Alexander Hotz’s “Take the Window Seat” won the top prize at the 2016 Flying Robot International Film Festival. Shot mostly using a Phantom 3 and a DJI Phantom 4, the drone poetry video features Tom Waits reading Charles Bukowski’s poem “The Laughing Heart.” Illustrating the narration are clips taken above seven countries: The U.S., Thailand, Indonesia, Singapore, Myanmar, and Sri Lanka.

Alexander Hotz is  a filmmaker and journalist. Most of his shoots are for journalistic stories, but he also has directed many travel and commercial pieces in locations all across the world. He’s covered a wide range of subjects including sporting events, speed boats, large political rallies at night, dense cities, vast forests, and fires. To learn more about his work, visit fairvoyagefilms.com.

Hotz’s poetry video can thought of us as an offshoot of music videos. In both genres, video is used to enhance the experience of previously created literary works, poems or songs. The roots of music videos extend back further, to the earliest days of sound movies. The modern form was developed in the 1970s, with the first MTV video—”Video Killed The Radio Star”—debuting on August 1, 1981. Business Insider presents a short history along with the ground-breaking video here.

 

The Flying Robot International Film Festival (FRiFF) is the premiere competitive international film festival focused on aerial cinema created from the POV of drones.

If you’d like to share your own drone video or poetry video, let us know by emailing info@mobilemoviemaking.com

“Take the Window Seat” was chosen a Mobile Movie of the Week by the editors of MobileMovieMaking.com.