if you just got your first drone and you want to know how to film with it then this
is the video for you today i want to show you the basics of how to film using a drone
hey my name is jake and i create content here to help solo creators on the go so i test and review
drones cameras lenses filmmaking equipment here in alaska and i give you tips and tutorials on how to
use them so you can tell better stories if that's something that interests you consider subscribing
today i want to walk you through the very basics of how to film with a drone we'll
talk about settings all the way from auto settings to get the best out of those and
then some more advanced settings also in shot composition and how to compose different shots
to be able to highlight your subject and then we'll also talk a little bit about how to use
drones in storytelling and the types of shots you want to get this is not how to
fly your drone video if you need to learn how to fly your drone i have a video right up here
that'll walk you through some great basic steps on learning how to fly a drone you definitely
need to watch that first this is all about how to film with the drone let's jump into it
now to start off with the easiest way to film with your drone is use it in auto mode so if you
tap down in the lower right hand corner of your screen whether it's on a phone or here it should
switch you to auto mode other drones might have different ways but if you look there should be a
way to switch from pro mode or something like that to auto mode where you're not having to manage
all the individual settings but there is a way that you can use auto mode to get the best
settings and it's very important and that is on the ev which is your exposure compensation value
you want to tap that and then lower it to either minus 0.3 or minus 0.7 and that will protect your
highlights so things like this white shirt clouds anything like that in broad sunlight will not you
won't lose the information in those and then from there you can just start filming and doing
the different things you want to do so i could circle around myself here get some nice footage
of you know me standing on this rock in the middle of the mountains but if you want to get the most
out of your drone and your mo the most out of the footage that you're going to film with your drone
you don't want to use auto mode so you're going to switch that back into pro mode or whatever
the manual mode you have is now when you switch to pro mode that means you have manual control
over all the settings so you have iso your shutter speed and in some drones like the mavic
2 pro or the mavic 3 pro and some of the autel drones you'll have control over the aperture
and what you want to do is set those settings up to get the best possible exposure this particular
drone because this is more of a beginner drone uh it doesn't have the option for aperture but it
does have the option for iso and for shutter speed for iso you always want to keep your iso as low
as possible so 100 200 400 if you absolutely have to if you're filming like sunset and stuff
like that but 100 is best you the lower your iso the cleaner image you're going to have and then
you want to adjust based on your shutter speed if you don't have nd filters you will have to have a
really high shutter speed which means you'll lose some motion blur motion blur is really important
because when we move things quickly in front of our eyes your eyes naturally blur out some
of the motion in that image i have a whole video about that it'll be linked up here linked in the
description but motion blur is important you can't use or can't get motion blur without nd filters so
for while you're beginning and while you're just learning to film you don't really need
to worry about it because honestly if you put the wrong nd filter on there you don't have the
settings quite right you can actually ruin more shots than you'll get so i recommend using the
auto mode for now and just filming getting footage having fun enjoying your drone but if you want to
use the pro mode you want to keep your iso as low as possible you want to keep your shutter
speed at two times your frame rate and then you want to use whatever nd filter will take you to
about the right exposure so keeping your uh your mm or your ev your exposure evaluator in
zero or maybe just a little lower than zero like minus point three or minus point seven
most drones have two different color profiles one is a normal color profile which pretty much just
looks great right out of the drone you can put it right on social media everything looks about right
and the way it should but they also have a flat or log or d city like in this case color profile
which is a more flat color profile and gives you more room to be able to color grade and push and
pull things around in post it gives you a little more information to work with when you're actually
editing the footage for now if you're just starting then just use the normal color pro
profile mode most drones actually look really good in this color profile mode and they do a good job
overall especially if you're using the auto settings like i said where you have it set
to expose at minus 0.3 or minus 0.7 and there's one more thing you need to know and that's white
balance white balance is important to get the proper color so if you're wearing white
or if you have white things in the photo or the the video it looks white and not orange or blue
so most drones come with this in auto mode but it's really important to get this set right for
the conditions so in sunlight you'll be at 5600 or 5700 5500 somewhere in there for cloudy days
you'll be at like 6500 and for things where it's much warmer light if you want things to look right
then you're going to be at like 3 200 mostly you'll probably be at 5600 or at 6 500 cloudy
days in the shade things like that the easiest way to use white balance beyond the settings that
i've already given you is to turn on auto let the drone set the white balance and then turn off auto
and that will lock the white balance because you don't want it changing during the shot the reason
you want to set your white balance properly is you don't want to have anything that's white
in the video look orange or blue but not only that setting your white balance properly means that all
the rest of the colors in that video will be right and look the way they should according to where
they look when we're looking at those things with our eyes your eyes and your brain have a
fantastic ability to adjust white balance on their own drones cameras have to match that and that's
the way we do it is setting the white balance to the proper conditions and the easiest way to
do that is hit auto let the drone set the white balance for whatever conditions you're flying in
and then turn the auto off so that it locks the white balance at whatever those conditions are
the next thing we need to talk about is composition composition has everything
to do with your subject and getting the right composition will make a big
difference on how your shots look so there's a couple of different ways to use drones
in the ways we tell stories we'll jump into that more in a minute but for composition the easiest
way to help yourself get good composition in your drone shots is go into your settings
like here go on the camera tab wherever that might be and scroll down to where it says grid lines
and the biggest thing you want to turn on is the rule of thirds grid lines those rule of thirds
grid lines will help you compose a more pleasing shot and so whether you're using the top and the
bottom rule of thirds say for a horizon shot you want your horizon either on the bottom rule
