- Hey guys, welcome to another episode of
Quick Little Pro Tip.
And today we're gonna talk about drones
and how to actually get good at the flying part of drones.
(uplifting electronic music)
Half the battle of being a videographer, cinematographer,
drone pilot, is to actually know how to compose shots,
get really nice shots, and where to fly your drone.
But the other half is actually getting your drone
to those places and getting those shots by flying the drone.
Oh, and big announcement, we got some new merch.
I'm pretty excited about this one.
It's the Learn, Make, Repeat.
You guys have heard me talking about this before,
learn, make, repeat, that's really the motto that
I use to learn this whole videography, cinematography thing.
I got interested in it, I started learning,
and then I put it to use, I made stuff,
and I just basically repeated that process
until I ended up here.
So, I wanted to put it on a shirt
thanks to Stefan Koontz for designing this, super sweet.
It's in black and white.
And also, kind of paying respects to
the old Travel Feels day, we designed this
rest in peace Travel Feels shirt.
Yeah, it's kind of just paying respects to where this
channel started, where we came from, and yeah,
I don't know, good memories, lot's of good memories.
So, if you're interested in merch,
check out the link down below.
Okay so, let's get back to these guys, the drones.
Let's talk about five tips, five tips,
on how to actually get good at flying your drone.
Number one, I'd say get one of these,
get one of these cheap little mini drones first.
They're, I think this one's called the Cheerson.
They're like 20 bucks, super cheap, really fun to fly.
But, if you can fly this thing,
you can pretty much fly any drone.
And this one, it doesn't really matter if you crash it,
it's like 20 bucks, you can buy new little propellers,
it's fine, whatever.
If you can fly this thing, you can literally fly any drone.
This thing is way harder to fly because it doesn't actually
hover, you have to control the altitude all the time.
So, if you can learn to fly this thing,
you'll have no problems flying a real DJI drone,
or whatever, this kind of bigger drone.
So, number one, I'd say test out
one of these mini drones.
I'll link this guy down below.
I have a few of these, I actually really like flying these,
even just for fun, and they do flips and stuff,
so that's pretty cool.
Number two, I would say, is to know your settings.
And I know, this is another one of those boring tips
but it's really important 'cause this always happens,
you're flying in the air, you got your controller here,
something happens, something goes wrong,
and you have no idea how to fix it.
That's why I'd say take a deep dive into the settings,
know where everything is, be really quick to change
the settings, and know how to fix things,
'cause things will go wrong.
You need to be able to format the card,
or turn off the obstacle avoidance, or whatever in here
that's kind of messing up your shot at that time,
or something that you need to do.
You need to know where those settings are.
And if you don't, it's gonna, not only are you
gonna waste time, waste batteries, but also
you're gonna get really flustered, you're just gonna
lose everything, you're gonna forget what you're filming,
what you should be doing, and you're gonna be worrying
about the settings, you're not gonna know where they are.
So, learn where the settings are.
This is gonna save you a lot of headaches,
and just make you a better flyer.
And then, number three, and this one's really
the most important, is to practice, practice, practice.
When I got my first drone, I literally spent hours
in this open field, football, soccer field thing,
and I just flew, I didn't even record.
I was just flying and learning how the whole drone works,
how does it fly, how do I go up and down,
how do I turn, how do I spin around stuff.
I was learning everything about the drone and how to fly it.
One of the best things was that it actually
had those football goalpost things and I could
kind of fly through them, I could fly around them,
I could practice all sorts of different things.
And it was a safe space, there's no people around there,
I can't get in trouble.
It was just a really good place to learn and fly.
So, forget about trying to get nice shots at first,
just figure out how to actually fly the thing,
and fly it really well.
You wanna have different flight patterns or movements
on lockdown so, when you're actually filming
a person, a car, or you're in that situation
having to get that shot, you have it on lockdown.
You know exactly what you're doing.
You know how to get that follow shot,
or that orbit shot, or whatever shot you're trying to get.
You have that on lockdown.
The first one I would start off with
is the controlled follow or leading shot.
So, you're just gonna follow something,
follow yourself walking, follow another person walking,
follow a car, anything.
Follow it in a nice, controlled way,
keeping that same speed, and not losing
whatever that object, or person, or whatever it is
that you're tracking, you're not losing it,
you're keeping it in frame.
Practice the follow and lead.
And this one comes into play in a lot of different shots
so it's, it's a really simple thing, but it's actually
really important to be really good at this.
