Drone & aerial operations · Munich · Bavaria · worldwide

Four ways we fly

Cinematic aerials for brand films. Live aerial cut straight into a broadcast. Run-and-gun on an event day. FPV for the one-take move. Same crew, same insurance, same delivery standard — flown by certified pilots out of the Munich area, and taken wherever the job is.

01

Cinematic

Large-sensor aerial for brand films, commercials and location work. Flown slowly and deliberately, matched to what the ground cameras are doing, and graded with the rest of the film rather than dropped in as a separate look.

Heavier airframes carry the cinema body and the lens the film needs; the shot list is planned with the director before the day, and every move is repeated until it cuts.

Ask for this when

The shot has to hold on screen — an opening, a hero product move, a location reveal — and the footage is going into an edit rather than out the same day.

02

TV & broadcast

Aerial as a live camera inside a broadcast chain. The drone feed runs over DJI Transmission into the switcher in the video village, the pilot works to the director's call, and the shot is cut into the programme as it happens — not delivered afterwards.

This is the mode most drone hire cannot supply. It needs a transmission path, a pilot who takes a director's count, a spare airframe and battery plan for a programme that cannot stop, and a rehearsal before the first live day. We do it as the standing production crew for Olympic-class world championships.

Ask for this when

There is a live output — a championship, a corporate stream, a sports fixture, a launch — and the aerial has to appear in the programme, on the director's call, while it is happening.

03

Run and gun

One or two people, fast setup, no closed set. The drone moves with whatever the day gives you: a heat that starts an hour early, weather that turns, an athlete who is only free between races. Small airframes, batteries sized for a full day, and a cut that goes out the same evening.

This is most of what we do. It is the difference between a crew that films an event and a crew that keeps up with one.

Ask for this when

The schedule will move, there is no lock-off time, and you need usable material the same day — event days, festivals, race weekends, activations.

04

FPV

Chase, proximity and one-take reveals. A single continuous move that no other camera can make — through a space, down a line, alongside a rider at their speed. Flown line-of-sight with a spotter, rehearsed before it is shot.

FPV is a discipline of its own, not a setting on a camera drone. We fly it where it earns the shot and we say so when it does not.

Ask for this when

You want one unbroken move — a venue reveal, a product handoff, a run alongside the action — and you can give the pilot a rehearsal pass before the take.

Before the drone

The one we shot from a helicopter

EngadinSnow 2018 in the Swiss Alps - the Freeride World Tour qualifier and its final, on the north face of the Corvatsch. Our own account of that job at the time was short and exact: we shot from helicopters, we hiked mountains and we got deep in fresh powder. It is still the only helicopter-camera job and the only snow and freeride production on this site.

Qualifier day

120 riders dropping in for a place in the final. The event published our qualifier film before the final ran the next day - a mountain, a full field and an overnight turnaround.

Watch the qualifier film →
The final, on the north face

The finale of the event, shot from the air and from the mountain itself, and published on the event's own channel.

Watch the final film →
Why it belongs on this page

In the mountains the hard part of an aerial is not the aircraft. It is the weather window, the altitude, the access, and agreeing the airspace with everybody else who is in it. None of that changes when the camera moves onto a drone - and it is the part we had already run before we were flying our own.

Where we have flown →

Credit, as it was published: the event's own posts credit the production to Adam Sims, with an assistant producer and two additional-footage credits. We produced these films; we did not shoot every frame in them, and this page does not pretend otherwise.

Licensed · insured · permitted

The paperwork, before the shoot

Commercial clients in Germany are signing off a flight, not just a film. Every AALVAA flight is flown by a certified pilot on insured equipment, and the documents your compliance team needs go out with the quote — not after somebody asks. Our pilots are certified in the EU and the UK, and we have flown commercially across four continents, so a shoot outside Germany does not start from scratch.

Site permissions: where a location, an authority or an airspace needs written permission, we apply for it as part of the job and hand you the approval with the delivery.

Where we have flown

Certified in Europe, cleared to work well beyond it

Flying somewhere new is mostly paperwork: the local authority, the airspace, the permit and the insurance wording. We have been through it in these territories, which is usually the difference between a shoot that happens and one that gets grounded on the day.

Morocco is next on the list.

Restricted airspace: we have worked inside controlled airspace on altitude gates, sharing the block with manned aircraft — helicopter camera ships, safety and media boats, and event traffic. That coordination is part of the job, not an extra.

The aircraft

A fleet picked for conditions, not for a spec sheet

Most jobs are won or lost on whether the aircraft can fly at all — in wind, in spray, in a gap between races. We carry aircraft for each of the four modes and maintain them ourselves, so a repair does not become a lost shoot day.

Continuous coverage: for live work we rotate aircraft so the aerial feed does not stop for a battery change. Maintained in-house: we service and repair our own aircraft, so a fault between race days does not cost you a shoot day.

Where this differs

A drone hire hands you a card of footage

That is a perfectly good thing to buy, and for some jobs it is the right one. Three things are usually the reason people come to us instead.

We deliver into a live programme

Our aerial goes into a switcher on a director's call, not only onto a drive at the end of the day. The transmission path, the redundancy and the rehearsal are part of the job, because a live programme cannot wait for a battery change.

How the live chain works →
We shoot on the water

Chase boats, water-rated operators and stabilised rigs working from a moving boat, with the aerial flying off it. Most drone operators will not launch and recover from a boat in open water; it is our defining specialism, and it is where a lot of our sailing and surf work is shot.

Watershooting →
We work to a rights and delivery spec

Usage, territory, term, formats and delivery dates are written into the quote before the shoot, so what you get can legally run where you intend to run it. Aspect ratios and cutdowns are agreed up front too — a 16:9 film and a 9:16 cut are two deliverables, not one file resized.

Spec it in the quote →

Based in the Munich area

AALVAA Media is registered at Grasbrunn, in the Munich district, and most of our own filming starts on the doorstep. Munich and the rest of Bavaria are a drive, not a travel budget — and we travel for everything else, which is how the same crew ends up on a world championship course a week later.

Corporate and industrial sites, sport, fashion and lifestyle shoots, construction and property, events and festivals: if it needs an aerial in or around Munich, it needs the same three things — a certified pilot, insurance, and permission for the place you want to fly.

Tell us the job

Location, date, what it is for and where it will run. We come back with the airframe, the crew, the permissions we need and a price — one crew, one workflow, one quote.