How I started my video production company
Having previously worked for the videogame publisher Codemasters, Infinite Pixel founder Alex Harvey found a knack for controlling a virtual camera translated perfectly into the drone world. In this article we find out more about how these two surprisingly complimentary worlds collided creating infinite possibilities…
His story begins late in 2007 when he applied for a job as a games tester to videogame publisher and developer Codemasters – a studio famous for such racing brands as Colin McRae, DiRT, GRID and the F1 licence. “It was a dream job back then because I was just getting paid to play games,” says Alex. “And not just getting paid to play games, but playing them in Los Angeles and then in Holland as well as in England. Getting paid to play games was amazing, but travelling the world was even better.” However, Alex wanted to explore another interest within the company: video. “I was massively into video from an early age,” Alex explains. “I just loved editing videos of me and my friends; it was just handicam stuff back in 1996- 97. We used to edit bits together using old programs like Pinnacle Pro.” So he tracked down the company’s video editing department and coaxed them into giving him a two week work placement which quickly turned into a brand new career.
“I was just trying to replicate the shots and camera angles that we saw in the real world… that was my first experience of flying in a game world”
Game for Video
Alex began working on trailers for the likes of Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising and its sequel, Red River. However, it was when Codemasters secured the rights to develop Formula 1 games that Alex began to see things from a new perspective. “I loved doing that as I loved watching Formula 1 anyway, so I was just trying to replicate the shots and camera angles that we saw in the real world, in the game world. So without me even knowing it, that was my first experience of flying in a game world. At the time I didn’t know it, but that was the skill that would later turn into real-world flying.”To those unfamiliar with the gaming world, most games are played from a fixed perspective – with racing titles that would commonly be from a cockpit camera, a bonnet camera, a bumper camera or cameras set behind the car. But for the developers, especially those interested in creating TV-style action replays, you can detach the camera and move it wherever you like to get the preferred shot.
“You have full control over every conceivable option that you might have in the real world,” Alex explains. “You’d have infinite zoom which was just crazy; the field of view was just crazy. You could do depth of field and motion blur, chromatic aberration and you could add all of these special effects. You could even replay the race where you could just fly freely around the game world – and that was where I was trying to get these smooth camera moves.
“They’re the sort of moves you get now with the Inspire using two people but we were able to pull them off with one person”
The Aerial View
Alex and the team was also able to set up ‘splines’ or wires like those that suspend cameras over the real F1 pit lanes (or you see in sports stadia for those cool overhead shots), creating new axes that they could rotate the camera around. Using techniques like this the team also managed to establish a ‘Follow Me’ mode long before it became a regular feature with drones. “It allowed us to create impossible camera angles, so one of the things we’d do is to attach the camera to a specific car in a crowd of cars and move the camera to the front of that bunch to make it look like a shaky cam,” says Alex. “You’d choose a point of interest, like DJI do these days, and you can move the camera around that point of interest. I had no idea that these things were going to come in handy in the future. But it’s the same with everything, it fits looking back on it in time.” What makes it all the more interesting is that these modes that are now commonplace on drones may well have been inspired by some of the very shots and footage that Alex was either creating himself or replicating from TV coverage.
By now Alex could clearly see the unique perspective such an aerial view could provide, and was keen to test it out in the real world. “They still joke at Codemasters about how I pestered the brand team to buy a drone but they didn’t have the budget for it.” Undeterred Alex went out and bought himself a Phantom 2 with a GoPro and gimbal – even unboxing it at his desk at Codemasters’ main offices near Leamington Spa in Warwickshire. At this point Alex had never actually flown anything before – and the initial results were, well, unsurprising! “I crashed it a couple of times in the fields surrounding Codemasters’ offices, because I was so keen to fly it! But it was all part of the learning process, and no one saw me as I was flying out of hours.”
