Most people who fly drones at music festivals learned the drone first and the festival second. Chris Teal did it the other way round, and that is the whole difference.
Fifteen years in the crowd first
Before he ever flew one professionally, Chris spent more than fifteen years going to electronic music festivals. By his own account that came long before the career did — he understood the culture, the rooms and the rhythm of a set as a person who was there for the music, not as a contractor who got a booking.
It sounds like a soft detail. It isn't. Knowing when a drop is coming, where a crowd is about to surge, and which moment is the one worth being in the air for is not something you can learn from a flight manual. It is the difference between footage of a festival and footage that feels like being at one.
Ten years behind the goggles
Chris is a professional FPV pilot, filmmaker and entrepreneur with over a decade of FPV experience, and he founded DroneCo Productions to do high-end FPV work at major festivals, concerts, motorsports and large-scale productions. His own description of what the reputation is built on is worth repeating, because it is not the part most pilots lead with: not just capturing exceptional footage, but being reliable, professional, safety-focused and easy to work with in genuinely complicated environments.
That focus points somewhere. His stated long-term goal is for DroneCo to become the leading authority on live-event FPV operations in the United States — consulting, training, safety standards and a network of qualified operators — so that professional FPV flying over people stays safe, sustainable and respected. Anyone who has watched this industry knows how much rests on that going well.
The frame you're flying
He does not only fly them. He designs, builds and sells them. The SnapRing 2.5″ cinewhoop is his, and it is the real airframe the cinewhoop in Festival FPV is modelled on, used with permission. When you fly the free mainstage in your browser, you are flying his frame.
And the music
The other half of it is that Chris produces electronic music under the name TAURU5. The five-track original soundtrack in Festival FPV is his. So the drone is his design and the music the show is cut to is his production — which is a strange and quite specific overlap of two lifelong obsessions, and it is exactly the overlap this game is built on.
“Failing is where you find out who you really are.”
Chris Teal — It Was The BEST Thing EVER, 2024
In his own words
The path was not a straight line, and Chris has told that part himself far better than anyone could tell it for him. Two videos, both worth your time.
Why he's the first pilot on this page
Big Sky FPV's view, stated as ours rather than as fact: Chris is one of the best festival FPV pilots working today, and one of the people who pushed this corner of the sport into existence. We would say that about very few people. He is also the reason a lot of Festival FPV exists at all — the frame, the soundtrack, and a good deal of the advice.