Iceland
A roadtrip we will never forget.
The journey
In February 2016 we were brave enough to withstand the tough weather of winterly Iceland. Our goal was to gather as much film and sound material as possible in a time span of just 5 days which didn’t always went as planned.
In this season of the year there’s only very little daylight in Iceland.
This combined with the harsh weather was challeninging us and our gear a lot. Iceland in winter is very beautiful but also dangerous and rough.
2376.7 Kilometers
Distance Berlin - Reykjavik
215 Minutes
Flight time
21 hours of light was all we had so we had to get up before dawn, drive hours through complete darkness and snowstorms, passing only a few cars here and there, get out our equipment, just to be ready to roll when the sun rose.
Filming
Even though we had planned out our trip thoghroughly we almost every day ended up rescheduling because of the ever-changing conditions.
Sometimes the wheather changed from snowstorm to broad sunlight, back to storm in a timespan of just a few minutes, so flying with our drone to capture video was always a bit risky.
Losing it would have ment no drone footage for the rest of the trip and we had no backup drone. Because of that everybody was a little bit tense when we flew, especially our drone pilot.
Recording
Fieldrecording in Iceland had a lot of challenges.
First of all: The cold.
I had to change batteries at least every 2 hours because the cold made them discharge much quicker. Furthermore it was really hard to hold the boom pole for long amounts of time because even with gloves my hands would freeze off.
Secondly: Snow, Rain and Wind.
When I planned my trip to Iceland I went shopping just to get well-equipped for the trip. And I thought I was. What I totally underestimated was not the temperature, which isn’t much colder than Germany in Winter, but the Wind.
Recording audio inside of the biggest man-made Ice Cap Glacier Ice Cave was one of the best experiences for me.
The crash
At the end of the trip our drone crashed on the top of a glacier.
Right before the entrance of the world’s biggest man-made Ice Cap Glacier Ice Cave a huge gust of wind hit the drone and smashed it against a truck.
Fortunately nobody got hurt and this was the last spot we filmed and none of the footage of the glacier that we recored before the crash got damaged.
There were many more close calls like that on our roadtrip but you have to risk something if you want to get drone footage in the harsh winter of Iceland.
The Soundtrack
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Sadly we found out, that a tourist died one week later at the Black Beach in Myrdalur. That was one of the spots we filmed and recorded sound at, which you can also see in the video.
Seeing how dangerous this place can be made us realize that we were really lucky to have none of our crew members injured and apart from the drone crash no gear was damaged.
We used our drone footage to create this short film to participate in the Peugeot Drone Film Festival.
GEAR USED
Sony FS7
GoPro Hero Black 4
ZOOM H4
Sennheiser MKH416
DJI Phantom 3 Professional