Learning to fly
Understandably the controls came easy to Alex, but the tech was still pretty basic back then. “The thumbstick movements worked fine for me with the Phantom 2 but that’s before Lightbridge or any kind of video downlink; that was just on a video sender to a little crappy Black Pearl 7-inch screen – but it was enough for me. We talk about it being ‘back then’ but it was only a couple of years ago!” But for Alex it wasn’t about the quality of the kit: “For me, it was all about movement in the shot. From my time in the game world, I knew I didn’t want to just do a lift; I didn’t want to just be flying along – I wanted to do two-stick movements. So, for me, it was always two-stick movement in the game, and that was the best way to do it in the real world. They’re the sort of moves you get now with the Inspire using two people but we were able to pull them off with one person if you can do that two-stick movement and keep it smooth.” It’s the kind of thing that’s pretty straightforward with modern drones but still a good skill to learn. “It’s really hard to pull off without the likes of the Point of Interest mode you’ve got now; it’s a lot quicker for people now to just jump in, punch in the POI on a house, set a radius of 50 metres and just fly around – it’s so much easier.” Alex’ early experiences also gave him ideas for integrating his videogame techniques into the real world. “Although the transferable skills are really apparent from the game world to the real world, so are the camera skills.
Strapping cameras inside a real cockpit is very similar to attaching a camera to an F1 car in the game world.” And with a wealth of contacts and the potential to test out these ideas, Alex decided to strike out on his own. “That was why I really wanted to start my own thing, to allow me to go to all of these different clients. I loved Codemasters, but I wanted to do more.”
Infinite Possibilities
Towards the end of 2014 Alex founded Infinite Pixel and he soon found a very useful ally in his brother Joe. “My brother has 20 years of model flying experience, flying planes and helicopters – so I knew he was capable with stuff in the air, and I knew I was capable with cameras, angles and editing.” It also helped that Joe was happy dealing with all of the CAA admin and putting together the company’s Operations Manual! It’s worth pointing out that Infinite Pixel isn’t purely focused on drone-based work. “We’re looking at all areas of video, with drone and aerial work being one of them. We’re not specifically a drone camera company; we can just as easily turn up and never use one because our background is in video production as well the aerial capture work; so it’s not solely drone work we do, it’s just one of our tools.” However, it was his racing contacts and experience with Codemasters that gave Infinite Pixel some of their first big jobs, most notably working with the Exocet Racing team and producing teasers and trailers for Renault Sport and the Clio Cup – so lots of nice sweeping aerials not unlike in the replays and videos for the F1 games. As well as working with the Ford MSA Championship (formerly the British Formula Ford Championship), Alex also got to fly around Rockingham race track for Renault and Ford, where those 360-degree cockpit cams came into very useful effect. As enticing as the work was, Alex and the Infinite team needed to expand their horizons. “The passion was originally with racing cars and going from the game world to the real world with cars, but we had to turn it into a business as well,” he says. “So we looked at houses, and we’ve done over 1000 videos with Fine & Country Homes” – as well as hooking up with several other estate agents who appreciate a company that can both capture the footage and edit together the package afterwards.
To Infinity and beyond
There have also been several other big clients, including the likes of Leica Geosystems which led to one of the team’s more unusual jobs. “With the Leica connection we had a fishing lake that wanted us to map their lake above and below water,” Alex tells us. “So we mapped the lake from above using photogrammetry with just the Inspire, and then we used the Leica kit to use sonar to map below the water, and that enabled us to create a 3D model of the lake above and below the water. That was certainly a rather unique experience.” There have been a few mainstream clients as well, mostly in conjunction with broadcast specialist Rocaflix, including the ITV show It’s Not Rocket Science and getting drone shots for the ao.com Christmas ads.
The team was also on hand to provide an aerial view of Jo Brand’s ‘Hell of a Walk’ for Comic Relief, with Alex pointing out that “if you watch the hour-long Jo Brand documentary, it’s mainly carried by the drone footage”. As for the future? Who knows! “When you start talking about having Sense and Avoid on everything then the possibilities are endless and a lot safer. It will interesting to see, and it’s interesting to watch the industry change on an almost monthly basis.” And with other ex-Codemasters colleagues also moving into the drone community, perhaps the boundaries between the videogame and UAV worlds will continue to be crossed and intertwined.
More recently Infinite Pixel have been creating 360 video content for TUI holidays and you can see some reactions to these videos in the video below.
You can see more on the work of Alex and the Infinite Pixel team by heading to their website: www.infinitepixel.co.uk
Since this article was written in 2016 there has been more developments and Alex has founded RiVR (Reality in Virtual Reality) www.rivr.uk where the team is creating Photorealistic VR experiences but that is a story for another day!