Dronopoetics: Unmanned Aerial Cinematography and Ivan Sen’s Goldstone

Abstract

The use of unmanned aerial vehicles in mainstream cinema has been underexplored in film scholarship. This article seeks to address this by looking at Ivan Sen’s use of odd aerial perspectives in his 2016 film Goldstone, captured with the use of drones. This article considers the history of aerial photography and its impacts, before analyzing three drone shots from Goldstone, in terms of what these shots contain, and how they are situated in the edit. What is proposed is a poetics of drone cinematography, as observed in Sen’s film but applicable to all visual media. This poetics considers what the drone affords the cinematographer, director, and editor in terms of perspective. Finally, Deleuze’s film-philosophy and posthuman theory are co-opted to explore what drone footage affords Ivan Sen and all filmmakers in terms of the cinematic inscription of an attitude to the environment.