Drone Boning

A drone (or unmanned aerial vehicle) is like a small helicopter with a camera on it. Ranging in design from a single-bladed cam-copter to four-bladed multi-copters, they’re predominantly used in special military operations by US and UK troops for missions that are too dangerous for manned aircraft, or for surveillance. Sometimes they have bombs attached to them and are used to vapourise suspected terrorists, over the skies of Iraq or Afghanistan, earning them the nickname 'angels of death'.

However, since drones have moved from being billion dollar purchases for elite military to being available for a few thousand dollars thanks to computing advances, many other industries are capitalising on drone technology and these flying robots are increasingly moving into our daily lives. Analysts expect drones to grow into a $10 billion industry in the next three years alone, which means that UAVs will keep getting better. USA's Department of Homeland Security is using them to crack down on gaming and fishing violations, narcotics trade and illegal immigration, and police forces right here in Australia are using them for civilian law enforcement. Unfortunately for the police, criminals are using them too - watch this TED Talk on drones if you’re interested in how the future might look if madmen start exploiting drones (plus a bunch more TED Talks on drones here).

It’s not all bad news though – drones can be used for good things, too. They’re great for filming sports and large scale events – its entertaining to watch games from above and drones have been used at The Olympics. On a less grand level, hobbyists have been getting into them to make really pretty videos: check out this great one of Burning Man, an arts and music festival.

A Brooklyn-based company, Ghost + Cow, have made a really beautiful, Planet Earth-style nature video entirely shot with drone cameras, panning wide over mountains and vineyards and cliff-faces and forests in San Francisco. But this video’s more artistic than just a nature video - hidden in the forrest floor, and between the rows of grapevines, are a couple of adult porn stars, despoiling the natural terrain on which they lie naked. It’s called… Drone Boning.

Some people are saying this has paved the way for drone porn to be a thing, but with only an accumulated three or four seconds of f--king in the film, it's more artful and slightly tongue-in-cheek than any kind of legitimate genre stab. "We wanted to explore the whole idea of drone privacy and strikes - this idea of 'make porn, not war' Brandon LaGanke of Ghost+Cow told Vice. “It started as a kind of funny commentary on privacy and voyeurism, but it quickly became a conceptual grounding. … The plan was to take beautiful landscapes, and just put people f–king in them."

Watch Drone Boning below: 

Last week's episode of South Park put drones in the spotlight: "We live in a world where privacy is gone, okay?" says Cartman.  "It's just gone, bud. Your weiner, my balls - they're public domain." Watch a clip from it here: