drone pilots at Xizmo Media today for some of the best drone cinematography for sports on the northeast coast!