The Lily Drone’s Crash Landing

by The Editors on January 16, 2017

Remember this Lily video? It was a drone that magically followed you wherever you went and shot epic follow cam footage without anyone at the controls. Yeah, we do, too. And when we first saw it we thought it was a bit of a dream product — great in the promo video, but never something that would actually work. In fact, we never even posted anything about it.

Apparently, many others believed the hype and threw down big money on pre-orders. Unfortunately, things didn’t go well during production of the drone and the company has now closed up shop and is trying to return money to those who pre-ordered. Meanwhile, the San Francisco District Attorney’s office has filed a civil consumer protection suit “alleging the company had intentionally lied to potential customers with its launch video” according to as story in Forbes.

An interesting side note is that legendary snowboard filmer Brad Kremer has been sucked into the story as he was the recipient of emails that are being used as evidence in the case against Lily. 

In an email cited by the lawsuit, Lily CEO Balaresque wrote to Brad Kremer, a video producer who specialized in snowboarding shoots, that shots from the Lily Drone will be using a “Gopro mounted to a Lily prototype. . . . However, we do not feel comfortable telling people that we shot [view from Lily] scenes with a Gopro (because the whole thesis of our product is that you do not need a Gopro),” he continued. “Can you modify a Gopro image in post-processing so that people cannot tell that it was taken from a Gopro…”

According to the story, Kremer declined to discuss the case with Forbes.

Which reminds us: Always beware the drones. . . 

[Link: Forbes via Boing Boing]

 

{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }

a January 16, 2017 at 6:44 pm

#dronelyfe

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