Case Study - Frankenstein

Frankenstein

It began as a personal project. One cold April morning in 2023, I took my new drone to Seacliff Beach in East Lothian, a private stretch of coastline I’d been given permission to use. The beach was deserted, the light was perfect, and I wanted to test the limits of what the drone could do.

I spent hours experimenting, high frame rates, slow pans, top-down shots, and anything else that came to mind. Back home, I edited the footage into a short video and quietly uploaded it to Vimeo. It had a modest response, but I liked it.

A few months later, I got an email that stopped me in my tracks. A VFX studio in Canada, had been scouting locations for Guillermo del Toro’s new film Frankenstein. They’d found my video, and the location. They wanted me to shoot aerial sequences for the production.

Knowing the scale of what was needed, I called in Hazel Palmer, a veteran TV videographer, and together we hired the max spec. DJI Inspire 3, a £30K drone built for cinematic work. I flew; Hazel operated the camera. Between us, we captured a series of shots that would go on to form part of the film’s visual world.

Now, more than twenty months later, with Frankenstein finally released, I can share the story. What started as a personal experiment on a quiet beach ended up on the big screen. Proof, perhaps, that you never know who’s watching, or where a creative experiment might lead.