 I'm Joshua Bardwell and I am here at Rotor Riot Rampage. I am super, super excited to be sitting here with Potato Jet. That is me. Gene. Yes, or Potato, Mr. Potato. Mr. Potato, Mr. Jet, sir. I'm super excited about this because, well, Gene, I've been a fan of your YouTube channel for a long time. I've watched your camera reviews and I've been really excited to watch you get more and more into FPV. Like addicted to FPV. Would you say you're addicted? Yes, it's not to a healthy level. If I wake up and my fiance does not like drones anymore, she used to think it was kind of cool like, oh, look, you're flying the thing. And now she's just like, there's sound of those propellers. I hate it. And the sound of Bardwell videos in the background? Yeah, she's very familiar with your voice. She actually very much is. Okay, I needed that. Thank you. I needed that. This is actually your FPV gear we've got right here on the table. And we put it here because when people hear about like a guy coming out of the cinema world, getting into FPV, they think he just wants all the fame and money of the FPV world. And he's not for real. But one look at how freaking janky your FPV quads are. I'm waiting for the TV. I know. Just printing these 3D printers or... Don't tell me he's not legit. Look, you got a mismatched motor here. You're serious about FPV. I would like to have it all in one, but... No, it never is. Brampage is cruel to your drones. I came here with 3 drones and I was like, I think this is going to last me the whole time. I flew out with Bubby for the first day and destroyed everything. Right. And I saw you in the build room, soldering your own quads. You know, a big shot like you, you think somebody would be doing all your building for you. Apparently not. You like building? I actually do a lot now. I started off not wanting to do any of this soldering stuff. All I wanted was the shot because I just wanted to put a camera in the sky and I wanted to get that shot. But after really getting into it now, I'm just actually really excited to solder stuff now. And whenever I destroy something, it started off as a chore. But now it's like, I love it. I love it. It's fun. And you gave me some really good tips on what kind of solder to use. What was the brand? Shout out to Kester. Kester brand. Yeah. I'm using some janky thing. It does not ever... It always gives me the peak on the thing. Yeah. The Kester stuff is the good stuff. Okay. So let's back up from that. Some of the people watching may not know your background. So I know you first and foremost from camera reviews. Is that where you got started? Yeah. Well, my background is I used to have a production company. We used to shoot commercials in that kind of world. And we were shooting a video with an Arri Alexa camera. And I was like, it'll be funny if I put like a, you know, mount like a little iPhone on top and split screen it. And I posted that because I started off as a travel channel. And that's the good thing about... You started as a travel channel. Kind of because I was doing the video stuff for work. And I didn't think people were that interested in it. And I thought people would be more interested in the travel stuff. But then I started posting a few things from like just being on set and people really liked that. So then I kind of transitioned over to camera stuff. And right now I'm just obsessed with FPV drones to the point where my audience is like too much. Yeah. You were telling me earlier, your audience is like, will you please just review the latest camera from so and so and stop trying to tell us about FPV. I've missed the last three camera embargo releases because I've just been flying a Citilift around in the desert. Yeah. It's not good for my channel's algorithm. I'm pretty sure. But actually it turns out it has been because people seem to think it's cool. What was your first exposure to FPV? Oh, okay. So my first exposure to FPV was Robert McIntosh who's the founder of Real Steady. And he got those early shots of flying through Venice and through the Ferris wheel and the little loop in the hand. That was the very first FPV drone I ever flew was his little one. And so he built out a little beta FPV thing for me. And we did like a little build guide. And it was, yeah, we filmed it. And then like one week later, it was all outdated because some butterflies came out. And then we tried again. And yeah, so we were flying Cinewoops. And I love that. And Real Steady was a big part of just making all the footage to like, well, that looks beautiful. So that was the first one. And then a NERC, Paul Nercola, I saw him flying an XA. And then he was the first person to ever let me fly a five inch. So we were out there and I did my first flip with him. And after that, I just kind of went from there. It's been fun watching you go from a guy who, you said, you started out just wanting to get the shot, right? Yeah. And then to transition to sort of loving FPV. FPV is of course a great hobby. And people love flying FPV drones for their own enjoyment. But it's also a useful tool to get the shot. How do you see that fitting in there? It's really interesting because it definitely is not a shot for everybody. I think a majority time in the film world, most of the time they would still prefer an inspire over like a cine-lifter. But there's definitely those times where the intensity of the shot, you just don't get out of something that's super stable. Like, I think the feeling you get out of the shot is just so cool just being right there in the action. Like, I think one thing that's really