Best way to film a golf course - advice needed please

[aerialphotosbrisbane]

Hi there fellow Mavic pilots. I am after advice on the best way to do some aerial filming of a golf course. I need to film the club house and each hole. The club house is relatively simple. I need some advice on the best way to film the holes. The client wants the footage to start from the tee, fly up to 15-20 metres and then finish at the green.

The golf course is very hilly with 20-30 metres trees on all sides of the holes. This means the greens are at different heights to the tees. I would like to be able to program the flight (so i can focus on the filming) and was thinking of using either DJI Ground Station Pro waypoint route or Litchie.

Does anyone have any experience filming golf courses (hilly ones) and can share some pointers / advice.

Thanks in advance

Phil

 

[Jjenk321]

Subscribed for info. Curious.


Sent from my iPhone using MavicPilots

 

[Blucenturion]

Time of day make any dif? Magic hour would be most appealing; I'd have them close it down till I'm done.

 

[Anthony Viscomi]

I saw this over on the Phantom Fourm:
Golf Course Virtual Tour

 

[Anthony Viscomi]

When on the Phantom Forum do a search for Golf Course...there are over 5 pages of informational threads.

 

[DJILeaks]

The Masters golf tournament is coming up (March? i believe) and CBS Sports does a great job filming the various holes. I'm sure any tournament footage will be a great tutorial, but I think they try extra hard filming the masters.
What I can recall is that the holes are almost always filmed in the early morning. Don't be afraid to do flyover footage over the holes even if workers are mowing as it adds interest and scale the shot (although i wouldn't do the same flyerover if it was just workers standing around with shovels).
Lastly i would talk to the pro and if he's available, the golf course designer. If the designer isn't available chances are there's a news or magazine article for when the course was opened that will detail features of the course that were important in its design and as a result have become signature elements of the course.
Don't film in the winter....film once all of the leaves have come out on the trees in late spring, unless of course you live in a tropical paradise and don't have this problem.
Lastly i would grab a cart from the pro shop and slowly drive the course in the direction of play as well as from the 18th green back to the 1st tee to note all of the vignettes that the course designer has created.
Best of luck!

 

[Grey Wolf]

You will still need to get a 107 and insurance.
Make sure you have those in place before you film otherwise if something happens, you could be in a whole pile of trouble with the FAA!
Not worth the risk Do the right thing!

 

[Denny Crane]

Keep in mind what the end use of the footage will be. Wouldn't hurt to ask as it's likely promotional for the Golfers to view each hole separately, so just do one at a time instead of multiple holes.
As a Golfer and a guy that's done this for my club.... Our purpose is to provide an actual fly-over so golfers can see "around the corner" and over the hills on the Tee prior to hitting via their cell phones.
It was really cool to do and produce.

denny

 

[aerialphotosbrisbane]

Anthony, thanks for the heads up re: the Phantom Fourm: Golf Course Virtual Tour. i will definitely head over there and read through the posts, I am sure there is a tone of useful information.

DJILeaks, thanks also for the tips, fly overs of workers on the holes / grounds sounds like a good idea. I did a drive with the golf cart I am just thinking how to fly each hole with different elevations on the t and the green.

Grey Wolf, I am in Australia, I already am registered with CASA (FAA equiv) and have insurance. I plan to fly early morning as much as possible for the best light and to avoid flying over / near people

Denny Crane. The client wants 18 vids, one for each hole so the golfers can see what they are up against. Do you have a link to the video you took and any other tips.

Thanks again mavicos

 

[Florida Drone Supply]

Hi there fellow Mavic pilots. I am after advice on the best way to do some aerial filming of a golf course. I need to film the club house and each hole. The club house is relatively simple. I need some advice on the best way to film the holes. The client wants the footage to start from the tee, fly up to 15-20 metres and then finish at the green.

The golf course is very hilly with 20-30 metres trees on all sides of the holes. This means the greens are at different heights to the tees. I would like to be able to program the flight (so i can focus on the filming) and was thinking of using either DJI Ground Station Pro waypoint route or Litchie.

Does anyone have any experience filming golf courses (hilly ones) and can share some pointers / advice.

Thanks in advance

Phil

We get contracted to do some golf course work from time to time. We took a different approach to the individual hole videos and broke it up into lots of short movements edited together instead of one long continuous flight.

Here is a sample of one narrated as a general hole overview:

And this one is the same hole narrated with more specifics for a serious golfer:

They may be a bit long - but they are definitely a different way to film a golf course instead of the typical tee to green flight.

Hope that helps a little...happy to talk through any other ideas with you if you are ever interested.

www.FloridaDroneSupply.com is our DJI dealership and the vimeo channel linked above is our production company that does filming and editing when requested.

Michael

 

[DJILeaks]

Sorry forgot one more item...lots and lots of extra batteries!

 

[Florida Drone Supply]

Sorry forgot one more item...lots and lots of extra batteries!

+1 for lots of batteries. We use an M600 quite a bit and it takes 6 batteries at a time!

 

[olan767]

Hi there fellow Mavic pilots. I am after advice on the best way to do some aerial filming of a golf course. I need to film the club house and each hole. The club house is relatively simple. I need some advice on the best way to film the holes. The client wants the footage to start from the tee, fly up to 15-20 metres and then finish at the green.

The golf course is very hilly with 20-30 metres trees on all sides of the holes. This means the greens are at different heights to the tees. I would like to be able to program the flight (so i can focus on the filming) and was thinking of using either DJI Ground Station Pro waypoint route or Litchie.

Does anyone have any experience filming golf courses (hilly ones) and can share some pointers / advice.

Thanks in advance

Phil

Im doing the same - curios what to charge (price); woudl mind taking this off line [email protected]

 

[dwill405]

I volunteered to do fairway flyovers for my golf course with my Mavic.
Being a novice at drone work and video editing, my first cuts leave a lot of room for improvement.
The final products will go on the club's website before the start of the 2018 season when voice-overs are done.
The course is Smith Falls Golf and Country Club, home course of Brooke Henderson, 5 time LPGA champion.

My choice was to use way points and keep it simple with the dreaded tee to green approach.
On most holes I found that three points were enough. Par 5's with hills took up to 7 points.
Starting at the golfers perspective, I hit apply for the route, having the Mavic rise 20-30 feet to the first way point and then stopped it about 60 feet short of the green.
My starting graphics were done with Photoshop on a grabbed image but I plan to use Power Director 15 to insert titles into the video.

Here is a sample. There is a small 'jiggle' at the start because I did not line up the drone directly under the first way point.
Comments/suggestions welcome.

 

[dwill405]

I am not sure why the YouTube video is blurry at first. Any suggestions?