Drone operator

What this is about

The drone is the only unit on the call sheet that a document can ground. Clearance runs on lead time no production can compress, and the flight window that survives weather and access is usually narrower than the schedule assumes.

Every department needs the same plan in a different view. That is exactly where document collections fail: they only ever serve one perspective well.

What runs differently here

In planning terms, that means:

• Geo-zones and clearances hang on coordinates, so the location has to be final long before the shoot
• Wind at ground level says very little about wind at flight altitude
• Battery cycles cap how many flights fit into an hour, and every swap is shooting time

What the plan has to deliver

A production plan is useful to this role when it provides the following:

• Final coordinates early enough for the clearance process
• A flight window placed where light and wind are usable
• A ground-level alternative for every aerial shot a scene depends on
• People, traffic and overflight restrictions on site known in prep

Common pitfalls

What most often goes wrong in practice:

• Booking an aerial day before the airspace question has an answer
• Planning aerials for the end of the day, when the light has gone and the batteries with it

With TillyGen

TillyGen places the aerial block where light and access allow it and keeps the ground-level fallback in the same shot list.

Change one constraint and the consequences travel through the whole plan: affected shots are flagged, the call sheet is regenerated, and nobody keeps working from yesterday's version.