hard to translate in a shot from like a Mavic or Inspire is the speed you're going. You're filming a car going 80 miles per hour and you just have like a pan shot of it. It's like, yeah, everything's going pretty fast. But when you're in it and it's kicking up dirt into your lens and you're just like, it's all shaky and intense, like you really feel that speed. And you just see like on the wide-angle lens, the ground just whooshing down underneath you. And it's just like so intense. So I love that. And it's just a feeling you just don't get out of anything else. So it's definitely a specialty, I think. It's not like you want every shot to be like that. But when you see it, it's just like, oh man, and I love that we're starting to see a lot of that in like the live broadcast, like some of the car races. I'm not starting to see like some five inches or seven inches kind of following a lot of these cars around the track and just live streaming it. And I think there's just something about the shot that you get out of an FPV shot that there's just no way to get it otherwise. Yeah, yeah, I think you're right. I mean, you could do these moves with an FPV drone where like, for example, you can flip over the tree line and then come down and dive in on the cars. And like if you were to do that with a super stabilized drone like a Mavic or something else, you just wouldn't get that dynamic sense. But like you were saying, a lot of people don't like it. They find it really jarring and maybe off-putting and they're like maybe even motion sickness. But it's been really exciting to see more and more even big filmmakers like Michael Bay starting to recognize the value of these shots and implement them and work them in even in small ways into their filmmaking language. What's interesting about FPV is there's just no other way to move the camera in a lot of situations. There's no other way to get that movement except for FPV. So, and it's interesting to see how much of it we're seeing on TV. Like if you were just at a bar and like if we got a TV just playing like every five minutes you'd be like, hey, that's a really cool FPV shot. That happened to me. You talked about some of the pain points of getting into FPV earlier. We were talking about this and I think that people who are interested in FPV, maybe they're coming from the cinema world and they want to get more into FPV. What kind of pain points did you experience and what kind of tips do you have for people who want to follow in that path? I think it definitely always starts with the shopping experience of just going, all right, I'm on this website. What do I need? Right. How many of these, what's an XT30? What's an XT60? What kind of charger am I supposed to charge? How do I even charge these things without my house catching on fire? Right. There's a lot of, once you're in the hobby you get the general understanding of like, oh yeah, well this charger will charge all this and with a little adapter you could charge these too and that's USB. It gets simpler once you get into it but I think for someone that's coming into it fresh you definitely want just the shopping cart because my first FPV drone that I ever bought and set up I have not flown it once. I gave up on it halfway through. It's like, this is too much, it was an analog setup. You're not alone in that experience. So many people have that experience and you're like, I want this. I will buy all the parts. I have no idea how to make this work and then eventually you give up and it's still sitting there in your living room. That's really a shame. I couldn't even get it to the hover. Right. Yeah, I gave up there. Right. That's really a shame. My first drone I ever flew was the Flamewheel F450 or something like that. Yeah, back then and just hanging that little janky gimbal with GoPro footage and it still looked bad. But then the, I think the Phantoms came out and those are just like so much easier. And then I got the original Inspire and then I got the Mavic and I've been flying those for a while. But then I really wanted to start getting some FDB shots but it's definitely intimidating. And now we have some options like the Avada where you can just literally buy a kit. It comes in works and all that. But where I really learned was the Bind and Fly. So just getting something that's pre-built and already set up and all you really have to do is maybe change a few parameters and hook it up to the goggles and you're up in the air flying. And that was really nice because even though you may have to once in a while do repairs it's at least a lot easier to just go, oh, hey, look, this wire is loose and it came from here. Okay, I'll just take this hot iron and stick them together. Oh, look, it works again. So I got to slowly progressively learn, which was nice. But Bind and Fly's were definitely a huge part of my learning experience for sure. I think Rotariah has some options, right, where you can just go and just boom, grab the cart. Well, that's one of the things Rotariah does is they try to sort of handhold in a way to say, look, if you want individual parts, if you want to build it yourself, you can. But also if you just don't know what works together you could just pick one item from the cart, get everything you need to get up in the air and it's all pre-configured and ready to go. So I just flew those because going into it I just wanted the most headache-free experience. I was just like the easiest way for me to get that shot I'm going to do that. And I love the shots you can get out of them but it was pretty rare for me to actually