Behind the Goggles: PShaw

We met up with Patrick Shaw, aka P-Shaw, on the Freestyle course at the New York City Drone Film Festival to talk quads, editing and the advantages of living in the South.

“I would never, in a million years, step outside in this weather right now and fly. I mean, yeah I’m at this event I’m going to do it but this is absolutely miserable. I am not used to this weather.”

Patrick’s a Southern Boy. He’s originally from Atlanta but lives in Raleigh with his wife and 9 month old son.

“Tell me about your fam. Are they pretty supportive, do they like watching you fly, do they like watching your videos? I mean, a nine month old doesn’t really have a lot to say about it.”

“He think’s I’m awesome. He thinks I’m the best.”

“They like that I have something that I’m super passionate about, because a lot of
people don’t have that. They just go through life…”

“Sleepwalking.”

“Exactly.”

Luckily for him, he’s pretty close to the FPV hotbed of Atlanta where plenty of other well-known pilots share his passion.

“I grew up in Atlanta, I live in Raleigh, so all of those guys – ya know when I was trying to find spots to fly I just linked up with them. Ya know, Phil, Kevin, Steele, Jon, Nick, all those guys they’re just obsessed just like I was. I was trying to find really cool spots and I could go there and they would already have it all planned out. ‘We’re gonna hit this spot, this spot, and this spot,’ so there was no scouting for spots. It was just easy to jump in there and know we were going to have a good day.”

“What are some of your favorite places you’ve taken the quad out?”

“If I had to pick one location it would probably be the office complex in Atlanta. It’s got an open middle and all these other little places. It’s just – it’s super nice, there’s so much to do there that you can be really creative in there. No matter where you are or where your camera is facing it’s going to look awesome.”

Patrick was one of the first FPV pilots to upload videos to AirVūz, well before he was an AirVūz sponsored pilot. His reasoning for joining the community?

“For me it was just simple, because you look at YouTube versus AirVūz, YouTube is going to compress it. It’s going to get artifacts and images that don’t look as nice. You upload to AirVūz and put them side by side, it’s pretty apparent that it’s a better end result. So for me it was a no brainer.”

“Tell me about one of your favorite videos that’s on AirVūz.”

“It’s not because it’s like the coolest spot or the best flying but the most recent video I uploaded that’s like in this back alley park. I just got a new quad, I got it tuned really well. Normally I flew bottom mount batteries now I flew with it on the top because everybody says it flies better that way. When you look at the footage it’s really clean and there’s no bobbles or bad tendencies so for me that was cool because it was a one take video from start to finish. It’s the best looking footage I’ve gotten.”

“How important is post production to you?”

“Honestly, I try to do as little post production as possible. I hate editing with a
passion. I used to like it, I mean it comes in waves. I just don’t like sitting in front of the computer for 8 hours, so ideally what I’m trying to do now is get a nice, one take shot video that’s just start to finish where I can say ‘Look, I took off, here’s my flight I land.’ Really though I’d spend multiple days trying all this fancy editing and techniques and it wouldn’t get any traction at all. Then I’d throw something up that was like one take, just a quick not much editing, and it just like exploded.”

Patrick doesn’t like to edit, but he says he can be a little neurotic when it comes to flying as smooth as possible.

“You’ll see some videos where people fly into a building then come off and flip around or not look fluid. It’s creating a seamless flow from start to finish and I’m super hyper critical of stuff like that. This littlest, tiniest thumb twitch that nobody would notice in the video, people would be like ‘what are you talking about’ and I’m like ‘look right here.’ It’s just a little tick but I’ve gotten really weird about things like that.”

“Is this a freeing experience for you then, because it sounds like sometimes it’s not for you because you’re super concerned about how it’s looking.”

“Sometimes I go to a new location and I’ve got all these ideas in my head about what I want it to look like. And it would be so cool if I can just get it right, but I’ll have an off day and I’m like ‘come on just get it right.’ Just the whole thing from start to finish just doesn’t like fit fluidly but it just depends. Some days I go out with buddies and to me that’s the most fun because we’re just hanging out and making cool videos. But in some instances when I’m really trying and I’m like ‘I gotta go out here. I gotta make a video in this spot,’ sometimes it can be stressful. But, that’s stupid and I don’t even know why I’m saying this it sounds dumb.”

“But it’s true, people expect something of you. Even today people asked to take a picture with you and you want to put out your best work.”

“That’s just like today, I mean people are like it’s so nice to meet you I watch all of your videos. Then I’m flying all over the place and blowing up my quad. I exploded my GoPro but it happens. It sucks sometimes because it’s like, that’s not what it looks like at home on my big screen but there’s a lot of takes that go into it.”

“It’s like social media, all you see is the glitter and gold.”

“Exactly, it’s all fake HAHAHA.”