By Richie Griffin · September 11, 2026 · 6 min read
Every drone pilot goes through the same phase. You get the Part 107, you fly your first hundred hours, and you come back with a card full of footage that looks absolutely stunning on a monitor and does absolutely nothing for the client's project.
I've been that pilot. The reel was gorgeous. The client didn't use half of it.
The gap between a drone shot that sells and a drone shot that just looks cool isn't about the drone, the altitude, or the color grade. It's about whether the shot does a job in the edit. Here's the breakdown I use on every project to separate the ones that earn their place from the ones that burn battery.
1. The location establish. The shot that tells the viewer where they are. A slow climb from ground level revealing the building, the field, the venue, the intersection. Five seconds. The client needs it because every video starts with "where am I?" and the drone answers that question faster than any title card. This is the shot that ends up in the final cut every single time.
2. The scale reveal. The shot that shows how big something is. A parking lot full of cars. A stadium from above. A solar array stretching to the horizon. The drone is the only tool that communicates scale in a single frame — you can't get it from the ground without a wide lens that distorts the subject. When a brand needs you to feel the size of what they built, this is the shot.
3. The approach to subject. The shot that moves toward the thing that matters. A push from the highway to the storefront. A glide from the parking lot to the entrance. A descent toward the product on a rooftop. This shot does narrative work — it transitions the viewer from "where" to "what" and creates momentum into the next scene. Clients ask for this one by description even when they don't know the name for it.
4. The context orbit. A slow orbit around the subject that shows the surroundings in relation to it. The venue and the Strip behind it. The school and the neighborhood around it. The business and the traffic pattern that feeds it. This shot earns its place when the location itself is part of the selling proposition — which, for hospitality, real estate, sports venues, and event spaces, is almost always.
5. The FPV interior-to-exterior transition. This is the one that makes clients lean forward. Flying through a door, down a hallway, out a window, and revealing the exterior in one continuous move. It's the shot that used to require a crane, a Steadicam, and a cut. FPV does it in one take. When it's motivated by the space — not just a party trick — it's the most valuable shot on the card.
1. The high-altitude "art" shot. 400 feet up, looking straight down at an abstract pattern. Looks like a gallery print. Does nothing for a brand video. Nobody knows what they're looking at, and by the time they figure it out, the shot's over. Reserve these for personal reels, not client deliverables.
2. The orbit with no subject. Circling... nothing. Or circling something that doesn't benefit from being circled. An orbit around a flat-roofed warehouse tells the viewer nothing they couldn't get from a static photo. The orbit only works when the subject has dimensional interest — architecture, landscape, a venue with character. Otherwise it's motion for motion's sake.
3. The mega-reveal that takes 30 seconds. The slow climb, the slow pan, the slow push — all in one shot, taking half the battery to get to the point. In a 60-second brand video, a 30-second drone shot is a quarter of the runtime spent on one idea. Cut it to five seconds and let the edit breathe.
4. The "B-roll I'll figure out later" flight. Flying around the site grabbing angles with no plan for how they'll cut together. This is how you end up with 40 minutes of footage and three usable shots. Every flight should have a shot list — even a mental one — and every clip should answer a specific question the edit will ask.
5. The FPV trick that doesn't serve the story. The barrel roll, the power loop, the split-S through a structure. These are fun to fly and impressive to watch. But if the client's video is about their restaurant, a barrel roll over the roof doesn't make anyone hungry. FPV earns its place when the move is motivated by the space and the story — not when it's there because the pilot can.
Before I fly any shot, I ask one question: what does this shot replace in the edit?
If the answer is "it replaces a boring static establishing shot with something that does the same job but better" — fly it. If the answer is "it doesn't replace anything, it's just extra" — skip it and save the battery for the shot that matters.
The clients who hire me for drone work aren't paying for flight time. They're paying for the five shots that make the final cut, not the forty shots that end up on the cutting room floor. The pilot who understands that is the one who gets hired back.
If you're a brand or organization looking at drone video, here's what to actually ask for:
Five shots. Maybe six. That's what earns its place in a brand video. Everything else is a reel piece, and reel pieces are for the pilot's Instagram, not the client's campaign.
Make boring illegal. Fly with a purpose.
Written by Richie Griffin — Las Vegas video producer, FAA Part 107 drone and FPV pilot, voiceover artist, and on-camera host. Founder of Richie Griffin DigiCo. Make Boring Illegal.