Lorenzo Candelpergher

Dear @Bhaskar, Thank your very much for your interesting contribution. I like very much the view on the emotional side of off-roading. As with @Gaurav's proposal this requires much more than drone shots, but I'd say the idea is worth much more than your two cents 😂. Let's think about it. Dear @Srikumar, Yes pls share the route so I can check it against no-fly zones and GCAA regulations. Thanks.

Hi @Gaurav, Yesterday I took advantage of a short break during a pop-out recovery at the Intermediate Drive in Area 53 with @Frederic to fly my drone a little. I stole a couple of nice shots, which I will share later, but with static parked cars, captured from some distance, they don't tell much, I must say. If we really want to have some great footage we will have to plan the shootings in advance and carve some dedicated time during the drive (or have specific drives just for the purpose of shooting), so that preparations are not rushed into and all shots are executed as per plan as much as possible, while the convoy performs real some real action. Can we plan for a test in one for the next drives? All in all, we should include a 10 mins break for preps and briefing, 15 mins shottings with convoy driving around and 5 mins wrapping up.

Dear @Frederic, Area 53 is beautiful and today's drive was a very nice one due to the great weather conditions (still 27°C at 8.30am), the beautiful early morning light and the inspiring landscape. We had a few stops due to pop-outs, (during one of which I was able to steal a few minutes of drone video footage) but other than that the drive was nice and smooth, even if in a couple of cases we had to reroute before reaching the top of the pyramids. I was really looking forward to making it to the top!! The new high profile tyres deflated at 10psi were fantastic to drive and the more I get used to them the more I am getting efficient in managing power and traction, with much less concerns for pop-outs. It feels like driving a totally different car than just 3 weeks ago.. Thanks for the lead @Frederic and @Shiju Manuel and kudos to the whole convoy, which - despite being a big one - managed quite well, especially considering we had many newly / recently promoted intermediates. @Foxtrot Oscar was everywhere helping those who had stucks or refusals toghether with @Brette at the back. Great drive, can't wait for the next one in Sweihan..

Hi @Frederic, I'm familiar with the challenges in Area 53 (I've done 5 drives there, outside Carnity) so I know I'll need to be 120% focusing on the driving. Having said this, how about I'll take one of my drones with me in case we find the time to squeeze in a few mins for a couple of shots for the drone challenge?

Hi @Gaurav, Thanks for your contribution. I see where you want to get in terms of story telling and I like it very much. To do a 3 mins video like this we will need many shots, over multiple drives, everytime we should focus on just a few moments not to derail the drive, unless we change the concept slightly and organise a 2 or 3 "video shooting drives" where we spend most of the time shooting (ie we keep the drones up in the air for the good part of 2 hours) and the convoy members support as "stunt actors". Most of the story can be shot with a couple of my drones (a smaller and quieter one for short distance shooting and tight manoeuvring to shoot recoveries, vegetation and wildlife, and a bigger one for faster more cinematic camera movements chasing cars in movement). We may have combine it with some conventional camera shooting (handheld on gimbal or fixed/suction mount GoPro - I have plenty of this stuff to mount in all possible ways), which could be cool as we may involve the convoy members in the shooting (it is going to be fun). We will need some voice recording too for radio comms, again to be done by GoPro or even phones. I think we could cover Preparation and Ending parts easily in 1 or 2 drives. The Driving part will take at least 5-6 separate drives to cover everything, especially if we want to capture wildlife, unless - as said - we plan for dedicated video shooting drives. I think your proposal is great, @Gaurav. Thanks very much for this fundamental step. Unless someone has more to add to it, we could consider it our TREATMENT, based on which we now start developing our SCREENPLAY, ie we break down the story in scenes and the scenes in single shots and, one by one we plan how to execute them during our drives. Ready to take off: This is so thrilling!

