Most drone companies are one pilot and a marketing site. Productions find out which is which on the day.
Texas incentives stack state and local, and productions basing in Austin routinely shoot outward into the Hill Country and beyond. A drone company here needs to be as comfortable working a rural location two hours out as a downtown permit.
CineDrones has been a working aerial department since 2013, with the depth to put multiple units on a show and the insurance and permitting infrastructure a studio production office needs before it can hire you at all. We handle it end to end: airspace authorization, permits, the shoot itself, and delivery in whatever format post is expecting.
The Texas Film Commission coordinates statewide and the Austin Film Commission handles the city, with state and local incentive programs stacking on top of each other. Permitting is generally faster here than in the coastal markets, which is a genuine scheduling advantage.
Austin-Bergstrom anchors Class C airspace southeast of downtown, which keeps much of the city workable with LAANC authorization while the approach corridors stay tight. The Hill Country west of town opens up quickly, which is part of why productions base here and shoot outward.
We shoot downtown, the river, the Hill Country, and the Texas landscape — and we travel. CineDrones works nationwide, so if your production is basing in Austin and shooting somewhere else entirely, that is a normal week for us.
A full toolkit rather than one aircraft: cinema payloads, FPV, heavy lift, prop and stunt builds, and aerial lighting.
Our aerial units have worked on Ozark, Jack Ryan, Bosch, Mayans M.C., SEAL Team, NCIS: New Orleans, Fear the Walking Dead, American Horror Story, Modern Family, 9-1-1, Goliath, The Resident, Raising Dion, Castle Rock, Doctor Sleep and Chef's Table, for Netflix, Amazon, Apple, HBO, Hulu, Showtime, Sony, CBS, AMC, MTV and Bravo. See the work →
It is a procurement process, not a creative one. Risk management reviews your insurance, safety record and operating procedures before a production office is allowed to hire you. We have been through it with the majors since 2013.
Yes. Multi-unit days are normal for us, and having a second aircraft on standby is often cheaper than losing an hour to a battery swap or a downed aircraft.
A $5M aviation liability policy, with certificates issued to the production naming whoever your legal department needs named. That is usually the first question a UPM asks and the one that ends most conversations with smaller vendors.
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