> cool, but more common helicopter shots,

I'm glad they pointed out that a similar shot could have been done via drone. I've been told that drones have made cool aerial sequences available to directors who don't have the budget of SNL's 40th though I'd be interested in learning more.

Photographers were using RC helicopters long before multicopter thingies that people like to call drones for some reason became trendy. These are still around and they have the lift capacity to hoist your 5D or your Red Epic on a pan/tilt rig, unlike most multicopters that can hardly lift a go pro.

That's the issue, this equipment is heavy!

Sure, digital is usually "lighter" but get a DSLR in your hands and you see that even that is not something any drone can carry

Commercial use of drones is generally illegal. If you want to use it for TV or film production, you have to contract with one of six FAA blessed companies. http://www.faa.gov/news/press_releases/news_story.cfm?newsId...

The MPAA is actually doing a lot of good work to help free up restrictive laws on drone use.

He mentioned this in the article: "There are a lot of ways to shoot aerial footage these days; we could fly a DJI Phantom with a GoPro, mount a Dragon to a Freefly Cinestar drone, handhold a MoVI out an open chopper door…or we could just hire the best aerial pilot in New York – Al Cerullo – which is what we did."

My company uses a drone to "scope" land before we build. My first reaction to seeing the video is that we wasted money on a helicopter ride for a 30 sec clip.

A DJI Phantom 2 with the Zenmuse H3-3D and a GoPro 3+ or 4 can take amazingly smooth and high quality footage (example - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRC-8pCCCys ). There are also drones that can fly with DSLRs.

OK Go's "I Won't Let You Go" was filmed entirely using a drone. And as they are wont to do, as a single take.

Thanks for the hint, eventually i stumbled upon the note about Pixelstick in the article, never heard of it before. They had a successful Kickstarter last year, the video briefly introduces the tech and shows many more applications: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/bitbangerlabs/pixelstic... Now I want one!