Dime: Your $0.10
Let’s face it; Latinos like to fly. We love to soar.
Think of how one of your favorite films opened. Was it an aerial shot? What happens when you get three young, bilingual Latinos in New York to form their own production company featuring aerial shots from drones? The birth of Xizmo Media Production Company. What sets them apart from other filmmaking companies is that they bring large cinematic shots to the independent production world and we just love that. Meet one of them, Edward Kostakis. Born in Flushing, NY of Venezuelan-Greek parentage. Attended Queens College for filmmaking. He joined the military and combined all those worlds to spin the magic he makes up, up in the air so beautiful. We invited him during a monthly gathering of Latino multimedia-makers and actors in New York for a PRIME LATINO MEDIA Salón feature interview.
Edward Kostakis
How did you make the transition from media to military?
My family has a long history of involvement in the military. No one from my generation, but my brother had signed up. So I joined the Marine Corps. as a reservist. I started off in data communications, became an officer and then went into air intelligence. I was stationed primarily in Virginia. I was never deployed. My brother served three times. I served a few months in Germany and now I report to my base one weekend a month.
How did you manage to inject aerials into filmmaking?
It was in air intelligence while serving in the military that I got the idea of working with drones. I thought, “Why can’t we work on this military capability in the civilian sector?” At that point I contacted two buddies, Pablo Barrera and Carlos Espinel and told them that this would really be interesting to add to our production background and a way to compete in a different way with the multitude of local NY production companies. It took them a while to get lured into it, plus the extensive capital investment that it would entail. Since we first started almost five years ago we have seen the technology in this field explode.
You are a Producer/Creative Director of aerial productions. Describe the multi-rotor component.
It’s an aerial platform that can lift certain equipment. We have custom-designed equipment that we build. We have drones made for diverse projects. We have a drone for small, medium-sized and heavy cameras.
LIC New York City Aerial from Xizmo Media on Vimeo.
What was the most interesting film project that you were called to do?
The one that we found really, really fun was an annual racing event in NJ with cars and the cameras hovering alongside. It was the most incredible experience by putting all our expertise by documenting cars speeding at 100 mph and going all around them by pushing the multi-rotor around without getting in their way.
Describe to me step-by-step what it takes to produce these aerial shots?
We have to meet with the director to determine their vision for the shot and it has to be choreographed. Then we go to the shoot site where they want to get this shot. We have to mitigate safety, which camera and which lens. Once we get the vision we go back to our shop to make sure that everything is working correctly. What we offer is an infinite amount of work and possibility by three people. Each shot takes about three minutes. It gives the director flexibility.
What was your most challenging assignment?
It was when we took tourism shots for Venezuela. We went down there and we were shooting islands. They told us that they were going to take care of all our needs. The boat shows up in such a rickety state that it was almost sinking. So we did not have much land to take off from and we were quite a distance from land in the open sea. When we finally get to the islands, we realize there is not much flat land to take off from for this job. One of my business partners had to hold the copter from his hand and have it land back in his hand. It’s fun, but extremely nerve-wracking, because you have to realize that some of this equipment is $10-15K.
What was the most unreasonable request you received that you had to turn down?
Someone wanted me to get a shot of the Roosevelt Island tram from the gondola and get really close up. I was afraid someone would think that this was not a friendly encounter and could create a situation with the NY Police Department very quickly. I have to take all of this in consideration when deciding to take a job or not. I have to consider location and what exactly it is we can do with the shot.
What are the best-kept secrets in using these aerial drones?
It’s a relatively inexpensive way to make an expensive shot for a low-budget film. You can immediately increase your production budget when people will assume you spent much more.
When commissioning you, what are some of the limitations that people don’t take into consideration?
People want us to fly over clouds. They want us to fly higher than the 400 feet off the ground domestically when we have to adhere to regulations by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). Internationally, in some locations, such as Venezuela you can go over 2,000. The signal controlling the drone goes higher and farther than the eye can see.