go out and go, you know what I'm going to do today for fun? I'm going to go out and just fly this thing around. Like I'm usually like, I want that shot so I'm going to fly this for the shot. But with FPV, once I started really getting into it all of a sudden there was like a switch where I was like, you know what, what I want to do this weekend is I'm going to just go and fly these. Not necessarily to even film but I see this gap and everything just looks like a gap after a while. Absolutely. You're driving down the road and you're like, oh, I could fly there. I could fly there. I could go through that. Yeah, it takes over your brain. It does. Yeah, everything you see is just like, I could fly through that under that sign and I could do a wonder when I start in here and come out this way and roll down this way. So yeah, it definitely does actually become an addiction especially once you actually start to realize how much fun it is. I feel like it can be a little bit tough to get an understanding of how much fun it is until you're actually in the goggles. That's true. You could show people footage all day long and sometimes you show people footage and they're like, oh, this is the best. I need this. And sometimes people don't really get it until they actually try it. I think usually when people see the footage, they're impressed. They're out there like, wow, that's really impressive that you were able to do that. But until you're actually behind the sticks and you go and fly through your first gap and you go, oh my God, I cleared it. And then you go through the next one, you're like, oh, I crashed it. Oh, well, now I really need to get this. It's very challenging. And I think that's what makes it fun, is it's not easy. There's actual risk involved if you miss a gap and now you have to spend a lot of time repairing and all that. So I think the challenge of it is what makes it actually really fun and it really gets your adrenaline going a lot of times. Which you think is more exciting, flying a five inch drone at 80 miles an hour doing all these tricks or flying a red Komodo like a $40,000, $5,000 cinema camera. Yeah, so I mean, they're different. They're very different. But I mean, the intensity is definitely there when you have anything. I've been flying a FX6 on a CineLifter. So that's around, I think $10,000 set up. And then, you know, once we go crazy, like there's some that are like $50,000 or $70,000. So I'm not there yet, but even flying something that's $10,000, I mean, it's definitely just like you're 100% of your mind. Every brain cell is like everyone pay attention on this one thing for one second. And after you're done with this shot, now you can wander off and think about unicorns and drinking stuff like this. Rotor riot, non-alcoholic beverage. This is a rotor riot pre-built. Did you pick that up this weekend, right? Yeah, this is the tank. This I think is actually right now my favorite freestyle frame. I actually crashed it and got it stuck in a tire in a rainstorm on my very first battery, basically. But this is great because it sounds like it's completely indestructible. Yeah, as close as you can get. Yeah, yeah. This is great for when I want to crash. And I'm trying out the new avatar system right here, mostly for the low light. That's the thing that kind of got me interested. I primarily fly the O3 because I like the picture quality out of it. I like the range and you can even run that through gyro flow and get some almost GoPro-like quality out of just something this size and all. But low light on it's terrible. So I like flying. There's decent opportunities to fly here where there's a bunch of lights set up and stuff like that. So I definitely want something I could cruise around with that night. One of the things I said earlier was that I saw you in the build room soldering on one of your quads. This one is the solder-free build. So all the parts come with connectors. So you can swap the motors, swap all the parts in and out, whatever, pulling out that soldering. I don't think it looks like you've had to do any repairs on it yet though. No. So this one's been solder-free so far. The only thing I've done on it was to update this to the pro camera. So I just soldered onto these pads right here. Hopefully I did that right. It's my first time soldering this system. This is your first rampage. Yeah. This is my first rampage. I've been watching it on the Rotorite channel for a while. It's like seeing some of the spots that you guys fly and just coming here and actually you have to fly the spots that I watch because I actually am a huge fan of the Rotorite channel. I watch almost every video. No, shut up. No, I can show you. Like it's a red line under all the videos. Okay. Let's do it. Let's do it. Because you fly by yourself, you fly. A lot of people have this experience where they fly by themselves or maybe with a friend, but to come out to a big event like this with 250 pilots flying epic locations, this one behind us is just one location that people are flying. It used to be a nuclear processing plant that then was like never got finished and now it's, we just come here and we tear it up. This is a major way of stepping out. This is the Disneyland for anyone in the FPV. No joke. There's no better place to be if you're having, look at this place that you can fly. And you meet a lot of people that are into FPV because it definitely feels like there's an FPV culture which is really fun. I've never met anyone in FPV that I do not get along with. Oh, well that's good to hear. Kai, what's your favorite