Hello friends. Now I've been using the DJI spark for well over a year now
on my travels it's an awesome entry-level drone and if you have one or
if you're thinking of getting one I'm going to share with you my top tips for
how you can get the most out of this drone and how you can get those awesome
epic cinematic style drone shots.
But just because it is entry-level it doesn't mean you still can't get the
same epic cinematic style drone shots that you want to get from one of those
maybe more expensive drones. And that's what I'm going to show you today. Okay
number one before you even start flying your drone you're gonna want to do two
things. First of all open up your DJI Go application, tap on this little icon on
the right hand side and that's going to open up your video settings. And what you
want to do is you want to change from auto to manual. Going to manual settings
means that you can set your exposure and you can lock it for each of your shots
which is going to become really important because you don't want your
exposure settings changing going from light to dark and having the drone do it
all for you. That's fine when you're just starting out but if you want to be
making your footage look really epic really cinematic and as good as you can
then you really want to lock that exposure each time you're taking a new
shot. Now secondly click on this other icon at the top here and if you can see
the histogram make sure your histogram is turned on so you can always see your
exposure settings at any one time. Now if you've never used a histogram and
exposure settings before just go out and practice but basically all you want to
do is make sure that that curve which represents all the light coming into the
sensor that curve is in between the left hand side and the right hand side. It's
not pushed off one way so things are too dark and it's not pushed off the other
way so things are too light. Set your shot up then set your exposure and then
record. That's the process that I follow. This can be a bit overused but the rule
of thirds is kind of really important if you want to get those cinematic style
shots so make sure you turn your grid on so you can see where abouts your top
third bottom third left third right third and also your center points are
when you're actually filming. And use those when you're setting up shots just
to make things a lot more aesthetically pleasing and to really fit into those
rule of thirds, which I know are meant to be broken as well sometimes but if
you're just starting out and you want to try and get some sort of classic drone
style cinematic shots I always think if you try and follow the rule of thirds
it's gonna make things look a lot more pleasing on the eye than if you're just
kind of roughly guessing whereabouts to put things on screen enough set up later.
Ok let's get this thing into the air.
When you're filming your shot and you want motion in the shots make sure you
only have one direction of motion at any one time.
Don't change your motion halfway through the shot because that jerkiness really
gives away the fact that you're using a drone and one of the key things that you
want is you want people not to realize you're using a drone. You want your drone
shots to seamlessly flow with the rest of the shots that you're using in your
video. Drones are really good at doing basic
tracking shots and that's the next thing I want you to try and the easy way to do
that is basically set your drone at an altitude, get your rule of thirds set up
so you've got something nicely positioned in frame, and just push the
joystick left or right whichever way you want to track and allow the drone to
move across the scene and track from one way to the other. Next up now drones are
really good at establishing a shot which means they can help tell the person
watching where you are without having to actually tell them where you are. It's
show versus tell. And a great way to do that is with a reveal. Now the reveal
shot basically means the drone is flying somewhere and as it does it reveals
something new that wasn't there before. Now it can be hard to actually fly the
drone into the exact position that you want it to be in so you've got that
final shot beautifully framed so what I actually do is reverse it.
I frame the shot exactly how I want it and then I fly the drone away so it's
actually taking the subject out of frame and then in my Final Cut Pro or whichever
editing software you're using I just reverse the clip. Next tip is all to do
with lighting It's just gone eight o'clock in the morning here in
Melbourne the Sun came up about an hour ago
and the lighting is really nice right now. I always recommend if you're gonna
fly your drone try and fly it either first thing in the morning or last thing
at night when you've just got that beautiful either Golden Hour if you can
get it or still having a nice low Sun so you get all these nice textures in the
sky. I always try and film with the Sun behind the drone so that's helping light
whatever subject you're focusing on I don't really like to film into the Sun
because I don't think these drones do very well filming directly into the Sun.
You get these big areas of white where everything's washed out. Oh and actually
as a bonus tip if you've got the Sun behind the drone and you're focusing on
something on the ground be careful not to get your own drone shadow in the shot
because like I said earlier you kind of want these shots to not be obvious that
you're using a drone to film them with, and the obvious way to tell someone
you're filming with a drone is when the drone shadow goes right
across the foreground in front of you. Okay next up two tips that kind of
contradict each other. The first of which is shoot low down. What I mean by
that is keep your drone actually low down by the ground so you're not
actually way up high like you would traditionally associate drone footage
with. When you've got your drone low down and you're flying past a single
subject it's like you've basically got a stabilized shot it's like using a camera
on a gimbal. But instead you're using your drone and again you're not making
it obvious that you're using a drone to take that shot. Follow shots are really
good for this kind of thing as well where you put the drone behind someone
and you have that someone either walk towards the drone or away from them.
Once again it's not obvious you're using a drone to film that and you get that
really nice smooth motion as that person's walking past the camera. And
following on from that like I said of course the reverse is send you drone up
as high as you legally can obviously but try and get your drone nice and high and
then point the cameras straight down. And this shot, this style of shot is one of
my favorites with a drone because you pretty much can't get it with any other
type of camera out there unless you are flying in an aircraft or chartering a
helicopter. And following on from that my next tip is use locked shots wherever
you can which is set the drone and then don't move it. So whilst of course you
can move the drone and get those beautiful moving pictures if you
position the drone and then have the thing that you're focusing on move for
you I actually think it gives you a slightly different feel and once again
it makes the user forget that they're looking at footage that's being shot by
a drone. All right those are just some of my tips for how I make my drone footage
more cinematic let me know in the comments below what some of your tips
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a couple of times a week here on the channel. Otherwise thanks as always for
watching and I'll catch you in the next video.