Keeping pace with new innovations to support emerging aviation technologies

Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) is the term for a new generation of aircraft built to move people and goods in ways conventional aviation has not, most visibly the electric air taxis and the larger uncrewed aircraft that sit beyond today’s drones. In Australia it is regulated by the Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA), which groups AAM alongside remotely piloted aircraft systems (RPAS, the formal name for drones) in a single forward plan for how the technology enters Australian airspace. Mude produced the explainer film series for CASA’s RPAS and AAM roadmap, including the passenger-flight film that introduces AAM to a general audience. The category covers more than air taxis: cargo flights, regional connections, and operations that are crewed at first and expected to become uncrewed over time. What sets it apart from existing aviation is the aircraft themselves, electric and built to take off vertically, and the fact that the rules for flying them commercially are still being written. CASA’s position, set out across the roadmap, is that these operations join the transport network once their safety and community impact have been worked through.

Drones in Australia are regulated by the Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA), which uses the formal term remotely piloted aircraft systems, or RPAS. The rules scale with risk: lower-risk flying carries lighter requirements, and more complex operations, flying beyond the pilot’s line of sight, over people, or near controlled airspace, need CASA approval that grows with the risk involved. CASA’s longer-term plan for the sector is set out in its RPAS and AAM Strategic Regulatory Roadmap, developed with industry and government and sitting under the federal New and Emerging Aviation Technology policy. Mude produced the explainer films for the online version of that roadmap. The films make CASA’s approach concrete: for harder operations it is outcomes-based, so an operator shows how it will manage the specific risks of what it wants to do instead of working from a fixed checklist. That is how a company like Wing reached routine drone delivery, and it is the same logic that lets a farmer fly over their own paddocks under lighter rules. The roadmap is a long, dense document, which is exactly why CASA commissioned short films and graphics to sit alongside it.

Drone delivery in Australia is approved through CASA under an outcomes-based process: instead of meeting a fixed checklist, an operator demonstrates how it will manage the risks of the specific operation it wants to run, and the permissions expand as that case is proven. It is an incremental path, which is why operators describe it as crawl, walk, run. The delivery film Mude produced for CASA’s roadmap follows Wing, who have been running a drone delivery service in Australia for years and now deliver thousands of packages a week across Canberra and South East Queensland, with a drone going out roughly every thirty seconds at their busiest sites. They reached that point step by step: flying within line of sight first, then beyond it, then over people, and eventually with a single pilot overseeing several aircraft at once. The film also covers the parts that do not make headlines, like groceries still arriving in Logan during floods when the local shops were shut, and it is clear throughout that the drones overhead are operating under CASA’s oversight rather than outside it.

A vertiport is the place an electric air taxi takes off from and lands at, the eVTOL equivalent of a helipad or a small airport. In the early years they are not expected to appear on suburban rooftops; they start inside existing aviation sites, where the infrastructure and oversight already exist, and spread outward as the public and the regulator get more comfortable with the operations. This is covered in the passenger-flight film Mude produced for CASA’s roadmap, with Clem Newton from Skyportz walking through what a vertiport is and where the first ones realistically sit. It is one of the questions that is hard to follow in words alone, which is why the roadmap films lean on motion graphics to show where a vertiport fits in the airspace around a city rather than only describing it. Vertiports matter to the timeline because air taxis need somewhere to operate from, and that infrastructure rolls out gradually.

Mude produced a four-part film and graphics series for the online version of CASA’s RPAS and AAM Strategic Regulatory Roadmap, delivered in 2022. It was the second run of video work Mude had done with CASA. The roadmap itself is a long, dense regulatory document, and the online version was built to be interactive, with short films and explanatory graphics making it easier to take in. Each film was built around one theme and the audience that goes with it: a grower weighing up drones on the farm, a delivery operator, a city commuter sceptical about air taxis, and an overseas manufacturer deciding where to develop and test new aircraft. Mude’s scope ran from discovery and creative direction through scriptwriting and storyboarding, cinematography, 2D motion graphics and illustration, and post-production. The series was delivered as four explainer films of a few minutes each, four thirty-second social cut-downs, and five standalone graphics for the roadmap, supplied as 4K masters and social versions with WCAG captions. Mude did not touch CASA’s brand or tell CASA how to regulate; the work was the storytelling that made a dense roadmap legible to the people it needed to reach.

The move that makes a dense document work on screen is to stop treating it as one audience. CASA’s drone and air-taxi roadmap reaches a farmer thinking about a spray drone, a delivery business weighing up the outlay, a commuter who has only seen flying taxis in cartoons, and an overseas research lead deciding where to base testing. Mude split the roadmap series into four films, each built around one of those audiences and what they are worried about or hoping for, with a handful of interviews under each. From there it is a question of craft. The interviews are shot cinematically, taking the cue from the way Masterclass lights and frames a talking head, so the viewer’s eye stays on the person. The technical parts that words struggle with, no-fly zones, the airspace around an airport, where a vertiport sits, are handled with motion graphics, built on real locations in Google Earth Studio so the airspace on screen is the actual place being discussed. Each film opens on a situation the viewer already recognises, moves into what the technology makes possible, shows where CASA fits, and points back to the roadmap. That structure is what turns a document almost nobody would read end to end into something a farmer or an investor will watch.

Motion graphics are animated graphic elements, text, diagrams, maps and simple illustration, used to explain or emphasise something live footage cannot show on its own. A project needs them when the subject has a spatial or abstract dimension that words and filmed footage struggle to carry: how a system fits together, how a process moves, where something sits in space. CASA’s roadmap is a clear case. Mude used motion graphics to handle the parts of drone and air-taxi regulation that are hard to picture, no-fly zones, the airspace around an airport, line of sight, and where a vertiport fits, taking the cue from the way Vox builds its explainers. The maps were built in Google Earth Studio from real locations near the people interviewed, so the airspace on screen is the actual area being discussed rather than a generic illustration. Where part of the roadmap needed a diagram more than a film, Mude produced standalone graphics in the same visual language, so the static and moving pieces read as one system. Motion graphics earn their place when they make something legible that would otherwise stay abstract.

An eVTOL is an electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft: it lifts off and lands like a helicopter but runs on a lot of small electric motors instead of a single combustion engine. That design makes it quieter, cleaner and potentially cheaper to run than the helicopters operating now, which is why eVTOLs are the aircraft most people picture when they hear ‘flying taxi’. In the passenger-flight film Mude produced for CASA’s roadmap, the eVTOL is explained to a viewer who assumes the whole idea is science fiction: how the aircraft works, whether there is a pilot on board to begin with, and how the airspace above a city gets managed once there are more of them. The honest part of that film, and of CASA’s roadmap generally, is that commercial passenger flights are still a couple of years away and depend on each aircraft type being certified to fly. eVTOL developers such as Eve Air Mobility appear in the film talking through where the technology actually is, rather than where the marketing says it is.

In many cases, yes. CASA’s excluded category lets a landholder fly a drone of up to 25 kilograms over their own land for lower-risk work without holding a full remote pilot licence, which keeps a grower from needing formal approvals just to fly over their own paddocks. It applies to the lower-risk end of operations, so it is not a blanket exemption: heavier aircraft, flying beyond line of sight, or work near other people or airspace still bring CASA’s rules into play. The agriculture film Mude produced for CASA’s roadmap follows a grower doing exactly this kind of flying, spraying crops and helping muster stock. The practical case it makes is plain: charging a battery costs less than fuelling a chopper, and a lot of farm work will not wait, so being able to put a spray on in a wet season when the paddocks are too boggy for a ground sprayer can be the difference between getting the job done and missing the window. Meg Kummerow from Fly The Farm is one of the operators who appears, talking about what the technology has changed on the ground. Drones sit alongside the existing machinery and crews rather than replacing them.

Passenger air taxis are coming to Australia, but not imminently, and safety is the gate they have to pass through first. The aircraft are eVTOLs, electric and vertical take-off, and CASA’s position is that they can become part of the transport network once their safety and the community questions around them have been worked through. Commercial passenger flights are still a couple of years away and depend on each aircraft type being certified to fly. Mude produced the passenger-flight film for CASA’s roadmap, and it is built for the sceptic rather than the enthusiast. It walks through what someone actually wants answered before they would step in: whether the aircraft is safe, whether the sky will be full of noise, whether there is a pilot on board to begin with, and how air traffic is managed once there are many more aircraft in the air. People building the aircraft, such as Rob Weaver from Eve Air Mobility, appear alongside CASA, and Clem Newton from Skyportz explains where these aircraft would take off and land. The film does not oversell the timeline, which is part of why CASA could put it in front of a public that is reasonably sceptical.

Yes, and Australia actively positions itself as a place to do it. The pitch, which Austrade uses the CASA roadmap to make, rests on a few concrete advantages: large areas of low-density airspace to test in, which are harder to find in Europe or the United States; a strong record on protecting intellectual property; an established aerospace base; and a regulator that works alongside companies running trials rather than keeping them at arm’s length. Certification is the part that usually worries overseas operators, and Australia has shortened it. CASA recognises type certificates from authorities including the United States, Europe and Canada, so an aircraft already certified in one of those jurisdictions can enter Australia through a simpler validation instead of starting the process over. CASA has also committed to a research and development framework that lets operators test new technology in a controlled, time-limited setting before they are ready to put up a full safety case. Mude produced the film aimed at this audience for CASA’s roadmap, which features Australian work already ahead of the field, such as Debbie Saunders and her team at Wildlife Drones tracking endangered animals into country no one can reach on foot.

Most explainer-video work in Australia comes from animation studios producing purely animated pieces, which suits a software product but is a poor fit for a government regulator that needs real operators, real locations and real authority on screen. Mude works in the gap between those animation shops and the large film and television production houses: explainer films that combine cinematic interviews with people living the subject and motion graphics that carry the technical parts. CASA’s RPAS and AAM roadmap series is the clearest example. It is interview-led, shot with CASA staff, industry operators, researchers and pilots, and cut against footage of the actual work, with motion graphics handling the things that are hard to follow in words, such as airspace and line of sight. Mude has produced this kind of public-facing film for other federal clients as well, including the Department of Health, Disability and Ageing. The studio runs from Sydney and Canberra, and the Canberra base matters here because so many of the departments and regulators commissioning this work are based there.

Australian government communications carry standards consumer video does not, and the two that shape production most are the Australian Government Style Manual and the accessibility requirements built on the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). In practice that means content has to be captioned, legible, and usable by people with vision, hearing and cognitive impairments, and it has to read as official without becoming impenetrable. Mude builds to those standards as a default. The CASA roadmap films were delivered with captions to WCAG standard, in both their full and social versions, so the series met its accessibility obligations across every format it ran in. The same discipline shapes the rest of the work: motion graphics legible at speed, audio mixed so a voiceover stays clear under music, and a register formal enough for a regulator and plain enough for the farmer or commuter the films are made for. For a government client, the accessibility bar is set in the brief, and the production is built to meet it from the first cut.

Yes. Mude runs a studio in Canberra alongside its Sydney one, and a substantial part of the Canberra work is video for government departments, regulators and national bodies. CASA is one example, a federal aviation regulator Mude has made two runs of video work with, and the Department of Health, Disability and Ageing is another. A Canberra base matters for this work because so many of the organisations commissioning public-sector video, the departments, regulators and agencies, are headquartered there, and the briefs tend to be confidential, formal and accountable to a public audience. Government video also runs to a different standard than commercial work, from accessibility requirements through to the Style Manual register, and a studio that does it regularly treats those as part of the brief from the start. Mude’s government and public-sector video covers explainer films, awareness and education campaigns, interview-led pieces and the motion graphics that go with them, produced for federal and national clients across Canberra and Sydney.