Firefight Films producer Christopher Carson says he and his crew, based in Juneau, wanted to find awe-inspiring winter spots in Alaska to shoot for a video project called "Bigger Than Life." When the Firefight crew mulled over how best to represent the sublime beauty of the state, Mendenhall Glacier and its ice caves came to mind. "For me it was the raw beauty and power of the glacier that really inspired me to film the glacier. There are stumps exposed that we filmed in the glacier that date back over 2,000 years. And while our climate is warming, it's amazing to see all the beauty and our new set of land being carved by this massive block of ice. When you're in the ice cave, you are in pure awe of the beauty that lies around you. This feeling is surreal and empowering," says Carson. And it's captured in the footage they shot.
Firefight Films and DSLR Pros teamed up to collaborate on the project. They used a DSLR Pros DJI Phantom Cannes P2 Kit drone to access places and spaces that a regular camera crew could not reach. "We chose this highly sophisticated piece of aerial equipment for its stability and complex navigation throughout the ice caves," Carson said. The drone was fitted with a GoPro Hero3+ Black Edition that had its video feed transmitted back to the crew so they could monitor the drone was shooting, since most of the spaces were unreachable by the crew. "This extremely sophisticated technology helped us achieve these beautiful shots. This was an extremely difficult shoot with so many variable and things that could go wrong during the filming," Carson said.
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