As promised, let us get started with the Carnity Leaders DRONE CHALLENGE. First of all, I would suggest we establish the foundations for the challenge, i.e. we define a basic understanding of what we should be aiming for. In order to shoot some great drone videos, there is obviously a bit of homework to do.. In the following I tried to put toghether some basic infos as a starting point of reference for whoever will be curious. Obviously these are just humble suggestions, as the game here is to do this as a collective community effort, with everyone's contribution to improve the original idea. 1. SUBJECT If we were in professional context, we could say we have defined the broad SUBJECT, which is essentially the overarching idea of the challenge itself (ie producing a showreel of highly cinematic off-roading videos shot by drones during real Carnity drives, taken each time during a different ride at a different location as conceived by the drive leader) and we now have to work on the video treatment and screenplay / storyboard. 2. TREATMENT For each shooting session during a drive, the TREATMENT is a brief description or, better, a short story of what whould happen in the video to be shot during the ride. It is usually written in the present tense and describes events as they happen. Example: "In an early morning drive, the quiet yellow dawn with the skyline of Fossil Rock on the horizon is awaken by a Carnity off-roading convoy heading toward the sunrise. The cars swiftly ride east, along the ridge of a long dune. After some some prolonged ridge riding, the Leader criss-crosses and suddenly dives nose-down on the slip-side to the right, with the rear left wheel floating in the air for a second and sand flying all around. As the rest of the convoy gets past the ridge, the convoy continues its quest for the next dune to climb." The treatment should be the Leader's call, as it requires the choice of the location, of the timing and of the story to be told. Don't set boundaries to your ideas for treatment, as there are tons of off-road stories to tell... Don't just think about riding cars: think about wheel tracks, landscape and sceneries, viewpoints, driving paths, off-road maneuvers, refusals, stucks and recoveries, play areas, animals, trees, bushes, wrecks, sunsets, sunrises, inflation, deflation, flags.. You've been there, you name it! 3. SCREENPLAY / STORYBOARD Next comes the SCREENPLAY, which is a detailed written description of the single scenes to be shot and of the desired camera movements, which may be complemented by a STORYBOARD, ie sketches of the key frames of each shot to help fixating the ideas. Example (forgive my awful sketching 😂😂😂😞) Scene 1 Exterior - Dune Ridge pointing East, on the west side of Fossil Rock. Not more than 30' mins after sunrise The dawn against the skyline of Fossil Rock fills the screen, with crests of nearer dunes lit by almost tangent sun beams. The drone camera slightly tilts down while reducing the altitude then starts moving forward, showing the ridge of a long dune in full display, aligned east. The 1st car in the convoy enters the screen from the bottom overtaking the camera, while the camera keeps on rolling forward at slow speed approx 5m above the ridge, allowing for the following cars in the convoy to enter the scene and eventually leave the camera behind. Scene 2: Same setting / time as Scene 1 Same or similar dune as above. The drone camera slowly rolls left moving parallel to the ridge line, at an altitude slightly lower than the ridge top. The convoy enters from the right side of the screen: as the 2nd car enters, the camera builds up speed and tracks the vehicle from the side for 5 seconds then, while rolling left, slowly gains elevation and gently tilts down, revealing the scenery on the other side of the ridge. Scene 3: Same setting / time as Scene 1 Same or similar dune as above. The drone camera is positioned 30m above ground, tilted 90 degrees down (bird's eye view). The dune ridge is captured parallel to the horizontal screen side, while the camera slowly rolls right. The convoy enters the screen from the left, seen from above. As the convoy moves in the camera increases altitude to approx 80m. The shot ends when the convoy exits the right side of the screen. Scene 4: Same setting / time as Scene 1 Same or similar dune as above. The camera stands next to the criss-crossing point, pointing east and down with a 45 degrees tilt. As the leading car enters the screen from below, the camera starts a fast clock-wise orbit at constant altitude with a slight parallax, capturing the criss-crossing at approx 180 degrees and the slip-side dive while reaching 270 degrees in the orbit. " As you can appreciate, conceiving a sceeenplay requires some more technical understanding of how drone shots could be made: the preparation of a mini-screenplay like the one above (which took me 10 mins, so no big deal timewise) will be done in cooperation with the drone pilot, ie myself. It again requires a lot of input from the Leader, who should have a clear idea of the spatial context where the shooting will happen, but may as well benefit from the ideas of all convoy members. We won't have much time to debate on-site, so this exercise should be mostly prepared beforehand if we want to keep the time slot for the drone challenge within the 15' plus prepping. 4. EXAMPLES OF CINEMATIC DRONE SHOTS For the purpose of enabling the best ideas for screenplays, I suggest everyone interested should have a look at the youtube video below, which exemplifies 20 of the most commont cinematic drone shots (ie shots where the camera motion is urilized to obtain a cinematic effect): https://youtu.be/BdtHWr_nDeU. Having seen these 20 simple examples, I believe you will all have enough to fancy your screenplay. In addition, bear in mind we cluld do time-lapses (ie accelerated shots, ie 15' accelerated in 30" for example) or slow-motions (ie decelerated shots, where we can reduce the speed down from 100% to 25% without any image quality loss). Also, bear in mind that the drones we will be using do not have optical zoom lenses, i.e. They are equipped with fixed focal lenght lenses. Zooming effects can be achieved either by physically zooming in or out by moving the drone forward or backward or (less advisable and with some limitations) in post processing, i.e. during video editing. 5. LIGHT As all of you who like photography know, the best images are always shot in those magic 15 mins after sunrise and before sunset, when colors and natural contrasts between highlights and shadows are enhanced by a less overwhelming light coming from much more interesting angles. Luckily, our drives are always planned to include such moments, thus there will be plenty of opportunities, nevertheless we can take beautiful videos in full daylight (we will use ND filters if there is too much light), so don't feel forced to frame the shooting session in those key minutes all the times. 6. LOGISTICS AND DRIVE PLANNING / EXECUTION The example above would require the convoy to ride along a dune ridge, criss-cross, dive down on the slip side and return back at the beginnig of the ridge for at least 4 times, which can be easily done in not more than 10 mins. Every round should be started by radio comms with the drone pilot, to ensure he is ready for the relevant shot. The whole convoy should be specifically briefed. (Needless to say we don't necessarily have to shoot multiple scenes at the same location, however edited/cut video looks much better if you can tell the story using multiple videos from different angles and movements) Setting up the drone and briefing the convoy will take approx 5 mins, and another 5 mins will be needed to store it back safely. Flying time can last up to 25 mins with a battery (and I typically have a set of 3) but I would expect to keep the drone in the air not more than 15 mins. It may however happen that a shot needs to be repeated, as not always things go right the 1st time, especially when there are synchronized movements, thus I'd factor in another 5 mins of contingency, for a total stop of 30 mins, during which, however, the convoy (except me and a volunteer acting as my crew/spotter and anyone curious to stand by and watch from a drone safe and Covid-19 social distance rather than driving) will be mostly driving back and forth. In the above example, we would probably take approx a 15' continous video shooting, but all 4 scenes above would then be cut and edited into a videoclip which should last indicatively not more than 120" max, otherwise it gets boring and repetitive. 7. SAFETY As expected from professional drone pilots, the safety of all convoy members and bystanders, the pilot/crew own safety and the integrity of the cars, any property and, of course, of the drone itself will never be compromised. This means we won't do any crazy high speed maneuvers, we will never fly close to people, we will respect no-fly and geo-fenced zones (if any), altitude (120m) and range limits (500m) for hobbyist flights, will always fly with VLOS (visual line of sight, i.e. never on a purely instrumental flight) and won't fly at night. I hope the above helps. I can't wait to spin my propellers! 😂😂

