About Drone Stories
We didn’t join this industry. We started it.
Drone Stories came out of Studio DRIFT. In 2008, Ralph Nauta and Lonneke Gordijn had the idea of a flock of birds made of light, moving through the sky as one. No technology in the world could fly it. It took until 2017 before it could, and Franchise Freedom took off. Drone Stories is the company we built to fly it, and everything that came after.
Franchise Freedom was the first independently orchestrated drone performance ever flown. Since then we have flown it over NASA’s rocket garden, Art Basel, and Central Park, and used everything we learned to tell stories for Spotify, Samsung, Red Bull, Disney+, Formula 1, Coachella and Burning Man.
We fly under two names: Drone Stories for the shows, and Studio DRIFT, the art studio of our founders Ralph Nauta and Lonneke Gordijn, for the performances. Ideas we came up with along the way, like playing Tetris in the sky or skydiving through a Red Bull can, have since been picked up by the biggest brands in the world.
We are storytellers who use drones, not a drone company that does stories. That difference is the whole company.
Milestones
- 01
Art Basel Miami
Franchise Freedom premieres: the world’s first independently orchestrated drone performance, with Studio DRIFT. The drone light show as an art form is born.
- 02
Kennedy Space Center
Franchise Freedom flies over NASA’s rocket garden for the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11.
- 03
Amsterdam
A city’s New Year’s Eve countdown, and the first shows for Spotify and Samsung.
- 04
Burning Man
Fifteen shows in the Black Rock Desert, including a 2.5-hour endless show.
- 05
Central Park, New York
A thousand drones over Manhattan. International news.
- 06
Las Vegas
Speed City for Mercedes-AMG and IWC: 1,000 drones over the track while Lewis Hamilton and George Russell drove beneath them.
- 07
Venice
Social Sacrifice, the first indoor drone performance, in the Church of San Lorenzo alongside the Biennale. And more shows since, at the Arsenale.
- 08
Cannes
The future of media, told in the sky for Kargo at Cannes Lions.
- 09
Copacabana, Rio
1,500 drones opening Shakira’s free concert, in front of two million people on the beach.
What we believe
Impact over volume.
Drone shows have become easy to buy. Most of them are forgotten before the crowd reaches the car park. We are not interested in that. We take the shows that have to land: one launch, one countdown, one night a city will talk about. That is not a question of budget. Some of our best work was small.
It is a question of honesty. Our partners at Sky Elements fly every kind of show at every scale, and they are the best in the world at it. If that is what your event needs, we will introduce you. If it needs a story in the sky that people will remember, that is what we do.
The founders
Where it began
Franchise Freedom
The performance that started the company, and the industry. Still flying, still the show other shows are measured against.
Let’s collaborate
Want the people who started it on your show?
Brief us on the event, the place and the audience. Within a day you’ll hear whether a drone show is the right call, roughly what it takes, and what we would do with it.