Hankook Dynapro: An Inspire 3 Through the Canopy Ahead of a Bronco

On a wooded trail in an off-road park in the Northeast, a blue Ford Bronco was running through mud at speed. Ahead of it, a DJI Inspire 3 was flying in reverse, framing the windshield, holding one car length out front. The trees on either side were close enough that at the narrowest passes the props were clipping leaves, and the canopy overhead was tight enough that we were threading the kind of gap most crews would have brought an FPV rig to fly.

That run is the part of drone car commercial filming that never appears on a storyboard, and it is the reason this post exists. The campaign was Hankook Tire’s Dynapro “Built without Limits” spot, shot in 2025 for Heavy Metal Concepts with Will Gentile directing and shooting. Will has been telling stories in the off-road automotive world for a long time, and this shoot went the way his shoots tend to go: the day delivered more than the call sheet promised.

The boards asked for mud. The location offered a reveal.

The boards called for what most car commercials call for. A Bronco doing Bronco things: off-road runs, mud on the lens, the standard angles. We had those covered.

What was not on the boards was the canopy fly-through. There had been no scout day, and the crew was four people. When you walk a location without a pre-vis, you start seeing the shots the location wants to give you, and Will and I saw the same one at the same time. A trail through the trees with a canopy that opened and closed over a road just wide enough for a vehicle. Run a drone through it ahead of the car at top speed and you do not just have a tracking shot. You have a reveal, and a reveal is an edit decision made in the field.

Doing an FPV’s job with an Inspire 3

The conventional tool for a shot like this is a small FPV rig: a light aircraft flown by feel, quick to react, and easy to accept a risk with. Its footage then has to be matched in the grade to whatever the rest of the spot was shot on.

We were on a DJI Inspire 3, the cinema platform we had been shooting the rest of the day on. The Inspire 3 is a large aircraft, expensive, and it does not turn on a dime. Asking it to fly at its top speed through a closing and opening canopy with no margin for error is not the safe-looking call, and the production was nervous about the gear. The trade we were making was platform forgiveness for image continuity: one clean take on the cinema platform was worth more to the edit than several takes on a rig whose footage would need matching. The canopy run cuts against the rest of the spot because it was shot on the same sensor with the same color science.

The run, pass by pass

We walked the trail first. We moved a couple of branches that posed real problems. Then we ran it.

Run one was a feel-out, below the platform’s top speed, to map where the canopy tightened and where it opened to roughly twice the Bronco’s width, where I had to drop under a low branch and climb again to clear a higher one. The Bronco paced me at a consistent following distance, which is the geometry that makes this kind of shot work: the drone leads at maximum speed, the picture car matches it and holds the gap.

Each pass after that we pushed the speed. By the third or fourth pass I was at the platform’s top speed for the entire length of the trail, reacting to the canopy as it arrived rather than from memory. At the narrowest moments the leaves moved before the aircraft did. The takes were close to identical because the Bronco’s pace held the geometry. What changed from run to run was confidence in the line. By the final pass we had a take that was clean from the entrance to the canopy break.

The reveal is what made the shot

What made the run more than a fast tracking shot was the way the road ended. The trail closed in tight, then broke open at a vista. We led the Bronco through the last of the canopy, popped through the break, and the frame opened onto the whole landscape we had just come through: trees, mud, sky, the road behind us, all of it in one wide shot after the constriction of the run. That is the cut that became one of the outro beats of the spot.

When we played the take back at the truck, nobody said anything for the length of the canopy run. The room held its breath through the trees the way a viewer does, then let it out at the reveal. The audience reaction was already built into the footage.

What this says about how we work

On most days the shot is the shot on the boards. The producer paid for it, the storyboard artist drew it, the DP planned the lens, and the operator delivers it. That is the job, and we deliver every shot on every call sheet.

What we also bring is an editor’s eye on the shoot day. We spotted the canopy because we were both thinking about how the spot would cut, not only about what was on the page. We shoot end to end, so we know what will hold up in an edit; we talk about color profiles before the first run, and we recommend resolutions and frame rates that fit the post pipeline. When we see something the boards did not, we raise it before we shoot it. The crew is small, light, and nimble, which is how a four-person unit sees a shot and captures it without breaking the schedule.

There is one category of request we decline: anything that poses a significant safety risk. Everything else, our default is to find a way.

What to know before you scope a shot like this

• Walk the course. The narrowest gap sets the speed; a branch that can be moved should be moved before the first pass, not after a strike.
• Pace the picture car to the drone, not the other way around. The car matches the aircraft’s top speed and holds the gap; the geometry of the shot depends on that distance staying constant.
• Build speed across passes. The first pass maps the line at reduced speed. Each pass adds speed only after the line is clean.
• Decide what the footage has to cut against. If the rest of the day is on a cinema platform, an FPV rig buys reaction time and costs matching time in the grade. Sometimes that trade is right. On this day it was not.
• Give the operator a veto. Our only hard no is a significant safety risk. Everything else is a conversation about how.

Questions producers ask

Can a cinema drone do a shot that is usually flown FPV?

Sometimes. The Inspire 3 is larger and slower to react than an FPV rig, so the line has to be walked and rehearsed rather than improvised. Where the gap allows it, the cinema platform’s footage cuts against the rest of the spot without a matching pass in the grade, which is why we made the call here.

How many takes does a run like the canopy fly-through take?

On this shoot, three or four passes of increasing speed before a clean take at the platform’s top speed. The number depends on the line, the light, and how consistently the picture car holds its distance; the passes exist to build confidence in the line, not to fix the geometry.

What does the drone unit need from production for a tracking shot ahead of a car?

A driver who can hold a constant gap at speed, radio contact between the car and the aircraft, and time to walk the route. A scout day helps; this shoot did not have one, and the crew size is what made the discovery usable on the day.

Who decides whether a shot that is not on the boards gets flown?

The director and the operator together, on the day, with the operator holding the safety veto. We raise the shot, explain the risk and the trade, and fly it only when both sides want it.

Where to go from here

The finished spot is on YouTube: Hankook Dynapro “Built without Limits”. Our aerial cinematography for commercials page covers how the unit works on a commercial day, and the post on director-led commercial production covers what director-led shops ask of aerial that agency shoots do not. If you are scoping a campaign with a car in it, send the location, the picture car, and the boards, and we will tell you what is flyable, on which platform, and where the reveal might be: book a consultation.