Drone filming

Drone videography refers to capturing aerial videos. Going back 15 or so years before drone were about capturing aerial video was incredibly expensive. This involved having a videographer in a helicopter and manually capturing the shot with a video camera. Later on stabilised cameras mounted directly to a helicopter were developed. However the real leap came when light weight drone were developed. These allowed people to capture aerial perspectives, easily and at a much lower cost.

Now drones are fairly common place and experienced videographers are trained in drone videography. Having the ability to offer drone video, as a videographer is a fantastic skill. After all drone video elevates video productions and offers clients a unique aerial angle.

Drone videography costs vary depending on where you are filming and how long for. Filming in London or areas where there are flight restriction zones for example will cost more than a location where here are no airspace restrictions. This is because filming in flight restriction zones require more paperwork and getting permissions from the local air traffic control.

I offer an add on fee to my regular videographer day rate for using our small DJI-mini2 drone. This is ideal for productions where you just want a few drone shots. However, I also offer a full drone service where drone is the key objective of your video shoot. We have larger drones for this and work as a 2 person team to capture high end drone videography.

Capturing drone videography can feel overwhelming when you have a camera in the air. However it’s not something to shy away from and is completely safe when done right and within the law. We carry out a risk assessment for each flight we take and I am qualified to A2CofC level so understand the legal requirements for flying drones.

For smaller jobs we have our Dji-Mini-2 drone which is under 250g and has many less restrictions. This means we can fly closer to people and buildings.

For larger jobs we have the Dji-Maveric-3 Pro which captures some stunning imagery. We have a two person team to operate this drone which we typically use for more commercial videography work.

We can fly drone in most places but we’ll always check airspace to see what restrictions might be in place. We have experience flying in central London and know how to get the required permissions. Flying in London can be slightly more tricky as each borough has different requirements but we’ve handled this several times before.

It is a legal requirement to be insured when a videographer flys a drone for commercial purposes. With this in mind, we insure each and every flight we do. Instead of having a blanket insurance policy, we actually take out a policy for each flight. This is because each flight might have different requirements and insurance needs. However, this is also because we have to ensure the weather is good enough to take off. As a drone videographer, we have to adhere to rules on flying in certain weather conditions. Each drone is rated for a certain wind speed and we can’t film if it’s raining. As a result, we book the insurance the day before we fly when we know the weather will cooperate.