Westwood from above
A mile of towers, a campus, and a hospital with helipads on its roof. Here the plan comes before the flight.Thirty-plus towers, all selling the same thing
Westwood sits about three miles west of our Beverly Hills base, and a large share of the aerial work here happens over one stretch of Wilshire Boulevard. More than thirty condominium towers line it, running east from the 405 toward Comstock. Full-floor plans, private elevator landings, concierge desks, amenity decks parked on the ninth floor or the twenty-ninth. What a listing in one of these buildings is really selling is elevation.
That is the one thing a ground camera cannot photograph. A still shot from the balcony proves the view exists. It does not prove the floor. We fly the unit's own sightline at the unit's own height, so the frame reads the way the room does: Century City towers to the east, the ridge above the Sepulveda Pass to the northwest, the marine layer sitting low over the Westside on a clear afternoon.
Corridor exteriors take restraint. Every balcony belongs to somebody. We hold standoff, orbit past occupied units rather than into them, and put the camera where it reads the building's line instead of its neighbors' living rooms. Wilshire runs east to west here, so by mid-afternoon the towers stripe long shadows across the boulevard. West-facing units shoot late. East-facing units shoot early. We schedule for the exposure that matters.
- View-line pass flown at the unit's actual floor height
- Exterior orbit with standoff from occupied balconies
- Rooftop and amenity-deck coverage where the building allows it
- Context frame placing the tower between Century City and the pass
A low-rise 1920s grid under a very tall neighbor
Westwood Village was laid out as a Mediterranean-styled shopping district and it still reads that way from the air. The Fox tower rises roughly 170 feet over Broxton and Weyburn, open since 1931, with carved winged lions partway up. A block away the old Janss Investment Company building keeps its octagonal footprint and its zigzag-tiled dome. The Geffen Playhouse holds a 1929 Spanish Colonial courtyard behind its facade. The Hammer anchors the corner at Wilshire and Westwood.
That scale changes how commercial property gets flown. Village blocks are short, the streets are narrow, and foot traffic is constant, so the useful altitude band is low and tight rather than high. Most of what sells a storefront or a small mixed-use parcel here lives between rooftop height and a few hundred feet: the walk from campus, the corner it holds, the parking behind it, the plaza it opens onto.
The Village is also mid-change. Storefront turnover has been the running story for years, Broxton Plaza opened a through-block pedestrian cut, and redevelopment proposals keep surfacing along its blocks. Property documented before or during that shift becomes a record that dates itself precisely.
The most planned few square miles we work in
Two helipads sit on the north roof of Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center on Westwood Plaza. They carry their own FAA identifier and they exist for emergency patient transport, which means arrivals answer to nothing on a calendar. The blocks around Le Conte, Gayley and Westwood Plaza concentrate that traffic, and the eye institute, the children's hospital and the medical plazas keep the corridor dense at street level as well.
The campus adds a second layer. UCLA is University of California property and the UC system runs its own drone policy alongside the federal rules, so campus work is a university permission question on top of the federal one. Out toward the 405, the federal VA campus and the national cemetery beside it carry their own considerations. And much of this stretch of the Westside sits inside controlled airspace, layered beneath the shelves around LAX, on a grid where the authorizable ceiling changes from one square to the next.
We do not tell anyone over the phone what is permitted at their address. We pull the overlay for the exact parcel, plan route and altitude around the approach paths, and say plainly what is shootable before anything is booked. Every flight is planned and airspace-checked before the shoot date is confirmed. In Westwood that planning is not paperwork around the job. It is most of the job.
Boards, brokers, and buildings that are not going anywhere
North of the Village, the apartment grid along Gayley, Landfair, Kelton, Strathmore and Levering is dense, low-rise and held in small parcels. Leasing there runs on an academic calendar rather than a market one, which puts a hard edge on when marketing assets are worth having. South of Wilshire, Westwood Boulevard carries the Persian business district and a long run of independent ground-floor commercial. Along Wilshire itself sit office, institutional and medical tenants who need a building shown as a place rather than a floor plate.
Ground conditions keep moving. Subway work for the Westwood stations has been cutting into surface streets for years, so staging yards, deck plates and lane closures can appear in frame and change month to month. We scout the block before the shoot day and plan around campus event days and September move-in, when Westwood's streets stop behaving.
Work is delivered as 4K video and high-resolution aerial stills through a private online gallery. Mini Flight is $499, Signature Story is $999, Epic Package is $2,499, and custom scopes are quoted against the site. Revisions run one, two and three rounds by package. Delivery is fourteen days, ten on Epic, which also returns the raw footage. Clients supply any music they hold a license to use.
- Condo and multifamily listings, single units through whole buildings
- Commercial and retail property in the Village and along Westwood Boulevard
- Institutional, office and medical-corridor clients on Wilshire
- Hospitality and venue work for brands operating in the area
Asked and answered
Can you fly over the UCLA campus?
Not on our own authority. UCLA is University of California property and the UC system maintains its own drone policy alongside the federal rules, so anything launched from or centered on campus is a university permission question as well as a federal one. Most projects do not need it. We plan and frame from adjacent property, which is where the client's building sits anyway.
Do the hospital helipads rule out drone work in Westwood?
No, but they shape the plan. Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center has two helipads on its north roof serving emergency patient transport, and that traffic follows no schedule. We set route and altitude to stay clear of approach paths, keep eyes and ears on the sky throughout, and bring the aircraft down when anything is inbound. We check the overlay for the specific address before committing to a shot list.
What does aerial coverage actually add to a Wilshire Corridor listing?
Proof of elevation. We fly the unit's sightline at its own floor height, so the view in the video is the view from the unit rather than a generic skyline pass. Then we orbit the tower with standoff from occupied balconies and place it in context between Century City and the Sepulveda Pass. Delivered as 4K video and high-resolution stills in a private online gallery.
More in our full FAQ, or ask us directly.