And to take this one step further,
try to fly really low to the ground.
I find that you can get some really cool,
epic shots by flying really close to the ground.
And it's a little bit tricky, you gotta be really careful
with this one, so practice it a lot.
And the big tip here, I would say, is to
kind of keep an eye on the drone as well as your screen
because there's a bit of a delay so the drone will dip
and you don't wanna dip too far so it doesn't
hit the ground, or water, or whatever you're filming over.
So, you wanna keep an eye on the drone
and how far it is from the ground.
Make sure you have a nice line of sight.
But, definitely practice flying nice and low to the ground.
You're gonna get some really cool shots
if you know how to do this kind
of flight pattern movement really well.
Next you wanna practice the circle or orbit.
You wanna be able to orbit around a person,
object, thing, whatever you're filming.
And I would say practice it until you can do a full 360
around an object or person, and you're keeping them
in the frame, perfectly centered all the time.
You have full control.
And you can do this in a nice, smooth, slow way,
it's not just a crazy whizzing around.
Both directions, left and right,
because there is a difference, it is gonna be different.
Practice it until you have the orbit on lockdown.
And lastly, I would just practice flying up and over things.
It's a really cool way to reveal things,
whether it's a person, car, epic scenery,
whatever you're revealing.
It's a really cool way, and it's kind of
one of the go to's that everybody goes to
right away when they get a drone.
The just wanna fly up and over something.
But it's actually a little bit tricky,
and you don't wanna do it the wrong way.
There's a good story of how not to do this.
One time I was at the beach with my wife
and I was watching these guys, there was probably
like five or six of them, a group of friends.
They had a drone and they were just hanging out, having fun.
And then they decided to do this selfie.
And so they, you know, set up themselves
in a nice little huddle, and then they had
the drone flying right in front of them.
And I knew what they wanted to do, they wanted
to do kind of a fly away up and over.
But, I could tell they weren't very good
at flying the drone, and what happened is
they forgot that when the drone is pointed at you,
forwards is now backwards, flying towards you.
So, long story short, he slammed on forwards
and it slammed into them and into the sand,
and that was the end of that drone, I'm pretty sure.
I don't think it worked after that.
So, make sure you're practicing these
because you can get flustered, once you're in that situation
and you actually have to make this flight pattern
movement happen, there's a lot of people around,
you only have a few minutes to do it.
You might pull a rookie mistake like this
and press the wrong direction.
Make sure you're practicing these, so you don't
destroy your drone on your first shoot, right away.
And lastly, number five, I would say learn how
to control the gimbal, the tilt of the gimbal.
And this isn't really flying but you're having
to do it at the same time as you're flying.
So, you need to be really good at controlling
how the gimbal tilts.
And this is really one of the best ways
to get some really epic, cool shots.
Kind of combining some of these flight patterns,
movements that we've talked about, and then
a gimbal tilt move, it's a really cool way
to, you know, just fly forwards following somebody
and then bringing up the gimbal, tilting it up.
You need to be able to do this in a nice, smooth way
so that there's no, you know, jerk up and down.
You gotta practice this stuff, it doesn't come
naturally and it's really tricky in the beginning.
So many cool shots come when you combine
these two things, the gimbal tilt and then your movement.
From there, you can mix and match,
and just try all sorts of different flight patterns
and practice them.
I still, to this day, sometimes will go
in that same field and I'll be like, huh,
what's something new I can do and I'll
try some kind of crazy spiral coming down
to the object or person, usually it's me in that case.
And I just keep practicing.
So, find a safe space that's a big field.
Something where there's no trees, or power lines,
or people, nothing you can hit, and just practice.
Spend hours practicing.
I guarantee you, this will make you
a way better cinematographer, videographer, drone pilot.
If you know how to fly your drone really, really well.
That's how I got decent at flying drones,
I just laid down the ground work, I put in the effort,
put in the practice, and now when I'm on a shoot
and I'm trying to get a certain kind of shot
it doesn't actually take me very long to get that shot
because I've just practiced so much.
So, there you go, that's five tips on how
to actually get good at flying your drone.
I hope you enjoyed this little episode
of Quick Little Pro Tip.
I hope this was actually short, it feels already
a little bit long as I'm finishing this up.
If you like this video, hit that like button,
subscribe the channel, and I guess I'll
see you guys in the next one.
(uplifting electronic music)