This ‘Drone Zoom’ Effect Blurs Boundaries Between Life and Death

Filmmaker Tim Sessler and Brandon Bray contrasts life with solitude and death in Balance, a short movie shot on RED CF Weapon using helicopter and drone.

The team used a FREEFLY Alta 8 octocopter and employed the dolly zoom effect, made famous by Alfred Hitchcock, to bring background and foreground into the same space. The visual contrast between city skyline and the cemetery beneath is truly breathtaking.

Sessler remarks “We humans we create, we work, we stay busy from birth to death and never rest. We build, aim higher, work harder, accomplish more, and to what end?”

“Balance” takes an abstract look at our modern world, the full and the empty spaces and time in which we live and choose to make our lives.”

The video is believed to be the first of its kind to use a vertigo drone effect to fly towards a subject while the camera zooms out to keep the subject the exact same size.