First-year Shock: Crash landing

Frat guys are great. They have unmatched positive energy. They smile, they laugh, they always have fun.

Frat guys are also destructive creatures. During my second weekend at Miami University, I experienced this firsthand.

I’ve been doing professional videography for years. I spend a lot of my free time filming and editing content for weddings, businesses, concerts, sports games and more. It’s a creative outlet for me, and I’m lucky enough to make money from it.

As I’ve built my business over the last few years, I have reinvested money into equipment. This includes multiple cameras, stabilizers, tripods, audio equipment and more. One of my most important purchases was my drone. Without it, I’d lose a critical aspect of my filmmaking ability.

During my second weekend at college, I was hired to do aerial videography for a frat party. They already had videography covered from the ground, but they thought adding drone footage would make the video more interesting. I showed up, set my gear up and got started.

After filming almost every conceivable angle of this outdoor party, I let my drone sit still and hover over the crowd to turn it to face a waterslide they had set up. The goal was for one of my last shots of the day to be people’s reactions to the fun the waterslide brought. From the air, this looked even better.

After hovering for almost a minute, I looked up at the drone to eventually reposition it. It was then that I watched a half-full beer can be rifled at my drone from directly below it. Not tossed, not thrown, but rifled.

It was a direct impact — and an amazing throw, I must admit.

The drone was no match for the heavy can, and it spiraled out of control, landing right next to the waterslide. There, the water had been splashed all day onto the sand that surrounded it, and my drone was now the product of wet sand and power electronics mixing together.

My drone did not survive the impact and the wet sand.

First full week of college. One drone down.

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Logan Murray is a first-year from Cleveland, Ohio, double majoring in marketing alongside media and communication. He also produces professional videography for his own production company in his spare time.

murrayl9@miamioh.edu