this might be a long shot question but figured id ask here since there seem to be people with all kinds of backgrounds. ive been shooting with drones for a few years, got my 107, pretty comfortable with manual flight and i do a lot of cinematic stuff for fun - landscape, some short film projects with friends. ive always kinda dreamed about doing aerial work for actual productions, even small indie films or commercials would be amazing.

the problem is i genuinely dont know how the industry works in terms of getting hired for that kind of thing. like do you just cold email productions, is there some union thing i should know about, do you need to work under someone first as a camera assistant or something. every article i find online is either super vague or trying to sell me a course

im in the northeast US if that matters. not expecting to land a marvel movie anytime soon obviously just curious if anyone has actually broken into that world and how it started for them

the film side is a whole different beast compared to real estate or commercial work. most legit productions - even mid budget ones - go through DP's they already know or through aerial coordinators who have established relationships. so the cold email thing rarely works unless you have an insane reel and get lucky with timing.

what actually worked for me was volunteering on student and indie productions first, like just showing up and being useful and not being precious about it. you meet a DP on a no budget short and two years later they're on a real project and remember you. networking is annoyingly the actual answer. also look into joining local film commission databases, a lot of productions scouting in a region will check those for local crew which can get you in the door for the easier stuff.

the union question is complicated - IATSE covers a lot of camera work and some drone ops fall under that depending on the production, but plenty of indie and commercial stuff is non union so dont let that stop you from pursuing it. just be aware of it.

not in film but i did land a gig doing aerial for a local TV news station doing some feature segments, wasnt glamorous but it was steady for a while. i just emailed their news director with my reel and it took like three months to hear back but they eventually called. so sometimes the boring direct approach does work, just gotta be patient i guess. local commercials might be an easier entry point than film tbh, ad agencies are always looking for drone stuff and the budgets are sometimes surprisingly decent