Star Wars Producers Want a 'DroneShield' To Prevent Leaks On Set
Jason Koebler writes Over the last couple of weeks, people have been flying drones over Pinewood Studios, where Star Wars Episode VII is being filmed. That made waves last week, but, perhaps most interestingly, the studio ordered a "DroneShield" back in June anticipating the drone problem. According to the company, a DroneShield can provide email and SMS warnings if it detects a helicopters or drone. In any case, the folks over at DroneShield say that Pinewood Studios never actually got the product: The State Department keeps close tabs on products like these that are shipped overseas, and the company's export application still hasn't gone through.
Just declaring a no fly zone and then getting an amplifier strong enough to interupt all radio frequencies to down the drones before they get close enough would be better than "o it sends you a text" "yeah only £50,0000 such a bargain"
"if it detects a helicopters or drone"
DELETE MY ACCOUNT
They need to deploy some satellites over their set to shoot down any incoming bogies.
...so I'm going to disrupt filming of the new movie! Can you imagine how much it costs to do one take of a scene in this movie? "CUT! Fuck. Reset the $10,000 per shot animatronic thingy. There's a drone in the shot."
If at first you don't succeed, destroy all evidence that you tried.
It detects it via sound? I wonder how accurate it is.
Begun they have.
"Send in the drones!" Why not fight drones with drones? Cheaper than a stupid "drone shield" that sends you a text, probably without enough time to do anything.
Throw in a few old-tech barrage balloons (even weather balloons will do) trailing netting (even helicopters will avoid that), some really high-powered water and potato cannons, and the odd trebuchet filled with flaming dung or politicians (same diff), and "The Making of Star Wars Episode VII" becomes more than just filler.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Hire a couple of rednecks with shotguns to stand guard. Payment in beer and high cholesterol food.
If drones can delay the filming that's probably the most legitimate use for the damned things.
They're overthinking the problem. It's in Georgia. All's ya need to do is give BillyBob's thousand-year-old grampy a decent slingshot and a bucket of marbles, and tell him you'll pay him $250 every time he can hit one of those tiny little gummint spy planes.
Better yet, get him to tell his fishing buddies about the prize, and his buddies, etc... until you have a low level permeation thru the community. Just remember to pay 'em (and pay out of the set's lunch fund on an obfuscated line item that says something suitably snarky like "humble pie" or "tasty crow".) Oh, and tell 'em old guys: you can't eat what you catch, but you can resell the parts on ebay.... :)
I think not...(*poof*)
This makes me wonder how the White House and other high-profile government locations' security staffs deal with this issue. It's got to be a problem there as well, probably moreso as a drone could be armed, not just doing movie set recon. I have to think that there must have been recent incidents, but I've not seen any news accounts.
people who publish spoilers? They have ruined modern movies by constantly posting pictures and stories from movies before they're released. We get it. You hate Star Wars and want to ruin it for everyone. The legal system should be used to put a stop to that. We all know that Republicans hate entertainment, and no one is stopping them from leaking all of this media that has already ruined the next Star Wars movie.
Hire a few veterans with sniper training (or hunters if you can't find them) to sit on the edges of the set with 30.06 rifles. Perfectly legal to shoot down an unauthorized drone that intentionally flies onto your property to do surveillance in most states.
These aren't the drones you're looking for.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
What do they want these laser turrets for?
Begun The Drone War Has
Who logs in to gdm? Not I, said the duck.
Barrage balloons. String some blimps up on cables around the property, hang nets from the cables. It's legal, passive, safe - and only the most skilled of drone pilots could reliably navigate the maze without getting their rotors tangled. Plus the studio gets some free drones - somehow I don't imagine many of the pilots will be asking for their return.
"These are not the drones you are looking for.."
404 Not Found: No such file or resource as '.sig'
The problem is to find those drones in the first place, especially if they're coming in low and slow, or high enough to be out of slingshot range.
The "droneshield" thingy seems to tackle the problem by analysing ambient sounds. From the webpage the article refers to:
So it tells you if it hears a drone buzzing nearby, which is useful, ... but it doesn't (yet) do target-acquisition for BillyBob's anti-drone-slingshot batteries.
