Service · Aerial unit
Aerial filming & drone crew hire, London
A complete aerial unit for a shoot day: pilot, camera operator, the right platform for the brief, permissions sorted in advance and a clean feed to video village. Founded in London in 2015 and working across the UK and internationally.
What you get when you book a drone crew
Booking an aerial unit from Stem Studios means a two-person crew as standard — a pilot flying and a dedicated camera operator on the gimbal — plus the platform, spares and batteries for a full day. That split matters: with one person flying and one framing, the drone can do the moves a director actually asks for, rather than the compromised version a solo operator can manage while also keeping the aircraft safe.
We fly DJI Inspire-series aircraft for the majority of commercial work and can supply heavier lift for cinema cameras where a production needs it. Alongside that sits our FPV unit for the shots that need speed and proximity. Most productions use both over a day.
Before the shoot
Aerial work lives or dies on preparation, and most of ours happens before anyone is on location. Once we have a brief and an address we check the airspace — flight restriction zones, airports, controlled airspace, danger areas — and tell you straight away what’s possible and what needs a permission or a notification. You can do a first check yourself with the fly-zone map on our contact page. We then handle the risk assessment, any landowner or local-authority contact, and the CAA side, and turn up on the day with the paperwork already done.
On the day
We slot into a production the way any other camera unit does: call sheet, tech recce where it’s useful, a chat with the 1st AD and the DoP about the shot list, and a monitor feed to video village so the director sees the frame live. Set-ups are quick — an Inspire is airborne in a few minutes — and we plan battery cycles around the schedule so the aircraft is ready when the light is.
We shoot in the codec and log profile the DoP asks for and match to the main unit’s look. Footage is handed over on set or delivered the same day.
Insurance, authorisation and permissions
Our pilots are GVC qualified and operate under CAA authorisation, with public liability insurance appropriate to commercial production. Congested-area flying, night operations and work inside flight restriction zones are all things we do regularly — they just need to be planned. Full detail on the CAA authorised operator page.
Who we work with
Since 2015 we’ve provided aerial units for commercials, music videos, fashion films, documentaries and broadcast — for clients including Nike, Netflix, Sky Sports, Burberry, Prada, Mercedes-Benz and the British Museum, and for production companies such as Somesuch, Biscuit Filmworks, Stink, RSA and Pulse. Browse the full list on the work page, or email us with dates and a location and we’ll come back with availability and a quote.