The short answer
There is no objectively “best” drone company in Salt Lake City, and every company that ranks for that phrase is asserting the title about itself. That is not a useful answer for a producer with a shoot date.
What is verifiable is a company’s record. Four numbers and one list settle almost every hiring decision:
- How many years it has worked scripted sets — not how many years it has owned drones
- Its aviation liability limit, and whether that limit is standing or bought for your job
- Whether it can staff Local 600 union and non-union, so the answer does not change mid-prep
- Whether FAA and film-permit work happens in-house or gets pushed back to your production
- Which productions it has actually flown, named
CineDrones has worked sets since 2013, carries $5 million in aviation liability plus workers compensation, supplies both Local 600 union and non-union crews, handles FAA authorization and coordinates local film permitting in-house, and holds aerial or on-camera drone credits on more than forty productions. We work Salt Lake City as one of ten markets, and the full aerial toolkit that operates out of Los Angeles is available here.
Ask every company on your list for the same five things. The ones that answer in specifics are the ones to call back.
What Salt Lake City specifically demands
Salt Lake City is the market where the film office is not the problem and the landowner is. Utah issues no state film permit and no drone permit, but almost every location worth shooting sits behind a land manager or a resort with its own policy.
The state issues no permits at all
The Utah Film Commission is explicit: it does not issue filming permits, it helps productions find the right contact and process. Salt Lake City permits through the SLC Event Permits office at a $151 application fee covering up to three locations. No drone-specific state or city permit was found.
The land manager is usually the real authority
BLM, the US Forest Service, the National Park Service, Utah State Parks, UDOT, the Division of Forestry Fire and State Lands and Navajo Nation Parks & Recreation each run their own process. Federal land needs a minimum of 15 business days; city, county and state permits run 4 to 15 business days. Salt Lake City itself needs applications no later than 4 business days before filming.
Fourteen ski resorts ban drones
Alta, Beaver Mountain, Brian Head, Brighton, Cherry Peak, Deer Valley, Nordic Valley, Park City Mountain, Powder Mountain, Snowbasin, Snowbird, Solitude, Sundance and Woodward Park City all prohibit drone use. Some will consider individual approval for commercial crews — Snowbird does, and Eagle Point may grant written permission for media production — but a resort aerial is a negotiation with the resort, arranged well before the shoot date, not a permit application.
State parks run seasonal bans with a separate commercial track
At Dead Horse Point, drones are prohibited from March through October across the entire park, with recreational permits available only from November through February and no drone operation at the main viewpoint even in season. Commercial and film drone permits are handled as an attachment to the Special Use Permit application — a different queue with a different lead time.
The incentive is gated on residency, not on rate
Utah’s Motion Picture Incentive Program runs 20% to 25% depending on spend, with a 20% cash rebate under the Community Film Incentive Program for smaller budgets. The constraint is the gate: 75% of cast and crew must be Utah residents for MPIP, 85% for CFIP, and the rural pathway to the enhanced rate explicitly excludes Salt Lake County. An SLC-based production qualifies on residency or not at all. Applications are due the 10th of each month, before principal photography and no earlier than 90 days prior.
The airspace
Salt Lake City International is Class B and sits immediately west of downtown, so the downtown core and the Capitol area fall inside Class B and need LAANC or FAADroneZone authorization — Memory Grove Park near the State Capitol among them. That is unusual: in most markets the downtown is the easy part. Facility-map ceilings are informational only and get pulled fresh per location and date.
Rules change. Treat the above as a briefing for planning conversations rather than legal or regulatory advice, and confirm current requirements with the relevant authorities and your insurer before you shoot.
The checks that apply everywhere
Regardless of market, the same seven questions sort a working aerial department from a pilot with a drone.
- The insurance floor is $5 million, and it should already be in place. Most studio productions will not accept an aerial vendor below it. A company that has to buy up for your shoot is telling you what level it normally works at. Ask for the certificate in prep, and ask whether workers compensation is carried too.
- Part 107 is the entry ticket, not the qualification. Every legal commercial pilot holds one. What separates companies is the hard operations — flying over people under the FAA’s Subpart D categories or a waiver, at night, beyond visual line of sight, and inside controlled airspace.
- Local 600, both ways. Signatory scripted work generally requires the aerial camera position to be filled by an ICG Local 600 member; commercials and non-signatory work usually do not. The failure mode is hiring a company that can only staff one way.
- Permitting done, not delegated. Airspace and ground are two separate approvals from two different bodies. If a vendor sends the paperwork back to your line producer, price that time into the bid.
- Redundancy, because aircraft come down. Ask what happens when the primary aircraft is out of service at 2pm. Ask the same about the pilot.