The drones are so small they're avoiding the turbo lasers.
They'll have to destroy them ship to ship.
One could use a radar system coupled with a low power laser pointer and a decent aiming computer. Like a CIWS, only with a blinding laser instead of a 20mm gatling gun. Prevents pictures from being taken, doesn't risk destroying anything.
Or they could just use the gatling gun instead and utterly obliterate the offending drone
"Send in the drones!" Why not fight drones with drones?
I feel like a way better attack vector would be a computer controlled kite. Between a string reaching all the way to the ground almost invisible to see, and a bunch of long streaming tails from the kite to foul rotors - you could do pretty well, if you can find the drone.
I would think though it would be more effective to hire goons to hang around anywhere open and with a line of sight to the area over the filming. Kind of a different take on the XKCD $5 wrench encryption cracking strategy.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
That should do.
I would guess these drones are not flying LOS, therefore disrupting video and telemetry would make it very difficult for a drone operator to effectively maneuver, make any interesting video, and even return the drone back to safety.
This is in the UK, where there are clear legal requirements if you want to operate a drone. People can be and have been prosecuted for violating them.
So it is highly unlikely that any such drones were flying without LOS at close range or that they would be used by any reputable commercial surveillance firm without permission. As the cases mentioned above demonstrate, someone who violates the rules may well wind up in court with a hefty fine, and the authorities aren't going to look sympathetically on any excuses about losing control of the aircraft or being somewhere it shouldn't be accidentally.
By the way, responding to drones by disrupting frequencies using jammers as you suggested would, as a minimum, probably land you in hot water with the communications regulators yourself.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Take a look at the video. The drone is at least 1000 feet up. If it's painted dull colors, you probably can't even see it from the ground.
in the words of William Shatner, "Get a life".
Posting to message boards is costing you time when instead you too could be making $85 / hour. Stupid bots.
I am a crack shot and if I can see it I am going to shoot it down.
Send up a few x-wings after them?
Give me a fucking break, who gives a damn shit. It's not a cure, it's not a super galactic spaceship, it's not cold fusion, it's just a fucking movie that will end up on DVD for $19.
I sense a business opportunity here: killer drones!
These would be designed to go after and knock down the hovering picture-snapping kind, which would be easy pickings. The killer drones don't need to hover - they fly faster than the hovering kind and just go straight at 'em. Some kind of netting or framework to snag and entangle the drone rotors perhaps. Option of either hauling it back as evidence, or in true bird of prey fashion just applying a "killing blow" and letting it fall to the ground. Developing different kill mechanisms should be fun. Robot wars in the air!
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
Why could someone theoretically not just launch a balloon outside the shield perimeter with a zoom lens capable of looking in on this?
Also, why are people going to such lengths for spoilers? To me, a true fan is someone who is willing to wait for the full experience with the wonder of not knowing ahead of time how things are going to pan out.
How about we stop caring about the damn franchise and stop giving them free advertising for every form of social media?
They wouldn't have to deal with export restrictions if they would just film in the USA. It is likely this movie's credits will end much like most other recent movies with a statement that "production and legal distribution of this film resulted in over 10,000 jobs." However, they refuse to give a break down on the exact details of those 10,000 jobs. How many of them are domestic? How many are overseas? What is the average hourly income across all those jobs?
It is upsetting to keep being hit with statements how much Hollywood helps the economy when the VFX industry in the USA has crashed. There is more visual effects used in movies than ever before but less of it is actually done at home even if the movie was filmed in the USA.
If the MPAA wants to pat itself on the back for all the jobs they create, then maybe they should also be required to put "Made in China" (India, Korea, Ukraine, etc) just like all other products.
The truth is, they don't mind jobs being stolen away from the USA, they just don't like when someone other than them is doing the "stealing." Americans are no longer hired for high skilled tasks like visual effects, but at least part of those 10,000 jobs are taking the ticket stubs at minimum wage! Great job MPAA!
