flying in fireworks - just need sound!

Corey Tucker · Jul 7, 2016

so i flew my p3 around while everyone was shooting off fireworks the other night. it would've been much cooler if i could get sound. i know if a microphone was close to the p3 i would just get propellor noise, but has anyone ever dangled some kind of mic from a string way below the drone so you don't get so much drone noise, but more of what you want to capture?

here's the video. i blacked out all my lights by covering them with black electrical tape so i wouldn't be seen or distract from anyone's fireworks show. but i ended up getting real close to one person's fireworks and i thought later they might be able to see me once the firework blew up around me. lol oops!

MikeyOnline · Jul 7, 2016

What I do at times like that is just bring my Zoom H2 (basically just a good digital recorder that records either 4 or 2 channel stereo) and put it on the ground next to me and let it record. If you're filming fireworks from a little farther away, then you can make the decision in post whether to sync the bangs with the visuals or leave a little delay like you'd have on the ground. But yeah, recorder on the ground does the trick. Easy to drop the MP3/WAV into your video later.

Mike

shockwave199 · Jul 7, 2016

You can use anything you have on you at the time to record audio, such as a cell phone or another camera or even a dedicated field recorder. Audio doesn't have to be recorded from the bird and would not give good results anyway. You did the wrong thing blacking out your orientation lights. Please refrain from doing that in the future. We don't need anyone adding to the drone accident stories on the news and certainly not by willfully blacking out orientation lights.

Corey Tucker · Jul 7, 2016

i figured i could use my phone, but i wanted the sound of the firework blowing up right next to me.

i turned the lights on before i landed. i just had them off while i was flying around since i knew a lot of people would be looking in the sky. it was pretty cool too. you could hear it up there but you couldn't see anything!

N017RW · Jul 7, 2016

Depending on how close you are the sound will be terrible.

The blasts will essentially 'bottom out' the mic element and you just hear pops that are not similar to the explosions.

You can probably find 'canned' sound effects like Foley artists use and save a lot of time and expense.

RocketBrew · Jul 7, 2016

I setup my GoPro on a tripod, and the explosion sounds recorded great. With that video and sound together I hope to more easily sync the sounds into the P3P video, but haven't done anything that complicated with Premiere Elements yet. Should be interesting, if not frustrating!

alokbhargava · Jul 7, 2016

I was close to the firework site and recorded video on my phone. I can extract the sound to attach to another video if needed.

With The Birds · Jul 7, 2016

Corey Tucker said:
i figured i could use my phone, but i wanted the sound of the firework blowing up right next to me.

i turned the lights on before i landed. i just had them off while i was flying around since i knew a lot of people would be looking in the sky. it was pretty cool too. you could hear it up there but you couldn't see anything!

Turned them on how? You found implemented some sort of solution to remove the electrical tape in the air?

Corey Tucker · Jul 8, 2016

With The Birds said:
Turned them on how? You found implemented some sort of solution to remove the electrical tape in the air?

no, i'm not smart enough to "found implement" a solution as cool as that. i just turned off the front lights and programmed the remote so i could turn those on/off whenever i needed. if you look at the app, you can make the buttons on the remote do a bunch of different stuff. you just have to tell it what you want it to do. look in the app, it's under settings or something like that. if you need help figuring it out, let me know.

dirkclod · Jul 8, 2016

Corey I think we know you can cut the lights off in the app .You said

i blacked out all my lights by covering them with black electrical tape so i wouldn't be seen

So really not sure what good turning them back on would do .
Now this has went off the topic of you getting sound so lets all stay on that subject , OK

BigAl07 · Jul 8, 2016

Any device even remotely close to the aircraft will pickup aircraft noise and if it's merely a mic dangling from the aircraft the wind noise is going to be horrible.

Ground recording and then applying to the video is your best option by far.