360° Drone View for Journalism: Way for Innovative Video Making

Have you ever thought of using Drone to detect Forest fire aftermath!? Well in my case, I haven’t! Well simply because I don’t own a drone. My LinkedIn friend Ben Kriemer has done it. As per his LinkedIn account, he is a storyteller, emerging media technologist for drones, 360° VR and video.

courtesy: benkreimer.com/aerial-video-photography/aerial-photographs/

He developed innovative applications for UAV aircraft and crowd sourced microcomputer sensor platforms, providing new ways of gathering data and interpreting events, environments and characteristics of the physical world.

He builds, test and fly UAVs. Much of his work falls in the context of journalism, but he has worked with in the field with archaeologists, photographers and filmmakers. While he introduced 360° video to BuzzFeed as the hired Beta Fellow in their San Francisco based Open Lab, a media R&D space, and co-produced most of BuzzFeed's early 360° videos. He Augmented video can make a publisher’s perspectives even more wide and profound. It is fun and exciting for the viewers too.

He captured the footage of a fire-ravaged city in California. Here is the California fire aftermath 360 video released by BuzzFeed:
https://www.facebook.com/BuzzFeedVideo/videos/1869492456524961/

Here is one interesting video of dancing people showcasing cultural diversity and popular dance forms of different countries:
https://www.facebook.com/BuzzFeedVideo/videos/2028686083938930/

His Africa Story of aerial footage about stopping elephant poaching was integrated with news piece that not only made more people aware about the brutality but it also helped demonstrated how UAVs can be used for journalism in broadcast television:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=55&v=Vg56O5UhQyM

One more site called flyzipline.com is sending life saving medications through drone across the country. These are just an example of how drones can be used in different ways. Be it awareness purpose, unraveling mysteries of nature, medical, journalistic or understanding people and their cultures or conditions rather than cliché reasons like adventure or wedding.

This wave called ‘Drone Journalism’ is the need of the hour.