We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Jeff Stein. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Jeff below.
Alright, Jeff thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?
The origin story of Drone Studios is about identifying and applying your strengths, following your passions and finding a way to monetize them. When I was in my 20s, I made international travel a priority and immersed myself in as many cultures and unique experiences as I possibly could to expand my horizons and attain deeper knowledge of the diversity of our planet. Naturally, I wanted to document these experiences in a creative way and realized I had both passion and talent in videography. I began putting more effort into this, and created a website DudesVsWild.com.
Looking back, these videos were pretty cheesy but the passion and skill were evident in my early work. As the years went by, I continued gaining professional experience in entrepreneurship and business development, and in my 30s the flying camera or “drone” emerged. I immediately saw the value in this, and the creative potential so I started Drone Studios in 2016 based around applying this technology! It was the perfect balance between technical and creative, and combined art with aviation which was right up my alley. The initial adrenaline rush of operating a flying camera and creating mind blowing videos and photos that put the world in an entirely new perspective resonated with me deeply, and I new I had found my calling. I was also extremely excited about the potential of this tech and how it would continue to evolve.
Drone tech has advanced rapidly forging new ways to create art in the sky. Currently, I am focused on mastering the craft of aerial animations or “drone shows” in which a fleet of drones with LED colored lights are programmed to create animations, graphics, shapes, etc in the sky for storytelling, events, advertising, replacement or compliment to fireworks and other applications. Essentially each drone is a pixel and the more drones in the sky, the more detailed and dynamic the aerial animations can be. I can already predict how this craft will improve over the years as I imagine fleets of drones synchronized to create massive holographic atmospherics. For example, imagine a fleet of drones that emit a particulate or reflective gas into the sky, and then another subset of drones that emit lasers or mini-projectors into the fog that create the desired holographic effects. I’ll leave the rest up to the imagination…
Jeff, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
I have been an entrepreneur for nearly 20 years and Drone Studios is my third start-up. When drone technology emerged, I was very intrigued and saw the massive potential in the creative applications. The drone industry was exciting to me and seemed to me the perfect balance between technical and creative. I believe that Drone Studios also has the ability to make a positive impact on the world as I strive to document significant historical moments and spread music, culture, beautiful scenery, and positivity through my passion projects.
Drone Studios is a very diversified drone company. We do everything from aerial filming of music festivals and performances, luxury real estate, documentary filmmaking, marketing, and promotional videos for businesses, live broadcasting sporting events and the list goes on. Recently we were the drone team for Bottlerock Music Festival in Napa which was a blast! We had the honor of filming Metallica, Pink, Twenty-One Pilots, Snoop Dogg, Kygo, Luke Combs and the list goes on. We also aerial filmed Olivia Rodrigo recently at the Rady Shell for a Universal Studios documentary on her career that’s still in the works. I have also filmed other celebrities and music artists such as ODESZA, Lil Wayne, Imagine Dragons, and Danica Patrick. I would have to say that I am most proud of the effect Drone Studios has had had on the growth of our client’s businesses. For example, a construction client of mine submits a video I created of one of his flagship projects with every bid, and ever since he began doing so, he gets almost ever project he bids on.
We continue to push the creative boundaries of drone technology and recently began performing “drone light shows.” A drone light show or drone show is essentially an aerial animation created by 100s or 1,000s of small LED drones in which each drone acts as a pixel. So the more drones in the sky, the more detailed and dynamic the drone show. There’s no better feeling in my opinion than to light up the night sky with aerial animation art and see all the smiles on the faces of the audience. It makes me so immensely happy every time!!! We have performed two shows thus far. The first was in downtown San Diego over the bay for a corporate event. The second show was more intimate, for a wedding on a ranch in Gilroy, California. We are currently scheduled to perform the 4th of July entertainment for La Jolla which is a huge honor! The drone show will be a 15 minute patriotic animation with lots of red, white & blue. The optimal viewing area will be Kellogg Park at La Jolla Shores.
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
There are conditions that are not obvious that can lead to a very expensive mistake or even severe injury. For example, I was working on a promotional video for a very popular restaurant and rooftop lounge called Rustic Root in downtown San Diego when a flock of very angry and territorial seagulls started swarming my drone. I was thinking to myself that I better bring the drone down for landing when all of a sudden one of the seagulls dive-bombed my drone and clipped the propeller with its feet. The propeller sheared off and the drone came crashing down in the middle of 5th Ave in Gaslamp just missing a car. I was extremely embarrassed considering it was a busy Friday night and there were hundreds of witnesses, however, I was thankful no property or pedestrians were injured in the crash. It was also a very expensive mistake. After this incident, I had trouble sleeping for about a week as I lay in bed questioning my decision to make a career as a drone operator with all the apparent risks involved such as bird strikes. I would ask myself “is the risk worth the reward?” This is always a question when I accept a project, so being a creative drone operator isn’t all fun and games.
How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?
It was a long and arduous road full of high amplitude successes and failures, trials and tribulations, elation, and rock bottom dysphoria that led to the creation of Drone Studios. I would say it all began when I graduated from UC Santa Barbara with a degree in Chemical Engineering and extremely motivated to make a positive impact on the world using the knowledge, I had worked so hard to attain through my education. I began my career as an entrepreneur and was the first employee for an early-stage medical startup BioIQ. The ground floor experience and entrepreneurial spirit I gained at BioIQ is probably the most relevant of my professional career to the creation of Drone Studios. After BioIQ, I moved on to medical sales for a spine surgery device company and experienced the corporate world for the first time. I discovered the corporate world was not for me and decided to start my own pharmaceutical company which grew wayyy too fast and crashed even harder with much heartbreak. I then represented the Western Region from Canada down to Mexico for an international biotech company that provided Nobel Prize-winning mRNA technology for reprogramming adult cells into stem cells (iPSCs or induced pluripotent stem cells) which sounds like science fiction but it’s very real. I like to call it cellular alchemy. Through all of these ups and downs throughout my medical/biotech career, I experienced the highest of highs and the lowest of lows during my successes and failures. Because of those past experiences, I have proven my resilience and I feel like I can handle almost any situation with equanimity. Most of my failures were due to aspects that I had no control over, including markets and research and development results. I was honestly tired of having no control over my success, so I decided to change directions with my career altogether and pursued the drone industry which seemed to me the perfect balance between technical and creative.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://droneshows.io
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dronestudiosinc
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dronestudiosinc
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/drone-studios-usa
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/dronestudios
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/drone-studios-san-diego