- Payload range, because the shot picks the aircraft. Heavy-lift for a full-size cinema camera — the Freefly Alta X carries RED and ALEXA Mini. Mid-size stabilised for aerials that intercut with A-camera — the DJI Inspire 3 shooting 8K full-frame on swappable DL-mount lenses, and the Inspire 2 with the Super 35 X7. FPV for continuous moving shots through spaces nothing else fits, carrying anything from a GoPro up to cinema cameras. A company with one aircraft will tell you your shot suits that aircraft.
- Named credits, not logo walls. “We’ve worked with Netflix and HBO” is a claim any company can make after one day of second-unit work. A named production list is checkable.
The long version of each check, written for the Los Angeles market, is here.
The credit list
CineDrones has provided aerial cinematography, on-camera prop drones, stunt drones or aerial lighting on productions including:
Ozark · 9-1-1 · SEAL Team · Jack Ryan · Bosch · Goliath · Castle Rock · Doctor Sleep · NOS4A2 · Mayans M.C. · Modern Family · NCIS: New Orleans · American Horror Story: Cult · Fear the Walking Dead · Station 19 · The Politician · The Resident · Runaways · Raising Dion · Good Trouble · The Gifted · 24: Legacy · American Housewife · The Fix · The First 48 · Hell’s Kitchen · The Grand Tour · Basketball Wives · Shahs of Sunset · Bizaardvark · I Feel Bad · Kevin (Probably) Saves the World · Making It · The Leisure Seeker · Trial by Fire · First and Last · Spartan · TKO · You’re the Worst — and NFL broadcasts.
Two are written up in detail — what the production needed, what it took to fly, and what that demonstrates: 9-1-1, where we brought the look and the aerial design to the show from day one, and Ozark, where the aerials carried feel and drama into the visual language of the series.
When to hire somebody else
We would rather say this in prep than take a booking and disappoint a producer.
- If the job is real estate, weddings or single-operator social content, an aerial department is the wrong purchase. You do not need Local 600 crews and a $5M policy to shoot a listing.
- If the job is inspection, survey or mapping, hire a company that does that work. We fly for camera.
- If the schedule allows no rehearsal for a complex FPV move through a practical location, the honest answer is that the shot should be flown a different way, or the schedule should change.
- If the only thing that matters is the lowest number on the bid, someone will always be cheaper. What we will not do is quote a crew and a safety plan we would not actually staff.
How to run the comparison
Send every company on your shortlist the same message:
Shoot dates, location, and city. What is your standing aviation liability limit? Can you staff Local 600 and non-union? Who files the FAA authorization and who coordinates the film permit? What aircraft would you bring for this shot, and what is the backup? Name five productions you have flown.
The replies sort themselves. Specific answers with numbers and titles come from companies that have done the work.
Frequently asked
Do I need a permit to fly a drone in Salt Lake City?
Utah issues no state film permit — the Utah Film Commission is explicit that it does not issue permits and instead helps productions find the right authority. Salt Lake City permits through the SLC Event Permits office, with a $151 application fee covering up to three locations, submitted no later than 4 business days before filming. No drone-specific state or city permit requirement was found. The permits that usually bind are the land managers’: federal land through BLM, the Forest Service or the National Park Service needs a minimum of 15 business days.
Can you fly a drone at a Utah ski resort?
Not without the resort’s permission. Fourteen Utah resorts prohibit drone use — Alta, Beaver Mountain, Brian Head, Brighton, Cherry Peak, Deer Valley, Nordic Valley, Park City Mountain, Powder Mountain, Snowbasin, Snowbird, Solitude, Sundance and Woodward Park City. Some will consider individual approval for commercial crews; Snowbird allows commercial requests and Eagle Point may grant written permission for media production. A resort aerial is a negotiation arranged well ahead of the shoot date, not a permit application filed the week before.
Do you need FAA authorization to fly a drone in downtown Salt Lake City?
Yes. Salt Lake City International Airport sits immediately west of downtown, so the downtown core and the Capitol area — including Memory Grove Park near the State Capitol — fall inside Class B airspace and require an FAA authorization through LAANC or FAADroneZone. This is unusual: in most production markets the downtown core is outside controlled airspace at drone altitudes, and Salt Lake is the opposite.
More on this market: drone cinematography in Salt Lake City · aerial cinematography · FPV drone pilot · Local 600 drone operators
CineDrones is a Hollywood-based aerial cinematography company working in Salt Lake City and nine other markets nationwide. FAA Part 107 certified, $5M aviation liability, Local 600 union and non-union crews, flying since 2013.
Send us the shot and the dates — 310-905-9195. We will tell you what it takes, and we will tell you if it should be flown a different way.
