FPV footage of a cab climb on a moving semi

Nov 02, 2026 Last reply: 2 hours ago 3 Replies
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The moment that got me was the cab entry. A person in dark clothing, a cap and a black face mask climbs down from the roof of a moving semi, steps onto the exterior steps by the passenger door, grips the open window frame and pulls themselves inside the cab, all while a 5 inch Deadcat flies alongside. That is a proper action sequence, and it was filmed for an upcoming French short movie called 'Le Dernier Plein'.



Assembling the sequence, it opens with an aerial shot over rural farmland, then the drone swoops down toward the truck. From there the beats stack up nicely: the climber crouches on top of the moving vehicle, works down to the steps, gets through the window, and the whole thing ends on a cut to black. Short, punchy and it reads like a proper film scene rather than a cruise clip.



The rig details stand out too. The truck is a semi with a red tractor unit and a white box trailer, and the music or effects layer underneath gives it that cinematic feel. Flying a 5 inch Deadcat around a moving semi seems like a smart pick for this kind of work in my view, since that frame tends to keep prop wash and frame arms out of the shot, though that is just my read on it.



The open question for me is safety. Getting that close to a moving truck untethered, with a person flailing near the wheels, looks like a real trade-off between the shot and the risk. It is also unclear whether this was made for the maker or a small independent production.


The Deadcat choice is the one that grabs me here. For a shot where the drone has to track a person climbing down the side of a moving semi, keeping the arms and props out of frame matters more than raw efficiency, and that layout trades some performance for a clean camera line. Looks like the right call for this sequence.

Curious how the opening was flown. Was the swoop down from the farmland shot done as one continuous dive into the tracking shot beside the truck, or does the cut to the climber on the roof hide a battery swap or a relaunch somewhere in between?

For anything like the wheel-adjacent moments in this sequence, I would suggest rigging the climber with safety wires and breaking the stunt into multiple shorter shots instead of one long run. It would give the maker more coverage to cut between and take a lot of the risk out of the parts where the person is flailing near the wheels.

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