--- title: Behind The Scenes of TIME's Drones Cover | TIME description: Find out how TIME's drones cover was shot, using 958 of Intel's Shooting Star drones. canonical: https://time.com/video/Hu3D9kBc/ og:title: Behind The Scenes of TIME's Drones Cover og:description: Find out how TIME's drones cover was shot, using 958 of Intel's Shooting Star drones. og:url: https://time.com/video/Hu3D9kBc/ og:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/Hu3D9kBc/poster.jpg?width=720 og:type: video.other twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Behind The Scenes of TIME's Drones Cover twitter:description: Find out how TIME's drones cover was shot, using 958 of Intel's Shooting Star drones. twitter:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/Hu3D9kBc/poster.jpg?width=720 --- # Behind The Scenes of TIME's Drones Cover > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: Behind The Scenes of TIME's Drones Cover [Watch (HLS stream): Behind The Scenes of TIME's Drones Cover](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/Hu3D9kBc.m3u8) (4:28)  _Published 2018-05-31. Find out how TIME's drones cover was shot, using 958 of Intel's Shooting Star drones._ --- Jul 28, 2023 12:02 AM UTC --- ## More From This Series [All Videos](https://time.com/video/) [Behind the Scenes of Time's Interstellar Cover Shoot](/video/T8DzvVHZ/) ### Behind the Scenes of Time's Interstellar Cover Shoot [Behind the Scenes of a TIME Cover Shoot: Gay Marriage](/video/FiD0ttYs/) ### Behind the Scenes of a TIME Cover Shoot: Gay Marriage [Behind the Scenes: TIME’s Original 9/11 Cover Story](/video/PEonnIyg/) ### Behind the Scenes: TIME’s Original 9/11 Cover Story --- ## Transcript Animation in 3, 2, 1, [ INAUDIBLE ] 2. 9. That's it just hold that. Perfect that's perfect. [ BLANK_AUDIO ] Landing in 45 seconds. [ MUSIC ] The major challenge of this particular animation is the height. In which we have to fly and getting the resolution that we want in the time will go. This animation is a hundred meters tall. Our ceiling is four hundred feet, so we have to stay within that space. So normally we like to keep the drones about three meters apart from one another. This one we were a little limited on space, so we were Having to confine that down to 1. 5 years. The risks are that they can collide with one another while in the air if it's really dusty. Okay, big drone is going up. Not only did we want the border and logo made out of thousands of drones But we also wanted to shoot that cover photo with a drone. In the history of Time, in 95 years, we've never had a cover image that was shot by a drone camera. Aim is good. Everything looks great Bryce. This is our first time shooting a magazine cover. We've got a tight timeline. They're going up, getting a lot of drones up in the air, and we've got to be in the perfect precise position. To get that shot. We're gonna be flying a distance away with our big heavy lift drone. Filming it with a cinema camera and we're gonna be pulling a vertical still photograph from that of the thousand drones making this cover in the sky. We want a view in this position right here. Ideally, the one that's closest to the drone Should have one of our production readings. One of the challenges I would say is it's coordinating where we're flying so that there's no collisions between the aircraft. And then also, we're sort of pushing the boundaries of shooting this low light scene with the camera, shooting LEDs, and that sort of thing. So it is challenging just coordinating something that's so massive. So. You press go, they take off, they go make the square. And when they come back they come straight back to that spot right above where they took off, and then land straight down. Okay. My responsibility is to monitor the health of the fleet of the drones, both while they're on the ground and then also while they're in the air. And when we're actually doing flight, I work with Clay who's our pilot in command for this show. In order to coordinate the commands that we send to the drones, to make sure we're safe to fly from an aviation perspective. [ UNKNOWN ] time code? Yeah, we are at 1 minute, 40 seconds. 1 minute- This show has been a bit challenging in that we're flying close to 1, 000 drones, and we've had some challenges with the wind. So we're hoping that the wind cooperates with us tonight before we fly. We've gone over 1, 200 drones before for the Olympics so we know that technically this is definitely doable. But when we fly right at sunset or right at sunrise, that's exactly when the winds are picking up and slowing down. And we're flying up to 400 feet. So there's definitely a lot of turbulence that the drones are dealing with. We are ready for an 8: 36 Animation start okay [ INAUDIBLE ] going up. 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, launching. [ BLANK_AUDIO ] [ BLANK_AUDIO ] Animation in three, two, one, trigger. Man, check it out! I've always been amazed at how different an image looks when you put it inside the red border of Time. And what's interesting about this is that the image is actually the border of Time. I've looked at that border and logo every single day on a flat screen monitor, and to see it up the sky and 400 feet in the air, it was very moving for me. [ MUSIC ] Just to see it flying above you was really special. Drones are returning home. [ MUSIC ] The drone's coming home. 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