We spent 4 days filming and photographing at Angkor. Although it was high season (January) we carefully orchestrated the video shoot at times and at locations where there were few, if any visitors. It often meant arriving at dark, well before dawn, and then waiting for the light before launching the drone.
Angkor Wat was the tricky one as it receives thousands of visitors per day, many of them entering through the main East gate so our filming there was limited to the North and South gates and prior to 7am, before the crowds descended. We were particularly pleased with our late afternoon experience at the Bayon Temple with the monks. Besides the magic of the light play on the towers during this time it was wonderful to launch the drone with hardly any one around. The sound eventually drew the attention of a small group of onlookers but in all I think we will find the final footage will showcase this temple handsomely and will generate the atmosphere of mystery and solitude that we aspire to achieve with the whole Angkor project.
In locations such as Preah Khan temple and the Gate of Death we had the area to ourselves at certain times of the day (again, carefully researched and arranged) and were able to shoot more extensively and with various degrees of angles and approach so this resulted in more comprehensive material which will no doubt make its way to the final DVD production.
It wasn’t all about temples however, as our focus was to help bring these locations alive somewhat by injecting an element of human culture where appropriate. We filmed elephants walking through the Gate of Death, we filmed Apsara dancers performing on a natural temple stage in a quiet area near Angkor Thom, we filmed monks wandering the colossal stone works of the Bayon and we filmed martial art fighters in the grounds of Siem Reap’s oldest pagoda. We wil be releasing snippets of some of the drone footage from our Angkor shoot on this site, although the finished product will showcase this magnificent place in its entirety.
VISIT: CAMBODIA – NEW PERSPECTIVES FOR ALL VIDEO FOOTAGE FROM THIS LOCATION
New Perspectives of Vietnam & Cambodia 