via Youtube
Bryant-Lake Bowl
When Anthony Jaska set out to direct a drone shot of Bryant Lake Bowl, it was not intended to be a commercial for the Uptown staple. Merely a way to tell a story through the eyes of a first-person view drone. Jaska told Kare 11, “It's taking a traditional storytelling and putting new technology behind it. There's no cuts. It's a one-take, no CG."
The drone flies throughout the entirety of Bryant Lake Bowl. Starting outside, it makes its way through the restaurant, the cabaret theater, behind the bowling lanes, and gets up close and personal with the bowling pins – all the while picking up pieces of conversations from patrons and staff. The drone even survived what looks like a serious crash at the end of the video.
After five practice runs and 10 or so takes with the camera on, drone operator Jay Christensen of Rally Studios, nailed it. A clean, one take shot where the only thing added in post-production was the dialogue. The shot, titled “Right Up our Alley,” has now been viewed over 5 million times on Twitter and over 475,000 on YouTube.
The video was shot as a part of a project to document iconic Minnesotan businesses that have been threatened with closure by the pandemic. In 1936, Bryant Lake Bowl was converted from a Ford garage to a bowling alley. In 1993, the cabaret was added and BLB quickly became an Uptown fixture. Brian Heimann, a producer at Rally Studios, told The New York Times that Bryant Lake Bowl is, “near and dear to our hearts.” When they pitched the idea to owner Erica Gilbert, she was all for it.
And it certainly wasn’t intended to be noticed by Hollywood.
James Gunn, the director and screenwriter behind Guardians of the Galaxy and Suicide Squad, shared a tweet with the drone shot, calling it “stupendous.” Gunn also requested that whoever shot the video come to London in the fall to work on Guardians of the Galaxy vol. 3. Lee Unkrich, director of Oscar winning films Coco and Toy Story 3, said the video was, “One of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen.”
