How Do You Make Your Video Spectacular with a Drone?

It used to be that all you had to do for aerial photography was to get 300 meters in the air, turn the camera on, and shoot something from a bird’s eye view, and you had a bunch of enthusiastic comments, likes, and recognition.

The industry has grown a little bit now and it doesn’t surprise anymore. If you want to shoot beautifully, you need to choose the right copter, learn different flying techniques, develop your creative thinking and practice a lot.

So we are going to share with you a few tips that will make your videos more cinematic.

Tip #1

Whenever possible, investigate a location before you shoot. Assess the latitude of the space, choose the object or scene you’re going to show in the video. Think about how you can use the foreground. Determine from an app or compass exactly where and what time the sun rises and sets. This will give you an understanding of how the light will reflect. Some locations maximize their beauty only when the sun is rising or setting.

Tip #2

Try to keep all movements soft and smooth. This will also add a cinematic feel to your footage. The most common mistake novice pilots make is moving too fast. Don’t do that. Of course, there are certain situations where you need to fly fast. For instance, you may be shooting an Audi Q8 (https://renty.ae/cars/audi-q8), so that you need to capture a dynamic scene. But you must be much more careful not to fly into some obstacle, which is much easier to do when you are into speed flying and shooting.

Most of the time it’s much more advantageous to have smooth movements that add a cinematic feel to your shots. Especially if you have an object in the frame. For example, a person who is located fairly close to the copter. In this case, try to move particularly slowly and smoothly. Yes, you can fly fast when shooting if the landscape you are shooting is far away, but in other cases, slow down.

To make the drone move slowly, select Tripod mode on the remote control.

Tip #3

Be sure to use ND filters. Essentially, these are just dark glasses for your camera. They only limit the amount of light that enters your lens. By doing so, ND filters allow you to keep the shutter speed within the desired range, whatever frame rate you use. This means you get the most natural Motion blur effect in the frame, making your video much more cinematic. It also avoids the slight wobble that can occur with fast shutter speeds caused by the vibration of the camera.

Tip #4

Set the smoothest settings for camera suspension movement. The slower and smoother the better. Also don’t forget to set a comfortable smoothness of movement on the yaw axis (rotation around the vertical axis of the drone – the nose (front part) rotates in different directions), as this is the most difficult axis to control during video shooting. These values will vary from drone to drone and from user to user.

Tip #5

Since the sensors on most modern drones don’t yet have as impressive a dynamic range as movie cameras, it’s important to shoot at the right time of day. This means shooting during the golden hour, which is the time of sunrise and sunset. In this case, you can be as sure as possible that you will have the best natural light and you will be able to get the most beautiful picture possible.