Sorry Disney, you don't own the airspace. If you want to be outdoors in private, you build a fence. If there's a building or hill with a view of your property, oh well. Someone wants to fly over the property? Oh well. If you want privacy of that nature, film indoors or use a tarp of some kind. You have no right to stop people from exercising their rights, and you have no right to privacy if you can be seen from a public location.
This is one of the main reasons for the push to limit drone operation in the U.S. It has nothing to do with public safety, it has everything to do with corporate secrecy.
--- Keep the choice with the user..
I'm somewhat a Star Wars fan... and I'm like most people - I may have a passing curiosity on the developments in the movie, and might click a link here and there, but for the most part, I don't really care about every little inner workings of the movie, which is still very much in development. Even if I saw a X-Wing fighter.. and gasped that there will be X-Wing fighters in the movie... it doesn't really mean anything at this point because no one really knows the whole storyboard and plot of the movie. If anything these drones are giving the movie additional free advertising that can't be bought, but if you think this in any way will spoil the movie when it's released is ludicrous at best.
Erect a giant Jar Jar, then the fanboys will be all pissed and lose interest in snooping. Solved!
Table-ized A.I.
I thought the apocryphal story of Taliban marksmanship was the discovery of a weakness in Mi-24 "Hind" helicopter tails or tail rotors. The Taliban would then mass fire from their Lee-Enfields on this spot, bringing down the Hinds.
Bob`s a neighbour with a semi-automatic, double-barrel, under-over, 12 gauge shotgun.
Bob likes to shoot quail, duck, skeet, highway signs, and drones.
I asked Bob, ``How can you shoot someone`s expensive drone?"
He replied, " Easy. You just have to lead 'em a little more."
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
Since apk made you "Run, Forrest: RUN" from proving his points wrong http://slashdot.org/comments.p... on hosts files massive superiority to adblock, which you FAILED in doing, troll sockpuppetmaster that you are BarbaraHudson http://slashdot.org/~BarbaraHu... = http://slashdot.org/~tomhudson... + http://slashdot.org/~Barbara%2...
Since she has 3 we know of (many more too) http://slashdot.org/~BarbaraHu... = http://slashdot.org/~tomhudson... + http://slashdot.org/~Barbara%2...
I would hope that they need import permits for anything beyond a passive monitor.
As for all the idiots suggesting signal jammers and even GPS blockers, no chance. It's doubtful that you would get away with using them in most of your own country although big money is more effective there. In this country, even big money finds it harder. You would need some help from the police at least but would be a little more likely to succeed if you had military or spook help.
I'll see your Constitution and raise you a Queen.
Not viable in civilised countries.
I'll see your Constitution and raise you a Queen.
APK, you are the dumbest troll ever to haunt Slashdot. May you rot in internet hell.
Now that ever body's dun told ya how stoopid ya are, how's that there crow taste, ya redneck hatin bastard!
The Rebel Alliance will deactivate it...
I'd think a modified shotgun shell (or a compressed air version for the UK) stuffed with fine netting with a few weights attached would easily be able to take down any drones flying at less than 30 meters or so. Japan developed such a "spiderman-gun" for holligans in the Nagano Olympics years ago. For higher-flying drones, an anti-drone drone that could drop a net from above would also work. In either case, though, you'd have drones falling from the sky.
Not viable in civilised countries.
So, it'll work in America?
This is a good example why drones should be banned.. Now it's trying to get some eyes on filming of a big budget movie, but drones can (and are) also be used to peeping tom..
Whenever I see a drone over my property, it'll receive a nice buckshot.. Oh sorry I've mistaken it for my claypigeon..
Drones are nothing more than an RC airplane, and where I live you cannot fly those over populated area's, only on special assigned area's (mostly farmland)..
Because people can fly a simple drone with a camera now, doesn't mean people should be allowed to..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
If you are not from the USA, that would be a pretty tactless thing to say here.
If you are from the USA, be careful where you say that.
I'll see your Constitution and raise you a Queen.
Don't worry, it's a joke.