TIME magazine teamed up with Intel to send 958 drones into the sky to recreate the magazine’s logo and border for its June issue, titled “The Drone Age.” The cover image was also shot by a drone, a first in TIME’s 95-year history.
The shoot happened on May 3, and the drones measured 100 meters tall (around 328 feet) and hovered over Folsom, California.
If these Intel drones sound familiar, they’re the same ones that were used in the opening ceremony of the 2018 Winter Olympics and in Lady Gaga’s Super Bowl halftime show last year.
As you would expect, coordinating almost 1,000 drones was no easy task.
“The major challenge of this particular animation is the height at which we have to fly and getting the resolution that we want in the the time that we want,” said Tim Health, Intel’s animation lead in a behind-the-scenes video. “So normally we like to keep the drones about three-meters apart from another. This time, we were a bit limited on space so we had to confine that down to 1.5 meters.”
Learn more about what went into the drone shoot in the video below:
This special edition issue hit newsstands on June 1.
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Emily has written for some of the top tech companies, covering everything from creative copywriting to UX design. When she's not writing, she's traveling the world (next stop: Japan!), brewing kombucha, and biking through the Pacific Northwest.
