The Hard Part, Honestly
Let’s not dance around it: the last couple of years have been genuinely rough for a lot of people in this business. Writers, crew, vendors, and post houses all felt a real pullback in work as the strikes, a tighter streaming market, and studio belt-tightening landed close together. Anyone who tells you it didn’t happen wasn’t paying attention. That’s worth saying plainly before saying anything else.
Separating the Signal From the Noise
Where it’s easy to go wrong is treating a hard adjustment period as a permanent collapse. The entertainment business has been through contractions before — the 2008 downturn, the last writers’ strike, the early streaming shakeout — and each time, the work came back, just reshaped. This time it’s coming back more spread out: more live events, more branded and independent content, more production happening outside the traditional Los Angeles core in places like Las Vegas, Texas, and Georgia.
What’s Kept CineDrones Working
We didn’t sit out the slow stretch waiting for it to end. CineDrones expanded into Las Vegas, where hotel, event, and residency production has stayed strong, relaunched in Texas as Austin and Houston activity grew, added Salt Lake City, and built out a nationwide drone light show business for sports, concerts, and corporate events. We leaned harder into real estate and branded video too. It meant staying busy — and staying useful to clients — through a period that hit a lot of companies that stayed put much harder.
The Adjustment, Not the End
None of this erases how hard the last couple of years were for a lot of good people in this industry. But an adjustment period and an ending are two different things, and the data backs the former: production spending is real, it’s just distributed differently than it used to be. The companies and crews that adapted to that shift are the ones still working.
Get in Touch
If you need an aerial team that’s stayed active and adapted through the last few years, CineDrones is ready. Get in touch with CineDrones to talk about your next project.
