Drone footage: what a Part 107 licence actually means for your project

Aerials get asked for more than almost anything else, usually without much thought about what makes them legal, or whether the shot is worth the visit. Both are worth understanding before you commission them.

Commercial aerial work is regulated

In the United States, flying a drone for any commercial purpose requires the pilot to hold an FAA Remote Pilot Certificate under Part 107. That is not a formality — it covers airspace classification, weather, loading, and the rules on flying over people and moving vehicles.

It matters to you for two reasons. An uncertificated operator is a liability sitting on your property, and any footage they produce was obtained in breach of federal regulation — which is a genuinely awkward provenance for the marketing of a seven-figure asset.

We hold Part 107. It is worth asking anyone you hire, and worth being suspicious of a vague answer.

Airspace decides the schedule

Large parts of northern New Jersey sit under controlled airspace serving Newark and Teterboro. Flying there needs authorisation, which is usually granted quickly through the FAA's automated system but is not instant and is not guaranteed. A shoot planned for a Tuesday morning inside controlled airspace needs that request in beforehand.

This is the single most common reason an aerial gets dropped from a shoot: not weather, but somebody assuming a drone can simply go up wherever it is pointed.

When a drone earns its place

• Land and acreage. Nothing else communicates a parcel's size and shape.
• Waterfront and views. The reason for the price is usually only visible from above.
• Boats underway. A tracking pass and an overhead do what no shot from the deck can.
• Large sites and yards. Scale reads instantly from height and not at all from the ground.
• Roofs, paving and hardscape. The finished surface is a shape best seen from above.

When it does not

• A mid-block townhouse. The aerial shows you the neighbours' roofs.
• Interiors. A drone indoors is a stunt, and mostly a noisy one.
• Anything where the surroundings hurt the sale. Height is honest, which is not always what you want.

What to ask for

Not "drone footage", which is a tool rather than a deliverable. Ask for the shots: an establishing pass that shows the property in its setting, an overhead that reads the layout, and — for anything moving — a tracking shot at speed. Three purposeful moves beat ten minutes of hovering.

More on how we approach this by trade on the industries pages.

What weather actually stops

Wind more often than rain. Most airframes handle a steady wind badly, and the footage degrades long before the aircraft is in any danger — a drone fighting gusts produces a horizon that will not sit still. Booking an aerial without a fallback date is optimistic in any season and unrealistic between November and March.

Privacy, and the neighbours

Permission to film a property does not extend to hovering over the one next door, and a gallery showing a neighbour's garden in detail is a complaint waiting to happen. Framing that keeps adjacent properties incidental is both better practice and the better shot.

What good aerial footage looks like

• Slow. Fast movement at height reads as drone footage rather than as the subject.
• Purposeful. Each move should reveal something — the boundary, the water, the scale.
• Level. A tilted horizon is the most common giveaway of an inexperienced operator.
• Short. Three good moves beat a circuit nobody watches to the end.