of third or on the top rule of third in this case we've got a subject me standing on a rock here and
i'm using the bottom rule of thirds to put myself on one of those rule of thirds because i want you
to see the mountains that are up behind me but we could also do something where we bring the
drone down a bit turn it to the left or the right and now the subject is on the right rule of third
that right rule third also is a good way to frame so whenever you're getting shots and whatever kind
of shots you're getting you want to put your subject on one of the rule of thirds lines
here's some examples of some really nice framing with the subject on one of the rule of thirds
now there's a lot of different kinds of shots you can get and so we're going to cover just a few
i have a whole playlist about different types of shots you can get and you'll it'll be linked here
at the end of the video but you want to get a few different types of shots with your drone one is
an establishing shot really high really wide showing off the entire area where your video
is about to take place so in this case this valley surrounded by mountains i'm showing
that whole thing off but you can't or you don't necessarily see the subject here are three of
my favorite ways to get establishing shots one is just going up high and moving to the left
or moving to the right or pushing forward or pulling back either one of those just adds
a really nice amount of movement in the shot but it doesn't do too much to distract
but we don't do that for too long before we move in to show our subject in that location one of my
favorite ways to show a subject in a location is to start with the gimbal pointed down push forward
pretty good speed so either in normal mode and then just slowly rotate the gimbal up as you're
getting ready to fly near or into or not into but close to your subject and of course another really
simple way to show that off is to orbit your subject which takes a little bit of practice
but you can definitely get it down to where you get a nice smooth orbit of your subject
in a location just showing them off or showing your subject off in that surrounding area
another really great way to show your subject in a location after you've done your high
establishing wide shots is called the jib shot and it's just simply going up or down and then
tilting the gimbal in the opposite direction that you're traveling so the drone goes down the gimbal
comes up and all of a sudden boom you reveal this giant area that your subject's standing in
the idea is that while you can use a static drone shot and while they actually do work great for
that and i use them for that all the time kind of like a second camera on a tripod but drones
give us the opportunity to get a lot of movement and a lot of motion in the shots as well and so
we definitely want to use that to our advantage by constantly having just a little bit of motion
either left right forward backward anything like that and it will give you a lot more of a sense of
the area you'll be revealing more information to your audience and that will keep people interested
and then you also want to get some close shots with your drone so you can alternate between them
that's where you're actually fairly close to your subject like i am here and you can have that be
more static actually drones work great as a static b camera or you could even just have it rotating
slowly around we're going to cover some of the smart features in a minute which actually help
you do this without having to hold a controller if your drone does things like active track or
anything like that now if he doesn't you just gotta learn how to do this manually you can still
get some great shots these are the basic shots that i really highly suggest you master the orbit
which is where your control sticks are basically going to go in opposite directions from each other
so you can orbit left or orbit right so if your this control stick is going in et cetera you're
going the opposite way with this again this video doesn't teach you how to fly all those things but
some of my other videos do and the other shot you want to master is the jib shot because that's
another one that's really great for revealing your subject in a location as you reveal the location
around them and of course the push in the pullback the left the right those are all very simple very
easy to master because they're all pretty much just one control those are shots you really
want to work on because they will add a lot more interest and a lot more dynamic feeling and motion
to your shots now if your drone has smart modes quick shots active track anything like that you
can use that to your advantage a lot by actually tracking a subject so in this case i select the
subject by drawing a box around them and then i hit active track and i can track like follow
myself as i'm hiking through which is tremendously useful or i can hit the point of interest mode
and have it
just slowly start circling around me and this is great because i don't have to control the drone
you get a really smooth really good orbit shows off your subject in the location and you get
actually really nice footage out of it now i don't do this all the time because sometimes
i want to add other movements to my orbit or i want to do something else but i do use this a
lot when i'm getting into a location and setting my gear up or doing something where i don't want
to be holding the controller and focusing on flying the drone i just want to get footage
of myself in a location like this then using the smart modes the active track those things makes a
huge difference on being able to get great footage without looking like you're flying a drone but not
only that if your drone does have active track you can use it to get some really cool dynamic shots
if you have your subject selected then basically the drone will keep your subject in frame
no matter how you move the control stick so i can move it left and come down and while we're
coming down it's going to sweep up and around so it's going to show off the whole location
or it could just fly up and over my subject and show where i'm standing on this rock as i climb up
and go straight up but using active track in some of those smart modes those quick features
will add a lot of dynamic and a lot of other options for you to be able to get really good
footage with your drone without having to work super hard i still think you need to learn how
to fly everything manually because it'll make you a much better drone pilot but being able to use
those smart modes fairly fast to be able to get good shots especially if you're filming yourself
is a huge bonus you might say i don't have access to epic locations like this so my footage is not
going to look good and that's not necessarily true what makes a big difference on how good
your footage looks no matter where you're filming is the time of day you film right now
i'm in the high noon day sun it's very bright it's very harsh this is not the most ideal time to be
filming so here's some more examples of places filmed in the high noonday sun but if you wait a
few hours and you film the hour after sunrise or the hour before sunset what we call golden hour
your footage will look much better and much more interesting and it has a lot to do with
the dynamics of the lighting the temperature color change of the lighting and the angle of
the lighting that makes everything look so much better there are seven drone moves that you really
need to know if you're going to film with drones i put them in this video right here i'll see you
over there as always if you have questions ask me in the comments below or join my live stream
wednesday nights at 4 pm alaska time 8 pm eastern see you again soon in the next video cheers