Hi @Gaurav, this is indeed fun-tastic news. First of all, I like the idea of not just shooting at the cars but also at the tracks.. So many more possibilities for a fascinating storytelling. Great suggestion! Second, you are right, now that we have a first idea of the subject, the whole challenge will be about conceiving the screenplay / storyboard, i.e. detailing each shot setup and camera movement and then planning the drive so that we get at the right place by the right time to get the perfect light. Your experience in storyboards will be key! I'll be soon sharing some hints about some most powerful drone shot types, so everyone can widen their horizons while developing some thoughts about where, what and how to shoot. It sounds so cool..

Congrats @Luca Palanca Falsini, first step done. Keep pushing, I just made it to intermediate and can't wait to ride toghether as usual..

Hi @Srikumar, yes sure... October 2nd, 3.30-4.00am. When I told my wife she couldn't believe I could be so mad about off-roading.. 😂 😂

Hi @Rahimdad, very pleased of the many positive reactions and happy to discuss more in detail. I'll share some thoughts in the next days which may help the discussion and sparkle new ideas in the community. It is going to be great fun..

As some of you may know, among other (less fancy) things, I happen to be a UAE GCAA / DCAA licensed commercial multi-rotor RPAS pilot (i.e. I fly drones at professional level) and I would love to put my skills at service for some extra fun within the Carnity Club. Now that we approach the nicest season with milder temperatures which make a short desert break more enjoyable, I would like to launch a "Carnity Leaders Drone Challenge": for every drive that I will attend, I will take with me one of my drones and challenge the Drive Leaders to plan their drives so that they include an approx. 15 mins drone shooting session capturing a particularly inspiring, spectacular, scenographic, or adrenalin-fueled session of the drive, using all convoy members as performing stunt actors. The shooting doesn't need to be lasting 15' every time. We will simply dedicate max 15' to shoot some nice desert off-road riding aerial footage, in multiple short videos with all sorts of nice cinematic scenes. Out of 15' mins shootings I would expect we get 2' or 3' of quality footage. Each drive leader should come up with his/her own idea of a spectacular shooting in a different selected desert location and I will try, to the best of my abilities, to shoot as per their imagination, while the convoy drivers will be showcasing their best driving perfomances. The result, in a couple of months, will be a showreel featuring some of the very best Carnity moments, which will explain to our families, friends and potential new joiners better than any words the magic of desert off-roading. @Rahimdad, @Gaurav, @Srikumar, @Wrangeld, @Emmanuel, @Frederic, @Jeepie, @Ale Vallecchi, are you in? Everyone else... Pls add to the original idea and help make it even better. P.S.: the ones below are a couple of quick aerial shots at Pink Rock on my Absolute Newbie Drive, last March 20th.

