John Gore - Blog

John Gore is the owner and pilot of Drone Crew , a leading aerial octocopter drone filming company in southern Africa.

Having gained experience working with Sean Penn, Neill Blomkamp, Moonlighting, Lobster Tree, Sky 1, Smithsonian, Nat Geo Wild - Big Cat Week, Earth Touch, and many others. John Gore has established himself as the go to expert in aerial filming specializing in octocopter drone filming with RED Epic cameras.

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First Fully Licensed Drone Operator in the Film Industry in South Africa

Drone Crew is very glad to announce that we have received our Remote Operator Certificate (ROC) from SACAA on 23 October 2015, and are now fully licensed to operate (RPAS) drones in South Africa.

Drone Crew (Pty) Ltd is the first fully licensed drone operator in the South African film industry, and the 3rd fully licensed operator overall (the others being in Anti Rhino Poaching and Mining sectors).

We would like to thank all involved at SACAA and DOT for processing our application in a professional manner, and our entire team of experts for their hard work and commitment to the process, as well as all those who have supported us and cheered us on along the way.

This is a great milestone for us, and we look forward to leading the way in providing a safe and reliable service in this specialised part of the film industry.

Drone Crew specialises in high end drone filming services for the film industry. Flying cameras such as the RED Dragon / Epic / Scarlet or the Arri Alexa Mini, to capture low level aerial footage.

We are not a rental house or jack of all trades service, but prefer to specialise only in drone filming services, where we believe our experience and expertise really shine through. We have an unrivaled track record, and excellent relationship with the best rental houses, who are happy to provide fully insured camera gear to be used on our drones.

This allows us to offer a wide selection of camera options to our clients, in addition to our in-house RED cameras.

Considerable extra effort was needed to get approvals for what are considered higher risk operations, but we felt it worthwhile to achieve these approvals to be able to deliver on common requirements for drone operations on film sets. We are very glad to say that in addition to normal operations as defined by part 101 RPAS regulations, we also have approval for operations in close proximity to people, operations at night, operations in controlled airspace (near airports), operations in restricted and prohibited airspace, operations near buildings and public roads.

All these additional approved operations will be conducted according to our approved operations manual, and within agreed parameters.

We are very excited to be a part of this new field of aviation, and look forward to providing a world class service which our clients and the industry can be proud of.