The assumption is that you’re solely a technical production company. How do you and team contribute to the creative process of executing a production and share an example?
We shot some spots for Trump SoHo. They just wanted aerial shots. He didn’t know how he was going to do it and what he really wanted. We came in for our usual preliminary meeting and we gave him ideas of what they were capable of doing. We started telling them that we could get shots inside by the bar and by a pool and have the drone flying outside and over the building and pan right and looking up 8th Avenue in Manhattan. He originally just wanted something to just fly over the pool and we were like, let’s have some fun. Once we showed him the footage that could be captured, including interior, beyond just the external; he was blown away. I showed him this piece of equipment and what it could render after he had been shooting inside Trump SoHo for two or three days. Now he wanted to redo half his shoot by expanding the angles and camera movements without having to hire dollies and cranes. What took him initially three days to do, we did in 4.5 hours and it looked better than what he had originally captured.
Give us a reality check on pricing.
If you want a GoPro and explore a daily rate and not hourly, $800 gets you an experienced pilot, a stabilized camera and a transmitter so that the director can see immediately what is being captured. The director can call the shot as it is happening as opposed to letting the drone land to review the footage.
What’s next with this technology?
It looks like using these drones to work with live broadcast news. A news truck can get to a location and they can’t get through. With a drone you can fly overhead and capture the vehicle and broadcast it live. Helicopters cannot get that close. It can be sent to the truck from the drone and become live feed. It will only be a while before the NY Police Department incorporates it in its work. We volunteer our time with the fire department when they need to be able to see from above hot spots to assess the risk of fires being reignited or spotting citizens especially by utilizing heat sensitive cameras (forward looking infra red cameras), which it displays on the screen as heat sensitive areas, as well as visible images.
What other alternative out-of-the-box features can this technology capture?
We’re also fitting our drones to carry aerial banners. We can put a drone to fly over the 59th Street bridge in Manhattan where there are no billboards and you can just park it there in the air, especially while the cars are stopped in traffic and they’re reading whatever you put up there. Plus, people stop and take pictures of it because they’re intrigued and all of sudden it’s being broadcast throughout social media and being talked about while pictures are posted that get reposted. We’ve been doing this for the last two to three months. I can put it anywhere and it can just stay there until it’s time to bring it down to change the batteries in just a matter of two minutes and then the drone goes back to its prescribed location.
What is the assumption about audio?
Basically, the audio you pick up in the air are from the propellers and the wind it generates. We cannot record sound. If you want ambient sound you need to do it before. We can make noise from the drone and blast music.
With the business are you in the black, red or breaking even?
We have surpassed our initial investment. We work at this every day. The first three years were rough. The problem with using these drones is that a lot of directors don’t know about the existence of this technology. They still rely on aerials from helicopters. Now this technology is a lot more familiar to others in production.
Give your $0.10 advice to a director on how to optimize this technology.
You want to hire someone with experience. These drones are not toys. Anyone can think that they can pick up one at B&H Photo or Radio Shack. The questions that have to ask are: 1) How long have you been operating these devices? 2) What kind of equipment do you have? 3) Can I see footage of previously shot material? 4) Do you have experience flying over water? 5) Explore safety concerns. He had someone who barked at the price when he could get someone cheaper through Craigslist. That person interviewed some party from Craigslist and discovered that they really did not have much experience.
For more information and samples of their work: http://www.xizmomedia.com
TIO LOUIE/Louis E. Perego Moreno
President of Skyline Features, he is an interactive content producer and educator who for the past 33 years has owned a bilingual (English and Spanish-language) multimedia and educational production company developing documentaries, television programming and advertising commercials featuring Latinos, Blacks, Women, Urban Youth and LGBT. He is also the Executive Producer of PRIME LATINO MEDIA, the largest network of Latino multimedia-makers and actors in the metro-New York area that gather once a month to interview proven leaders in the community.
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