Pedro Pimentel is the brilliant mind, and hands, behind the viral footage of the Wānaka flooding that dominated Facebook pages. The Wānaka Sun spoke to him about his drones, the idea that started it all and what we can expect from Pimentel in the future going forwards.

Pimentel first began an interest in photography at age five, taking after his father. This passion only grew with time; as a teenager Pimentel convinced his high school to install a dark room and at age 18 received his first digital camera which he used to document his travels around South America. His second love is outdoor sports, and he soon found himself creating and selling imagery for climbing magazines. Eventually Pimentel started moving more into video and moving images, finally starting his own production company, formally Pedro Pimentel Visuals, now Katalyst Media. He moved to Wānaka permanently in 2015 after realising its bountiful opportunities for outdoor activities and began working full time for his business. 

He's been working with drones with 2013 but insists “I'm not just the drone guy, but I am very known as that.” Pimentel is quick to praise drone technology with its portability, cost and ease. “Before drones, you'd need to pay for a helicopter, a special helicopter camera, time, preparation and it was so time consuming, you wouldn't get the diversity you get with a drone today.” He admits that drones aren't the solution for everything, as laws require special permits to fly around town or DOC land. Despite this, it's clear to see the sheer versatility of drones in Pimentel's videos. 

He first stumbled upon the idea for filming the floods when he wanted to help move a friends boat that was getting swamped with water. He admits he didn't quite realise the extent of the flooding until he was up to his waist in it: “I was just thinking, wow, people should see this, they should probably move their boats,” and decided to use his skills to help warn people about the water levels. Pimentel's partner pushed him to make the most of the opportunity to create a more professional video and he uploaded his first drone footage to Facebook. He admits that in the back of his mind, about 15 percent of him thought it could be beneficial to his brand, but mostly he created the footage because he enjoyed filming with his drones and creating something beautiful. 

Pimentel wasn't planning on doing more than one video, but soon started receiving hordes of messages asking for more, from both Wānaka residents and NZ expats following the story overseas. His videos soon took off, receiving more than 70,000 views on one episode. Although he's grateful for the brand exposure, he also describes himself as “tired” and was happy when the flood died down. 

“It was taking a lot of time, it took about two or three hours to film, and then two or three to edit. Most days I went to bed at four or five o'clock in the morning.” Although struggling with the long days, Pimentel was determined to do his best and ride the wave of his newfound popularity, but his perfectionism meant each episode took longer and longer to shoot. He's surprised at how quickly the videos took off, but also notes that the attention died down in a surprising way, with his last video only receiving 15,000 views. This, however, he admits is still pretty incredible considering his earlier videos would struggle to push past 1-2000. Grateful at the reaction, Pimentel says that as an artist, “You want to reach people, you want to connect with people, and I did have a lot of connections, a lot of conversations, more conversations than I could actually keep track off.” 

Looking forward to the future, Pimentel is toying with the idea of releasing a coffee table book for next year, but first wants to gauge interest. The one thing he's sure on is that “It's definitely not going to come in time for this Christmas because I need to sleep.” As the floods die down and Wānaka returns to normal, Pimentel reflects on his time in the spotlight. He's proud to call this place home and says: “This town looks incredible, even in the middle of chaos, I think in a way I successfully managed to capture that.” If social media is anything to go by, we'd say Wānaka agrees with that.