Michaelangelo Masangkay – Founder, Top Drone (Ep.39)

For this, the 39th episode of the StartWell Podcast we sat down with the founder of Top Drone - a Toronto based film production company that exclusively works with Drone technology on projects for entertainment and commercial purpose. In the conversation, Michaelangelo tells us how he got started with drones and what sets his company apart from others getting started in this emerging type of cinematography. [expand title="Podcast Transcript"] Qasim Virjee 0:29 Hello and welcome back to another episode of the start. Well, podcast. Once again, I am Qasim in studio here on King Street West in downtown Toronto. This time joined by my guest, Michael Masangkay. Yeah, who is the founder owner of a really interesting company we're going to dig into, which is called Top drone. Yes. Welcome back to the studio. Yeah. Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure, man. Yeah. I love the idea of drones. Just conceptually, the idea of having these unmanned vehicles that we can kind of remotely control. Qasim Virjee 1:05 Let's just jump straight into it. Sure. So I'd love to hear how you became a drone pilot to start with? Yeah, no. Michaelangelo Masangkay 1:14 Well, I used to be in the video games a lot. When I was a kid, I dropped it. Laughter You know, you got to grow up a little bit. And I couldn't have time to do it. Especially in my line of work is just, there's just no time. So when Qasim Virjee 1:27 you drop video games, what was the console? That was your last console? Michaelangelo Masangkay 1:31 Playstation? Three. Whoa. Yeah, Qasim Virjee 1:35 I was gonna say Super Nintendo. That was mine. Yes. I'm old school man. Michaelangelo Masangkay 1:39 Now, I was still going to still go on for some time. But it was mainly sports games. Okay, so it was NBA 2k For sure. And NHL. So there's only sports games for the most part. Yeah. But when I've been in the industry, I've been in film and television industry now for, I guess from 2006. Okay. So it's been some time and I would travel a lot, I, before the pandemic, I was traveling quite a bit. And during that time, I also had a family. And I wanted to travel with them. So the first time I brought them out, you know, you don't want to be I'm already Asian as is. I don't want to propagate a myth and have another DSLR. And like, be, you know, taking photos. So I was like, You know what, I want to get a little different angle. Okay, so I was looking at the price point and look like getting into the marketplace was about the same price as getting, you know, a consumer drone. So, like a small little DJI Mavic air. Right. Loud. Wait, so Qasim Virjee 2:46 this is only a couple of years ago, this Michaelangelo Masangkay 2:48 is just three. This would be three to four years ago now. Wow. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, it's been it's been relatively Yeah. Qasim Virjee 2:55 But that was just about the time where the kind of like prosumer models were dropping below 1000 bucks. Right? Michaelangelo Masangkay 3:00 Yeah, that's right. So it was becoming a lot more accessible for people, you know, to, to really take a hold of it and like, just have fun with it. Yeah. And during that time, I was like, okay, you know what, I'm gonna go and take this with me on my travels. And with my family. So I took it to Cannes Film Festival. Oh, nice. First time, right. And I was scared because, you know, you fly it over Qasim Virjee 3:24 the festival, you were flying it on the closet, like over there. Michaelangelo Masangkay 3:28 So I have I have friends who like, who had like the suites, you know, the penthouse suites at like the Miramar and that Grand Hotel. So there, they knew that I had a drone. And they were like, Why don't you come fly it off our balcony. So no. Wanting to say no to that, you know, like, I can come and go to your penthouse suite. So yeah, so I had launched it there. And I got some amazing shots and just like, but the thing th