5 Killer Ideas for Drone Videos

[Music] when you're trying to get ideas for what to shoot with the drone there's a word for it it's called cinematography it's a really big word that basically means how to not suck at pointing the camera at things people buy drones and expect to have really good stuff because they don't pick up on these photography principles like how to frame a shot and as stupid and pretentious as it sounds is actually really really important I found a couple of angles and techniques that work pretty much consistently everywhere you go that will always get you guaranteed gold as much as I can guarantee as a guy on the internet giving advice once you start doing some of this stuff you're gonna see these opportunities everywhere and I'm not kidding it's really really easy to do you don't have to have a butt ton of experience I mean I'm not a genius I'm nothing special I've just done enough of these to screw them up to know exactly what pretty much gives me really good shots every single time and once you see it you're gonna start looking for this every time you go out to another important thing is that they have to be easy enough to pull off while you still have the drone pilot anxiety where you feel like you have to crap your pants because you kind of feel like a criminal even if you're doing it legally when everybody stares and 15 dads won't ask you questions which is why I always say if you have a metwo Pro fly without thumb stakes so you don't get all the shaky baggies but you know that's like five other videos the thing that's most frustrating which I wish I could tell everybody to stop doing and this is what I did when I first got a drone I didn't start out getting anything good right away I had the same impulse to fly to basically the moon and just to earth everybody does this right away you fly to the max height you can get maybe you break the law and go a little higher and you just wind up with a bunch of dirt spinning in one spot almost always looks bad and it's the first thing everybody goes for it's cool that you can see in every direction I know but the way that short lanes is working panning left and right always looks choppy and weird and it kills the perspective the opposite actually works really well when you rotate a stationary object but that's one of the shots I'm gonna get to in a minute this is just about angles and what to look for in your environment this isn't about settings I can give you a really shortened version so you don't have to sit through the whole video and in a PDF of what settings to use that work for me for most drones Mavic one maverick 2 Pro phantom 4 phantom 3 Mavic air why do I own all these drones to begin with because I teach a course on flying and filming and another one of photography so so I use pretty much all of them and know what works with certain drones so again these shots will only work if you make sure you handle a couple of things like expose incorrectly and I always say immediately with DJI drones turn down the contrast right away first thing if nothing else because DJ eyes default is to give you really amateur looking contrast and you can always do it in the editor later again that's in the PDF you want to download it yeah so anyways cinematography oh boy you may have heard from a trusted friend that Senate ography is difficult and you can't just do it yourself well this person is an idiot block them on your phone never speak to them again cinematography is fun and really really satisfying not on the spot but when you get home and you look at your stuff and you see how balanced and beautiful and even it is you will be so happy with yourself I have got just a fat fat pile of shots that you can replicate yourself today and see how cool you become amongst your non-flying lowborn friends here we're gonna show you a bunch of good but easy shots to get and the first shot I've got the easiest simplest but also very much okay to use low fast and over water so get the drone like 10 feet over water any less and the collision sensors might stop you mid-flight if it goes over a wave or something but the point is to go straight ahead pretty fast and the water brushing beneath is really cool to look at especially if there's waves beneath you because it gives it a lot of action and that is also great for a sunset if you don't know how else to shoot it really good if you can manage to use this as an intro to reveal something else like a mountain a resort something in the background that you're filming so if you were to fly over the water and lift up right before the golf course to show it below okay shot number two even easier just straight down is this called kinda don't know it's called straight down just aim the camera straight down as far down as it can go and fly straight at a constant speed let the patterns of houses or trees or rivers whatever's beneath you let it pass by and that will be enough action for the shot something you may feel the urge to do is to change plans mid shot and start aiming at the thing you just passed don't do this amateur shot can start and finish with the cool stuff passing by and not try to jerk and risk ruining the angle by twisting or racing the camera to keep aiming out whatever you're passing by just let it go and when you see it any editor trust me you will be happy with yourself shot number three right down the line how does this work step one find a line step two follow the line step three that's it that's all you have to do you're done really really simple again find a line let it split the frame perfectly and just follow it here I have a dirt road leading up some beautiful mountains but the intro to this still follows right over the dirt track this one looks really pretty but don't try it it takes a master a flight and framing like me just kidding I screwed it up and I almost crash because I hit a pole with a propeller thankfully while I was trying to fly my limp drone back I had sombrero guy walk and say yo you're definitely gonna crash and start filming so thanks a lot for that sombrero guy here I've combined the last two shots we went over with a straight down and right along the line split down the center frame for some cool symmetry this is really easy gold to go for because people who live in this area will never have seen this perspective super super high up everyone's seen that from helicopter photos and plane photos but barely anybody has seen a hundred feet off the ground or lower shot three and a half remember when I said points straight down not kinda down well that was a joke kind of down is also a cool shot to consider and it's great when you have rows and rows of similar items like houses or cars in a parking lot okay but moving on the shot for if you have a mountaintop a pole top a house and a hill show off the height by circling that point and this needs to be done with patience and steady fingers because you are now trying to rotate and move forward and over at the same time so you're flying kind of at an angle position wise but you are turning the drone to track that item this usually takes a ten-second head start so you can kind of calibrate and figure out the rotation speed and the flight speed that works but once you do just keep it there and don't move a muscle and let the drone film because of that these might take multiple tries because it's kind of a drift I wouldn't trust the software in the drones like DJ eyes orbit because it goofs on me really often it's better done handheld with slow gimbal settings but this is one of my favorites because you cover so much and it's always incredible to force perspective on the distance like that this also works from far away with a slower turn when you have a much broader environment to show off like a park shot five fly just barely above anything busy happening beneath you I'm talking about like ten feet if this was a river with tons of boats or a parade of people anything just fly straight over ahead treat it like it's a landscape shot and you're trying to get the background and as you pass by things below it will show how fast the camera is moving and how much is covering if there is a lot happening like huge waves crashing beneath I would say go slow and let the action speak for itself and that's if you have like a stampede of horses going by beneath or something you can also tilt the camera a little bit to look at this directly if you think you're gonna miss the action but do it gently and this takes muscle memory because it's easy to mess things up that way actually you know what this fifth one kind of sucks because it sounds exactly like the one I went over earlier so I'll throw in another this can be done pretty much everywhere because no matter where you live you have land you have a building more than likely or if you're using a hill so find one that's really tall sit in front of it and all you have to do is left to right and this building is gonna swipe like a card to reveal all the pretty background anything that's obstructing the view of something much much prettier behind it another added benefit is that sometimes when it's lit in the background but it's not up front you get this nice silhouette effect so if you add a lot of contrast it'll look like this really edgy emo music video kind of you know whatever that's up to you but these shots are not hard to do you don't have to worry about turning rising panning and controlling the gimbal at the same time for any of these so go out and give them a try because all they take is good taste but just for fun here's more shots I like that we're more complicated with panning and tilting at the same time as well as gimbal action but have a look anyway because I select them [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music]

Channel: QuickAssTutorials

Views: 750,701

Rating: 4.9290123 out of 5

Keywords: drone video ideas, drone camera idea, best stuff to film aerial, best drone shots, cool drone shots

Id: hpGVW3PWJeE

Length: 8min 47sec (527 seconds)

Published: Sat May 04 2019