By an experienced videographer, photographer, and producer at St Louis Drone Services
Drones aren’t just “cool angles.” In the hands of a disciplined crew, they’re a strategic tool for brand storytelling—revealing scale, clarifying processes, and connecting your people, facilities, and customers in a single, coherent narrative. This guide shows decision makers how to plan, fly, and finish aerial content that actually moves business metrics.
Start With Outcomes, Not Shots
Before you talk aircraft or lenses, define the business outcome:
- Awareness: hero aerials on homepages, trade show loops, social hooks.
- Trust & Recruitment: authentic people-at-work sequences, safe operations, community.
- Sales Enablement: process clarity for buyers (how it’s made, delivered, installed).
- Investor/PR: footprint, capacity, sustainability initiatives from a credible perspective.
Map each outcome to deliverables (length, aspect ratios, KPIs) and the channels where they’ll live.
The Brand-Lens Framework: People • Place • Purpose • Proof
Build your shot list around four pillars:
- People — leadership, crews, customers; safety culture on display.
- Place — campus, production floor, service routes, community context.
- Purpose — what you do and why it matters; the mission in motion.
- Proof — scale, quality systems, on-time logistics, sustainability.
If a planned aerial move doesn’t strengthen at least one pillar, it’s probably a vanity shot.
Pre-Production That De-Risks the Day
Objectives & deliverables
- Define runtimes (120s master, 30s cutdown, 15s social, 6s bumper), aspect ratios (16:9, 9:16, 1:1), and graphic needs (lower thirds, captions, CTA end cards).
Permissions & compliance
- Part 107 pilots; airspace and LAANC checks; property owner permissions; site-specific risk assessment; insurance; emergency procedures; visual observer assignments.
Schedule & access
- Golden/blue hour windows; shift changes; loading dock activity; interior quiet periods (for separate audio capture).
Indoor flight planning
- Cinewhoop route walk-through; hazards marked (sprinklers, signage, cables); pre-light corners; door control; prop guards; safe altitudes.
Technical targets
- 4K/5.1K capture, 10-bit log profiles, ND filters for proper shutter angle, locked white balance, waypoint programming for repeatability, RAW stills for hero frames.
Visual Grammar: Moves That Communicate Meaning
- Rise-Reveal (Scale): ascend from behind branded foreground to reveal campus or facility.
- Parallax Orbit (Prestige): wide orbit around a flagship entry, product, or installation.
- Low Lateral Track (Progress): 3–6 ft AGL along a line, conveyor, or showroom to show flow.
- Nadir Pass (Clarity): true top-down to make a process diagram come alive.
- Push-Through (Immersion): exterior to interior through a bay or lobby (cinewhoop).
- Pull-Back (Context): start on product detail, retreat to reveal workforce and footprint.
Speed & altitude discipline
- Exterior hero moves often read best at ~8–16 mph; indoor cinewhoop at ~2–6 mph. Maintain level horizons unless a motivated tilt communicates energy.
Shot Recipes by Use Case
Corporate HQ / Brand Film
- Signage rise-reveal → lobby push-through → collaboration spaces orbit → sunset pull-back to skyline.
- Inserts: flag, sustainability features, employee arrival routes (privacy-aware).
Manufacturing / Industrial
- Dawn campus hero → nadir site grid → line flow track → robotic cell close pass → QA station insert → finished goods orbit.
- Weekly waypointed progress orbits for time-lapse documentation.
Healthcare / Education Campus
- Approach along visitor journey (no PHI) → courtyard orbit → rooftop sustainability systems → interior wayfinding cinewhoop.
Construction / Real Estate
- Nadir mapping grid → façade install tracking → crane-height parallax → topped-out hero at golden hour.
Logistics / Retail
- Inbound staging orbit → loading dock push-through → route departure reveal → store arrival fly-in.
Audio & Narration Strategy (Drone-Friendly)
- Treat drone shots as visual b-roll. Capture dialogue/VO separately with lavs or boom.
- Record room tone and targeted SFX after flights.
- Use cutaways (hands, interactions, product details) to cover narration edits while aerials establish space.
Post-Production & Responsible AI
- Color pipeline: normalize log captures; preserve skin tones/materials; stylize only to match brand.
- Stabilization: subtle; keep the pilot’s intent.
- AI assists (used transparently): object cleanup (cones, scuffs), sky continuity, logo isolation for animated reveals, smart reframing for 9:16/1:1 without losing subject.
- Provenance & policy: maintain edit logs and export metadata; apply content credentials when required by policy.
- Versioning: master + cutdowns + micro-moments (3–10s) for social hooks.
Distribution & Measurement
- Web: silent-first hero loops with captions; fast loads and fallback imagery.
- Social: platform-native aspect ratios; first-2-second hook; clear CTAs in captions.
- Recruiting: people-at-work focus; pair aerial context with testimonial bites.
- Sales enablement: loopable trade show edits; QR to longer facility tour or case study.
- KPI tracking: view-through rate, page dwell time on aerial hero pages, CTR from aerial thumbnails, assisted conversions, application starts for recruiting campaigns.
Risk, Privacy, and Brand Protection Checklist
- Part 107 crew, VO assigned, emergency plan posted.
- Airspace/TFR/NOTAM checks; landowner permissions documented.
- Indoors: prop guards, route control, spotters, PPE as needed.
- Privacy controls: no license plates/PHI; signage plan; talent releases.
- Data governance: dual-card capture, checksum ingest, same-day cloud backup; retention policy aligned to your compliance requirements.
A One-Day Field Plan (Sample)
07:00–08:00 Exterior hero passes (golden hour)
08:00–09:00 Nadir documentation / parking & routing
09:00–10:30 Interior cinewhoop route (pre-lit)
10:30–12:00 Process sequences (line, lab, showroom)
13:00–14:30 Ground b-roll + leadership interactions
16:30–17:30 Sunset closes and neighborhood context
Your Prep Worksheet (Copy/Paste)
- Objectives & KPIs: __________________________
- Primary audiences/channels: __________________
- Must-have scenes/locations: __________________
- People/talent & PPE: _________________________
- Compliance & permissions: ____________________
- Deliverables (lengths/ratios): _______________
- Graphics/captioning needs: ___________________
- Timeline & weather backup: ___________________
Why Partner With St Louis Drone Services
St Louis Drone Services is an experienced, full-service professional commercial photography and video production company with the right equipment and creative crew experience for successful image acquisition. We offer full-service studio and location video and photography, as well as editing and post-production, and our licensed drone pilots tailor every flight to your story, environment, and safety requirements. St Louis Drone Services can customize your productions for diverse media needs. Repurposing your photography and video branding to gain more traction is a core specialty—we are well-versed in all file types, styles of media, and accompanying software, and we use the latest in Artificial Intelligence across our services for speed, consistency, and compliance.
Our private studio lighting and visual setup is perfect for small productions and interview scenes, and our studio is large enough to incorporate props to round out your set. We support every aspect of your production—from setting up a private, custom interview studio to supplying professional sound and camera operators, as well as providing the right equipment—ensuring your next video production is seamless and successful. We can also fly our specialized drones indoors for dynamic, immersive sequences. As a full-service video and photography production corporation, since 1982 St Louis Drone Services has worked with businesses, marketing firms, and creative agencies across the St. Louis area to deliver marketing photography and video that performs. If you’re ready to translate your brand into purposeful aerial storytelling, we’re ready to fly.
St Louis Drone Services 