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" James Bond&amp;#039;s Lotus Elise from 1977&amp;#039;s The Spy Who Loved me sold at auction Monday for a whopping $865,000, which while shy of the estimated $1.5 million, ain&amp;#039;t too shabby for a sports car that you can&amp;#039;t even drive. Well, not on the road, anyway. It is however, a fully functioning submarine, should you feel the need to explore your local sea floor. While this technology was pretty darn cool in the disco era, we&amp;#039;ve moved on some since then, and you know what? To hell with nostalgia. The real James Bond, and any lover of 007&amp;#039;s great gadgets, would be pretty hyped on what filmmaker Nicolas Doldinger is doing with his unmanned aircraft and a camera right now, today. Doldinger, who has worked on a number of films, most notably the Bernie Madoff documentary Chasing Madoff, made this incredible video by flying his unmanned helicopter with a digital camera attached around parts of New York, for a breathtaking perspective on the city. We caught up with him for a few words on filmmaking, privacy and drafting the correct drone legislation before the sky turns into an unmanned free-for-all.      FIRST FLIGHT OF THE PHANTOM from Nicolas Doldinger on Vimeo. ESQUIRE.COM: Is what you&amp;#039;re doing with the helicopter legal? NICOLAS DOLDINGER: Basically as long as it&amp;#039;s for personal use and below 400 feet it&amp;#039;s considered legal. And as long as it&amp;#039;s not interfering with pedestrians or traffic. ESQ: Has anyone ever given you a hard time? ND: No, at Union Square I would intentionally set up next to the cops, and show them that it&amp;#039;s not going too high, and no one ever had any questions. ESQ: What&amp;#039;s your take on unmanned aircraft in general? ND: There&amp;#039;s the privacy issue. What I do is create entertaining videos and work in the entertainment industry, so the privacy issue doesn&amp;#039;t really come into play as much as with journalism or if the government is using it. So in my case it&amp;#039;s just a platform like any other camera platform. ESQ: But you think there&amp;#039;s room for abuse? ND: There&amp;#039;s problems if it&amp;#039;s used for journalism or for paparazzi. Who knows what people will use it for? There needs to be some sort of legal framework that doesn&amp;#039;t exist yet, and that they&amp;#039;re working on. There&amp;#039;s a conference coming up in October called the Drones and Aerial Robotics Conference, or DARC, hosted by NYU. I&amp;#039;ll be part of a work group that will be in a study with the NYU School of Law talking about exactly that, clearing out the legal grey zone that exists. ESQ: Do you ever worry someone might shoot your &amp;#039;copter down? There&amp;#039;s a town in Colorado that may start issuing drone hunting licenses! ND: I think it just shows more of a mistrust in government then a mistrust in drones per se. Wherever I went, I was always met with positive curiosity and genuine interest in the craft. Since in motion picture film making we&amp;#039;re much more likely to use hovering UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) like Quadcopters and Octocopters, I think they don&amp;#039;t inspire the same menacing images that a combat drone airplane does.   ESQ: What else do you have coming up? More drone videos, please. ND: Well it&amp;#039;s more of a side gig from what I usually do. We can&amp;#039;t use it commercially yet, so it&amp;#039;s just waiting for legislation to be more clear on commercial use. It&amp;#039;s more of a platform when it&amp;#039;s needed. I do a lot of branded content, that&amp;#039;s most of what I do. A lot of documentary films, its very diverse, but taking a doc and connecting it with brands. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/news/a19456/first-flight-of-the-phantom/?src=nl&mag=esq&list=nl_enl_oth_non_091113_first-flight-phantom>