This is a 4K remastered version of my short film “Koh Yao Noi,” which I originally published 10 years ago.

This version has been upscaled from 2.7K using Topaz Video AI. I also used it to fix many of the stabilisation/ rolling shutter issues caused by the drone. I tweaked a couple of the edits and toned down the grade from the original using Film Convert Nitrate. I also added film grain and a touch of diffusion using their halation add-on.

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I am still very happy with the original edit; it will always be the main version. I just wanted to mark the 10th anniversary by making it look better, which I feel I have achieved. This is one of the films I am most proud of making. With the drones we have now, I wouldn’t have needed to go through all the work of making it look better, nor would I have had all the technical problems. Drones have come a long way in 10 years! Here’s some more information about the gear and the filming: Koh Yao Noi is a small island in Thailand.

I filmed this whilst on my holiday there. Initially, I was just going to use drone shots alongside my GH4 shots, but the footage was so unique that I made this standalone edit. I used two DJI Phantom 2s with a GoPro Hero 3+ shooting in 2.7K, attached to the drone with the Zen Muse 3-axis gimbal. The video quality wasn’t great, as many of the shots had many issues with rolling shutter ripples. Monitoring the shots was also very hard. One Phantom 2 had an awful FPV monitor, which I could barely see anything on, and the other had nothing, so I was flying purely by line of sight, which is tricky for composition! I had to do a lot of work in post to fix the issues and make it as good as possible. The film got a fantastic reception and, to date, has had 759,000 views on Vimeo.

There is a lot less on YouTube on this channel, but GoPro also uploaded it to their channel, with 1.2 million views. One day, I hope one of my videos on this channel will break 1 million views! The film also helped me land “The Wonder List” TV series for CNN, which I filmed all over the world for the first two seasons; then, during the filming of season 3, I badly injured my back, which meant I couldn’t continue anymore. In March 2015, I entered the film into the 1st New York City Drone Film Festival, and it won the “Best Travel/Landscape” category. Thank you to all the judges who voted for it. Music from Music Bed http://gopb.co/musicbed Gatlin Elms “For we never knew your beauty.”