place to fly that you've been out here? You've been flying. The nook is very fun. You know, trying to do the dives. That's where I destroyed all of mine. I was trying to keep up with Bubby FPV. He was just... Don't try to keep up. Yeah. I destroyed three drones there all at once. He would do it and makes it look so easy. Yeah. And destroy. That's actually our secret plan is everybody comes here, they destroy all their stuff and then we sell them more stuff. This is like supporting like the whole business model. I have purchased way more drones than I have planned to over here. But yeah, try to keep up with Bubby and then you over try to chase him and then doing that. But man, the drift cars were pretty wild of an experience because you know, you just have that adrenaline rush of like, oh, I have to get this shot and I want to get close to the tire. But not only that, but you have these crazy obstacles in the area. And also you have four other drones that you're like barely missing in. And it's fun. There's some parallels there to the cinema world, right? Like here comes the car. You have to make the shot. I mean, if you screw up this time, then you know, there's not going to be some director who's mad at you. But it is like, it is a really unique experience. I think one of the things that's very important for anyone flying FPV, especially professionally for in the film side is definitely you have to fly under pressure, which is a totally different experience. And I know the racing guys always experience flying under pressure and all that. But you know, even just flying with a handful of other people and a drift car is about to come by and you just hear the loudest of things. So loud. It's great. Yeah. It's great. So it definitely kind of tests your piloting skills under pressure, which is really cool. And that's definitely hard to do. I wonder if somebody has ever, like if as we're thinking about getting like convincing synapses, we think FPV is great. Yeah. And we think more people should think FPV is great as a gist of it. We're proselytizing here. What if, I wish that there was like a real of shots that you could not get any other way. Like a real of FPV shots that cinema people could look at and go, oh, that is interesting. You know, I don't know if that exists, but you're talking about these shots you're getting that you can't get any other way. People need to see more of those. Yeah. I mean, we definitely have like, you know, we're over in Los Angeles and there's a few productions like Light Crafts, which Alex Van Over, we made an episode with them. And you know, they definitely have a big collection. Like in their office, they have this big TV that just plays a giant loop of some of that stuff. And I don't know if it's out there in the public, but it's it's definitely like, wow, you could get that. And what I think is interesting is that there's such a wide variation of footage you can get with in terms of cinema. Yeah. You know, you have like cinna whoops and that kind of style. And then you could do like those long range like cliff dives. Right. And of course, all shapes and forms. It doesn't have to be flippy flops. Right. Right. I think in cinema, it's actually less acrobatic and like freestyle and like, you know, one of the things I'm trying to do here is, I want to learn how to trippy spin. I don't know if I'd ever do that. You would never do that in a movie. But like that's where like, it's interesting being here because there's there's a lot of people able to do these freestyle tricks that I've never really had a chance to practice. Yeah. You know, and even just those simple like dive gates. I'm still struggling doing that because it's it's not something I do too much of with cine lifters. But it's really cool seeing some of the tricks like Maddie flips and stuff like that. It's just like, this is a great place to practice that. But you know, it's it's also very interesting to see just even in the hobby side of FPV, all the different styles of flying there is to, you know, like the micro quads, like there's micro mayhem right over there where you can go in and just fly a tiny thing through all these pipes and little gaps. Like, you know, that's a style on its own where you're just looking for the tiniest gaps and try to get through that clean without bumping into the side. And yeah, what's your favorite type of my favorite type? I like, well, I like freestyle. I do, I do racing. I've done racing. I enjoy racing when I do it, but I don't like actively seek it out. Somebody's really like, go, oh, let's go to a race. And then I have a good time. But I just like freestyle. I like sort of exploring an environment, trying to do tricks and learn to do complicated tricks and become a better pilot. That's my favorite. I like to say that like, I might enjoy being into like gymnastics or dance or parkour, but like clearly I'm not. But with freestyle drone, I can experience that same kind of motion and athleticism without having to go to the hospital at the end of the day when I break an arm. You still get that mental rush. I mean, I have friends that do these crazy motorcycle stunts and he was saying the same thing. Johnny was like, yeah, no, it's, you get the same thrill out of doing these crazy wheelies, motorcycles at 80 miles per hour as they do FDV. And it's like, it's like the mental intensity of like, this requires a hundred percent of your mental focus. It's there and it's very exciting. It's hard to explain until you actually get up in the air and goggles. I get so excited when I see FPV people from sort of