Did the Gaussian splatting actually make it any cheaper? Especially considering that it needed 50+ fixed camera angles to splat properly, and extensive post-processing work both computationally and human labour, a camera drone just seems easier.
This is a “Dropbox is just ftp and rsync” level comment. There’s a shot in there where Rocky is sitting on top of the spinning blades of a helicopter and the camera smoothly transitions from flying around the room to solidly rotating along with the blades, so it’s fixed relative to rocky. Not only would programming a camera drone to follow this path be extremely difficult (and wouldn’t look as good), but just setting up the stunt would be cost prohibitive.
This is just one example of the hundreds you could come up with.
They would look much better in a very "familiar" way. They would have much less of the glitch and dynamic aesthetic that makes this so novel.
This approach is 100% flexible, and I'm sure at least part of the magic came from the process of play and experimentation in post.
There’s no proof of your claim and this video is proof of the opposite.
Volumetric capture like this allows you to decide on the camera angles in post-production
This tech is moving along at breakneck pace and now we're all talking about it. A drone video wouldn't have done that.