Congratulations @Anish S, looking forward to the next intermediate drive toghether!

Kudos @Jun Zamora, see you in the next intermediate drive!

Dear @jodha singh shekhawat, I incurred in many (....) pop-outs during my Carnity drives. Among all, I'll never forget the one I had while crossing literally the FIRST dune of the day, heading to Fossil Rock. I simply couldn't believe it, but - hey.. - it happened. I think having so many pop-outs has been one of the most useful experiences in my off-road learning and helped me a lot to understand what I was doing wrong. Discussing it ride after ride with Carnity senior staff and mostly with @Wrangeld helped me enormously in eventually improving my driving skills. Pop-outs are part of the learning process.. Sooner or later EVERYONE will have one, that's for sure, and it is always a nice team building experience when convoy members come toghether to help. If I must really say it, however, my biggest frustration was that, despite all my efforts, I always had pop-outs on the wrong wheel and I could never capture one with my Go-Pro.. 😂 😂

Dear @Wrangeld, dear @Kalahari, dear @Jeepie, today we were meant to look at the stars but it looks like there wasn't the right star alignment for this drive to go as planned. I have championed for quite some time the very special ranking (😂😂) of those who had the most frequent pop-outs (for my son's pleasure) and sweated in learning how to handle them, but today's was the trickiest ever seen for me and the first one which, despite all efforts, couldn't be fixed. This unfortunate event stole the best time of our ride, which - combined with SZR-style traffic at Pink Rock - made it impossible to reach Al Badayer by daylight. @Kalahari smoothly pushed the pace a bit but after sunset the east side of Pink Rock became soon very dark and it was really not safe to continue towards Al Badayer by night, especially after we spent some more time helping @Ashok chaturvedi get out from a difficult longitudinal cresting. In all this, I also discovered (I'll leave it to your imagination "how" I did it) that my daughter (who was joining me in the desert for the 1st time) doesn't really get along well with the shaking and tossing of desert riding: an early exit was, in her case, definitely the best option. As @Wrangeld said, we may have not reached for the moon as hoped, but the ride was anyhow valuable experience and the sight of the sunset from Pink Rock alone was, as usual, worth every effort. Looking forward to the next attempt to the moon. PS: @Wrangeld, as I was on the rush when I reached the meeting point I forgot to turn on the tracking app on my mobile. Can you share, if available, the ride data (distance / duration at least) for my records? Thanks in advance

Dear @Ale Vallecchi, Thanks for the nice and very smooth drive today. This 100km marathon was my 1st intermediate drive and, as announced, we had a lot of criss-crossing and ridge riding, which made it particularly fun, while exploring very different landscapes. Driving in a small and well experienced convoy makes the ride much more enjoyable as it rolls out uninterrupted. I really look forward to the next one.

Welcome to Carnity @Luca Palanca Falsini. It feels strange to see you as as an absolutely newbie after having driven together in the desert at least 20 times this year! Looking forward to be togheter in the next Carnity rides.. P. S. @Gaurav, Luca was the one who first brought me on the sand and drove ust in front of me during most of my initial rides. I insisted very much so he would join Carnity. Put him to the test!!

Congrats @Junaid Sayeed, looking forward to sharing the fun of the next intermediate drive as newly promoted intermediates.

This is great news! Thank you all @Gaurav, @Rahimdad, @Frederic for the consideration. I look forward to new adventures in the sand with the fantastic Carnity community. In particular, I would like to express my gratitude to @Wrangeld, who is probably the one who has followed my trajectory from newbie to intermediate more closely: your constant encouragement and tips were really useful and made a big difference. And thanks to @Jeepie as well, as you were always there too!

