What admissions and recruiting teams need
For many prospective students, residents and new hires, the first look at a campus is on a screen. A good campus film answers the questions a brochure cannot: where the campus sits in its city, how the buildings connect, what the walk from the residence hall to class looks like and whether the place feels alive.
Each camera has a job. Aerials establish setting and scale: the river, the downtown, the medical center next door, the green space between buildings. FPV takes the viewer through a residence hall, library, lab or practice facility in one continuous shot. Ground cameras capture students, faculty, clinicians and staff. Most admissions and recruiting films need all three, shot in the same season so the look holds together.
Hospitals and corporate campuses use the same approach for recruiting and employer branding. A new patient tower, a research building or a headquarters campus reads very differently from the air than from the parking lot.
Campus drone policies come first
On a campus, the property owner’s rules usually decide whether a flight happens at all. The University of Michigan is a clear example. Its policy on the operation of unmanned aircraft systems says outdoor drone use by anyone from, on or over the Ann Arbor campus is generally prohibited unless a waiver of Regents’ Ordinance Article XVI is issued. The application goes through the university’s risk management office, and a waiver, if granted, covers a specific use and time period. Outdoor flights at U-M Dearborn and U-M Flint need written permission from that campus’s chancellor. Indoor flights do not need a waiver if the building has drone safety procedures and the building manager approves. U-M’s Division of Public Safety and Security notes that violations can bring fines and impoundment of the drone.
Other institutions run their own processes. Michigan State University, for example, has a drone policy and an operations plan process run through its Office of Research and Innovation. School districts, hospital systems and corporate campuses set their own rules or simply require the owner’s written permission. We find out who approves flights on your campus before we quote a date.
Airspace over Michigan campuses
Campus airspace varies more than most people expect. When we checked FAA data in September 2026:
- Ann Arbor. U-M’s Central Campus, North Campus and Michigan Stadium sit inside Ann Arbor Municipal Airport’s Class D airspace, with a facility-map ceiling of 400 feet at the points we checked. Flights need LAANC authorization.
- Detroit. Wayne State’s Midtown campus is inside Coleman A. Young International Airport’s Class D, which also requires LAANC.
- Ypsilanti and East Lansing. Eastern Michigan’s campus falls inside Willow Run Airport’s Class D. Michigan State’s main campus showed uncontrolled Class G airspace at the surface, with Lansing’s Class C starting well overhead.
Football adds a second layer. The FAA prohibits drones within 3 nautical miles of listed stadiums from an hour before to an hour after NCAA Division I football games, and its stadium data includes Michigan Stadium, Spartan Stadium, Rynearson Stadium, Waldo Stadium and Kelly/Shorts Stadium. On home game days, those campuses are closed to drones.
Hospitals add a third. Part 107 bars operating in a way that interferes with traffic at any airport or heliport, so we locate helipads, plan flight paths away from approach routes and stop when a medical flight is inbound. Airspace changes, so every site gets checked in B4UFLY or a LAANC app on the day.
Commencement, events and flying over people
Commencement is the shot everyone wants and the hardest one to fly. Part 107 bars flying over people unless they are part of the operation, under cover or the drone meets an operations-over-people category. Even then, sustained flight over an open-air crowd requires Remote ID compliance, and Category 3 drones may not fly over open-air assemblies at all.
In practice, we fly beside the crowd rather than over it, capture the empty venue before seating and the crowd from a distance, and let ground cameras handle the close moments. A visit by the President, the Vice President or another public figure can also bring flight restrictions published by NOTAM under 14 CFR 91.141, so we check notices the week of the event.
Planning a campus shoot
Campus footage is seasonal, and each season comes once a year: fall color, the first green week of spring, move-in day and commencement. We plan around your academic calendar, your approval process and the light on your signature buildings. Deliverables usually include a finished film, vertical cuts for social and edited stills for web and print.
Tell us the campus, the story and the season you want on camera. We will check the policy and airspace and send a plan and a fixed quote. Get a quote.