Services

MG Drone Tours films indoor and aerial drone tours across southern and central Illinois. We are an FAA Part 107 certified operation based in Johnsonville, insured to $5 million, with finished video delivered in two days.

Most drone work in this region stops at the front door. We fly inside as well as above. An indoor tour uses a small FPV drone flown by hand through the inside of a building, in one continuous unbroken take, with no GPS holding it steady. It is a different skill and different equipment from flying a camera drone over a roof, and it is the part most operators in this area do not offer.

What we film

Residential real estate

An indoor fly-through of the home plus exterior aerials of the lot and its setting. The buyer sees how the rooms actually connect and how far it is from one end of the house to the other, which a set of corner-of-the-room photographs never conveys. Filming takes 30 minutes to an hour on site, and the house does not need to be empty.

Commercial and business

Restaurants, shops, churches, clinics, daycares, gyms, hotels, golf courses, schools and industrial buildings. For a business the useful footage is almost always inside: someone deciding whether to book a venue, choose a clinic or rent a unit wants to see the actual space, its layout and its condition. Tours are flown around staff, customers and normal operations. A working doggie daycare was filmed with the dogs and staff still in the building.

Farmland and acreage

Aerial and 360° panoramic coverage of crop ground, timber, hunting ground, orchards and water. On a large parcel the shape, the access, the drainage and the way the timber is distributed are what decide the sale, and none of that is visible from the road or answerable with a plat map. Filmed for listing and auction marketing.

Events and FPV work

Aerial coverage of parades, festivals and community events, plus FPV flying that a standard camera drone cannot do: chase footage, tight passes, low-light shooting and work that has to follow moving machinery closely.

How it works

1. Call or request a quote. Tell us the property, roughly where it is, and what needs covering.
2. We film on site. A residential shoot takes 30 minutes to an hour. If you have two or three properties in the same town, say so when you book and they can be filmed on one trip.
3. Finished video in two days. Edited and ready for a listing, a website or social media.

Certified, insured and local

Derrick Martin holds an FAA Part 107 Remote Pilot Certificate, and MG Drone Tours carries $5 million in liability insurance. A certificate of insurance can be provided where a commercial client or property manager requires one. Certification also matters for where we can fly: airfields, restricted airspace and land such as a national wildlife refuge all need planning before the shoot rather than on the day.

We are based in Johnsonville and cover roughly a 100-mile radius across southern and central Illinois. There are dedicated pages for the towns we work in most: Mount Vernon, Carbondale, Marion and Centralia. Every tour we have filmed is published in the portfolio, each one with the finished video.

Call 618-835-2598 or request a quote.