Dear all, I was really looking forward to this particular drive, as I was going to test the new high profile tyres for the 1st time. I must confess in the beginning it felt a bit strange, as the higher flexibility of the tyres gives quite a different feeling while turning or side sloping, ie softer and somehow wobbly, but as we went on I got more and more accustomed. Sweeping was also something new and I enjoyed it, as I could occasionally play with a bit more freedom on my lines. There were a few recoveries to handle, but - unlike last month in these same places - temperatures were much milder and all stucks were luckily minor ones and easy to sort out. I think that if some more distance had been kept between cars, some of today's stucks/refusals could have been avoided: several times a problem with the car in front became for no reason a problem also for the following car, which was forced to stop or lose momentum at the wrong time. Having said this, I thing everyone handled magnificently. Thanks to @Wrangeld and @Jeepie for leading us in this nice and fun ride (indeed with a much smoother route through the small technical dunes in the initial part than on the "technical dunes masterclass" 😂😂 of last month in Lisali.. (see the comparison of the two tracks below, purple = today / gray = last month, which lasted 7 hours!!). Thanks also to @Jeandre Bezuidenhout for his patrolling back and forth when hints of a stuck were coming from the rear part of the convoy and to @Islam Soliman for his patient waiting when @luwaimn and myself had to catch up. @luwaimnhaving watched you from the back I think the problem in your refusals was almost always a matter of not having enough momentum when approaching those spots where you had no visibility of what was on the other side. I had the same problem in my initial rides, which frequently left me crested, then realized on the other side there was usually sand 😂😂.. See you all again next week and WELL DONE!

Dear @Wrangeld, looking forward to testing the new high profile A/T tyres!

Dear @Jeepie, Thanks for leading this very nice drive to Fossil Rock and Al Faqa. Temperatures were not too bad today: I believe for a good part of the ride my thermometer showed less than 30°C and certainly the clean view of the dawn through Fossil Rock was worth the effort of a 4:40am wake-up.. It was a very smooth drive, with good fun at the Long Dune play area where we had the chance to ride multiple times without interferences. Going around Fossil Rock rather than crossing the saddle at the top was new for me, and I enjoyed the spectacular view from the side of the rock. Things got more interesting heading towards Al Faqa, going though Camel Rock and The Sphinx: for the latter, coming in from the north side, I could really understand the reasons of the naming as the rock really looked as a huge cat on the sand. As @Wrangeld commented on the radio, I had to leverage all my horsepower (in 4L) to get out of a nasty mini-bowl that I had missed to see in a moment of distraction after being idle waiting for a recovery to be completed: 2nd time in recent rides that I get stuck as a result of impatience.. Need to work on it 😂 Good fun again at The Saddle playground: it felt great to make it to the top with @Pancho, who climbed up with great agility despite the churned up sand, while I had to give up on my 1st attempt as I had accidentally engaged traction control, which killed all my power when I most needed it.. 😭 It was odd to see @Wrangelddriving a comfortable and air-conditioned Pajero. I am curious to read his impressions about it. Thanks to all and well done. See you next week.

Sounds like I missed a very good one!

Dear @Emmanuel, my flight from. Europe has been postponed so I won't be able to join. I am forced to withdraw my RSVP so someone else may join. Enjoy the ride and apologies. L

The technical dunes masterclass. This was my longest (time wise) drive ever but, despite the extreme duration I must say I enjoyed every bit of it. It all started with some very good loughs while listening to a brilliant briefing by @Wrangeld, perfect to make sure everyone is awake and listening. Things however got immediately serious as soon as we got into the small technical dunes next to the camel track. I was probably luckier than others in the convoy, being in the 2nd lead position, as I didn't have to deal too much with churned-up sand, but driving my Nissan Patrol Y62 in those tiny little dunes turned out super-fun for me and surprisingly less problematic than I would have expected. Having drastically improved in how to manage gears and power, I felt I could cruise around in a relatively easy way: in fact I got stuck only once, when - a bit bored for the long waiting - I moved the car forward for no reason without realising I was heading into a mini-bowl, tailored in the pefect size to block me from any further movement. @Rahimdad had a superbusy start with tons of recoveries in the very first technical dunes. We then had the illusion of some easy going on some large and fun dunes, but it didn't last long as this ride was a true masterclass in tricky small dunes combined with mercyless soft sand. The final bit towards Qudra turned out to be extremely hard to move around for a 12 cars convoy. Maybe in these adverse terrain conditions smaller convoys could be considered in order to minimize the time spent in waiting for the unavoidable recoveries from nasty stucks. @Rahimdad and @Wrangeld were restless in their recoveries efforts, which deserve everyone's gratitude and appreciation. Today's number of recoveries was abnormal and protracted for many hours in full day-time sunlight! I look forward to having another chance as 2nd lead, as the circumstances of the ride didn't allow me for much activity in such role, but I guess it will have to wait for a bit, as I will be taking some time off in Europe during the month of August. Thanks to all for the ride and see you on the sand again on August 28th!!