Most drone companies are one pilot and a marketing site. Productions find out which is which on the day.
A drone company that works New York is really a permitting company that also flies. Between the Mayor's Office of Media and Entertainment, the City's own drone restrictions and three overlapping Class B footprints, the difference between a shoot that happens and one that does not is decided weeks before anyone loads a case.
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.
Film permits come through the Mayor's Office of Media and Entertainment, and aerial work sits on a separate track from a standard street permit. The City has been opening a narrow, structured pathway for permitted drone operations, which is exactly the kind of thing a producer needs a crew to already understand rather than research after the fact.
New York City is Class B three times over, boxed in by JFK, LaGuardia and Newark, with helicopter routes running the rivers below that. On top of federal airspace, the City has its own long-standing restrictions on where a drone may take off and land, enforced by NYPD rather than the FAA. Flying here legally is a two-agency problem.
We shoot the Manhattan skyline, the bridges, the boroughs, and the waterfront — and we travel. CineDrones works nationwide, so if your production is basing in New York and shooting somewhere else entirely, that is a normal week for us.
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