Almost every brief we receive for a brand film has the same line somewhere near the bottom: “and some drone shots”. We understand the appeal. A slow glide over your building looks expensive, and looking expensive feels like the point. But a drone shot is an answer, and it is worth asking what question it is answering before you pay for it.
What the drone is usually for
Often, the drone is there because nobody is quite sure what the film is about. When there is no story, the camera goes up, because from up there everything looks important. Factories become geometry. Offices become landmarks. It is beautiful for about four seconds, and then the viewer is waiting for something to happen.
The audience does not remember the angle. They remember a person, a moment, a line somebody said that sounded true. None of those are visible from two hundred feet.
Where the money should go instead
Sound. People forgive a soft image. They do not forgive bad audio. A good sound recordist and a proper mix will do more for your film than any lens.
Light. One well-lit face in a real room beats a wide shot of a well-lit building. Light is where a film starts to feel like a film.
A person. Your founder, your oldest employee, your most loyal customer. Somebody who can say why this matters, in their own words, without a script getting in the way.
A writer’s day. Before anyone books a camera, spend a day finding the one idea the film is about. It is the cheapest line in the budget and the one that decides whether the rest is worth spending.
Nobody ever shared a brand film because of the altitude.
When you do need one
We are not against drones. We own the batteries. Sometimes the size of a thing is the story: a farm that stretches to the horizon, a site that took three years to build, a road that connects two villages for the first time. Then the aerial shot carries meaning, and it earns its place.
The test is simple. If you removed the drone shot, would the film lose an idea, or just a view? If it is only a view, spend the money on the person in the room instead. Your audience will be watching them, not the sky.