Arriving on location at Mosaic Stadium at the start of the 7:00 PM to 4:00 AM shoot, Java Post's Randy Shumay took the rare opportunity to stand at centre field on the 55-yard line (yes, American friends, the 55-yard line) and do his best Russell Crowe Gladiator impersonation to the West-side stands: "Are you not entertained?!?"

As this shoot would be a combination of aerial and ground-based photography, here we see our Java Post Aerial Photography flight crew, Trevor Bennett and Jack Tunnicliffe, ready the two different UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles, AKA "drones") that we would use for the aerial portion of this project. Java Post operates a squadron of four different UAV units, each one having different advantages, depending on the requirements of the shot or project. Pictured above are a white DJI Inspire 1 quadcopter and a customized DJI S900 hexacopter.

A closer look at our customized DJI S900 hexacopter, sitting on its high-tech landing mat. Low tech as the welcome mat landing pad may be, it actually serves a practical purpose. It gives clients, crew, and onlookers a defined area of avoidance, it gives our UAV pilot a specific target for landings, and it also helps reduce dirt or debris (in this case, small rubber pellets in the artificial turf) from being blown up into the unit from the prop wash.

As sun sets, our UAV takes to the air. Java Post Aerial Photography is fully certified to operate UAVs at night. However, strangely enough, this shoot was not officially considered an actual night flight, as it was conducted in a confined, artificially-lit area.

As we do for nearly all our projects, we shot 4K Ultra HD footage, which was then trans-coded down to standard HD for broadcast and web use.

Hovering at rooftop level, the green and red operational lights on the UAV made us wonder if the people in the neighbouring houses might phone in a UFO report to the local authorities. Of course, all the local authorities had already been alerted of our flight plans well in advance, so, if there was a UFO in the vicinity, it wasn't us.

Here's an image from the finished commercial, which was shot with our UAV positioned right behind a light tower in the Southeast corner of the stadium, looking towards the West-side stands. One thing to note in this shot is that, when we shot it, the lights at the top of the West-side stands weren't actually turned on. They were turned off on purpose to avoid light glaring into the camera lens. Our Java Post animators, Kevin Drysdale and Tomás Ibar, added the West-side stadium lights after the footage was shot.

Here's an aerial view from the Southeast corner of the stadium, looking north along the East-side stands. Depending on the position of our cameras (both in the air and on the ground) we turned the various stadium lights on and off to achieve our designed lighting "look," which was then enhanced in our colour-correction suite.

Our Director of Photography, Layton Burton, looking surprisingly chipper, considering the lateness of the hour. Must be all the coffee. Or perhaps his shoes. Looking at those would shock anyone awake.

The visiting team tunnel under the West-side stands, looking out towards the field. This is how it looked in real life...

...and this is how it looked in the finished commercial... visually haunting and imbued with moments and memories echoing down the decades. (Sorry, that's how film people talk. We're a strange bunch.)

So, you find yourself in the end zone of a football stadium and you want to take a low angle shot. But putting your motorized camera slider right on the turf is too low. What you need is some kind of improvised platform that's just a few inches tall. Thinking quickly, you borrow a couple of the red rubber pylons that mark the end zone corners and, as they say, "Robert is your mother's brother."

In a stairwell beneath the East-side stands, Randy rapidly readies our Ronin rig.

Say what you will about the old wooden benches on the East side of Mosaic Stadium, but they sure have rugged character on camera.

This was a raw image we shot that didn't make the final cut of the commercial. Viewed with a poetic eye, this has almost a "concrete catherdral" look to it.

And the answer to the age-old question of "How many crew members and advertising agency representatives does it take to help Randy line up a simple low angle shot of a concrete ramp?" is, apparently, five.

Another example of Java Post's on-the-spot photographic engineering: an angled camera platform constructed of a plastic soft drink tray and a scrap piece of wood, both of which we just found laying nearby.

The view from the camera, looking up the West-side pedestrian ramp...

...and the shot as it appeared in the final commercial.

The final image began as real-time UAV footage taken by Java Post Aerial Photography, which was then handed over to our Java Post Production animators, who added the stadium lights (which weren't turned on when the footage was shot), erased the existing construction cranes, and created and positioned the 3D model of the new Mosaic Stadium in the distance.

If the new Mosaic Stadium currently being constructed looks this good as a piece of 3D animation, we can't wait to see it as an actual piece of 3D architecture. Go Riders!