XM2 PURSUIT captures unique aerial perspective on COVID-19 across Europe, Los Angeles
We all acutely feel the enormity of COVID-19 on the ground, but only a bird’s-eye view can reveal the full historic impact the pandemic has had on humanity’s social tendencies.
Though normally focused on the major motion picture, visual effects, television and aerospace industries, XM2 PURSUIT, a groundbreaking new collaboration between XM2 and Pursuit Aviation, recently deployed the companies’ global aircraft fleets to capture an extensive portfolio of footage. This work reveals how stay-at-home orders and social distancing measures have frozen in time some of the world’s largest and most bustling cities. The team captured footage of empty beaches, streets and iconic landmarks, leaving many normally busy places, unrecognizable. From Paris’ Champs-Élysées to London’s Abbey Road and beyond, we can now show how life nearly ground to a halt in reaction to the pandemic
Utilizing the new UK-based 2-CINE Twinstar helicopter, XM2 PURSUIT’s pilots and camera operators have created a repository of footage of Rome, Florence, Venice, Milan, Geneva, Paris, Cannes, Antwerp, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Dover and London. XM2 PURSUIT’s U.S.-based aircraft captured similar footage in Los Angeles from busy tourist attractions like the Getty Villa and Universal Studios, to the usually packed Santa Monica Pier and the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Together, their work using a variety of high-performance camera systems and gyrostabilized heads has captured some of the world’s biggest cities as they have never been seen before and created an exclusive resource for the filmmakers and journalists who will ultimately tell the story of the COVID-19 pandemic and its effects on society.
You can check out the behind-the-scenes reel of the unique perspective captured during this dual aerial and ground survey here and follow XM2 and Pursuit Aviation’s social channels:
Pursuit Aviation
XM2