the FPV world making it into the bigger world, if you will. So like when Alex Vanover got hired by Michael Bay to be the drone camera operator for the ambulance movie, I was like, whoa, I know that guy. Right. And then you interviewed Michael Bay and I was like, whoa, one of us is getting to like talk to Michael Bay and interview him. What was that like? Yeah, that was a wild experience. So I mean, it's definitely like, got the phone call while we were out in Vegas shooting some stuff. And it's like, well, do you want to, and I think that might have been, I don't know, was it, there was also like a rotor riot thing happening in LA. So I was like, oh yeah, I want to come and hang out. I think it was like a so you were like Michael Bay. And I don't know, but rotor riot. But then as soon as that call gave it, I was just like, oh man, like I did it. Michael Bay and Jake Gyllenhaal and yeah, yeah, like it's like, oh, we got it. We got to take this. So yeah, we went in there and just got to talk to them about FPV drones. And Michael Bay is the type of guy that just gets really excited about stuff like this. It seems like he's really excited. Like here's the thing. I love it when FPV shots are in movies. But I watched ambulance and I was like, there might have been too many FPV shots in this movie. It seemed like he really loved the FPV drones. There's one shot where the camera just sort of tracks across the room and goes over Jake Gyllenhaal's head and he used a drone for that. And I'm like, you didn't need to use a drone for that Michael Bay. He loves it. No, Michael Bay definitely didn't. I think he started somewhat of a trend because there's a lot of movies now with FPV and I think it makes sense because the look you get out of it, it's just, it's so intense. Like if you're doing a car chase, or just trying to show that something's moving fast, I feel like there's just no other way to show like this thing is going fast. You can be going 40 miles per hour and it looks like it feels like you're going 80. Yeah, you're right up in it. Right. Yeah, exactly. And I think that's what's really cool about it is that not only is it fun and really cool, but also it's, you know, great interesting technology that's new, but also just the results you get out of it. It's impossible to replicate in what we've had before. But then once we got started talking about drones, it's like, you know, they're very excited about it. And Jake was started talking about how, you know, his first time working with these FPV drones, like you see a big drone coming at you at that speed and it's like, do I need to get out of the way? And he was talking about how. You might as well get out of the way. Yeah, but it's like, no. And until you realize it's like, no, Alex Vanova is behind those sticks. Then you go, oh, okay. I don't have to worry. Vanny's not going to hurt you. Yeah, exactly. He's got you, Jake. Jake Gyllenhaal, Vanova's got you. Don't you worry. He's going to take care of you. Yeah. Everyone had some really fun stories because it is a new thing to really see. I mean, I don't think we were seeing too much of it in total recent years. You know, most of the technology that are used in film sets right now been around for 100 years. So like I imagine, if you go back to like the first steady cams, right? People might have been, I don't know the history of steady cams, but I imagine it took a while for them to catch on. People are like, what is this? How do I use it? And then it sort of started to catch on. And I think that's where FPV is and drones in general in cinematography. It's at the, we're not quite sure how to use this stage, but it's starting to catch on. And that's pretty exciting. Definitely growing very rapidly. It's for sure. Yeah. What about you? I have to just learn how to not crash it. The most recent scintillifter crash I had, I took off near of I and a little piece of dirt just came here and landed right on the gimbal. And I was just flying towards me and I was like, all right, let off the throttle. And I was like, it's stuck. Oh, no. And I just fell safe. Disarmed. I disarmed it and it just. But better than it coming towards me. But so, you know, I'm learning like, okay, keep your gimbals and controllers clean. You don't want a piece of dirt stuck in there. Someday is what you're saying. Someday, maybe. We'll see. We're going to see you on the stage. Yeah, yeah, that'd be fun. In the meantime, we can see you on your YouTube channel. Of course. Potatojet. Well, of course, we'll have a link in the video description below. Gene, it's been really cool getting to meet you and hang out with you and talk to you for a little while. If anybody out there watching this is a viewer of Gene's and wants to see a little bit more of what FPV has to offer, we're going to put some links in the video description to some Rotorite videos that might help inspire you and hopefully suck you in. And hopefully one of those links down there is the starter kit because what's really cool about that if you're trying to get into it is that they actually do all the firmware updates here for you before they ship it out and they pre-bind it and all that stuff because even if you get a bind and fly, you still have to plug it into Betaflight. Yeah, you don't have to do that with everything. You don't have to do that with one of these Rotorites that sets them up completely. Plug it in and turn it on and try not to crash it right away. I'm Gene from Potato Jet. And I am Joshua Bardwell and you've been watching Rotorite. Like, subscribe, and we will see you in the next one.