- Let's talk about how you can capture more shots
when you don't have very much time to fly your drone.
Now, this is a problem when you're working with clients
or you're just in a situation
where you don't have a lot of time
to let the drone hang there up in the sky
and grab a bunch of different styles of shots.
Now, recently I was out working with one of my clients
and we had multiple locations that we had to go to in a day.
And one of the things I wanted to capture
was some running shots of her on this ridge line.
Now, to get up to this ridge line we had to hike up there.
And then once we were on the ridge line
we only had like 15 minutes for me to grab a few shots
and then we had to move on to the next location.
So I really only had time to fly about 10 minutes.
And in that 10 minutes
I had to get as many shots as possible
to be able to use for the edit.
And so the first thing that I do
when it comes to a situation like this,
is I make sure that I have a solid plan
so that I'm not trying to figure it out
when I get up to the ridge line.
I knew exactly where I was gonna go,
I knew exactly where I was gonna fly from,
and I planned out how much time we had
to get this drone shot.
Now, the second thing I do is,
specifically when I'm working with an actor,
or a client, or, you know, a specific scene,
and that is I make sure I have an action
that that person's doing that I'm gonna be capturing.
And I don't have the ability
to have her do this run over and over,
so what I planned for this scene
was to have her run to a point and when she gets that point
she was gonna stretch, she was gonna be excited,
she was gonna dance around, and then she was gonna run back.
And that, basically, is gonna be the 10 minutes
that I had to film this scene.
Now, next I made a conscious choice on frame rates
and resolutions before I actually took the drone off.
So I knew I wanted to shoot in 5.1K 30 frames per second
and I wasn't gonna try to fumble with bumping it to 4K 60
or anything like that while I was out flying.
I didn't wanna to focus on getting
different resolutions or frame rates,
I just was focused on getting different angles
when I'm flying.
Now, immediately when I take off,
the first shot that I get is something
where the drone is close to the ground
and I had the drone just raising up
and she ran right underneath it.
And so this is a quick shot to get
without having to get in position for another shot.
As soon as I know that I have that shot,
I move on to something different
and I try to change the angle dramatically,
whether it's to the left, to the right, up on top.
I try to get as much variety
so that when the scene is cut together,
it's gonna feel like there was a lot more planning involved
in terms of getting all of these different angles.
And so coming up with the shot variety
just comes from practice and experience.
So when you're out flying
and you have time to work with your drone,
just try a bunch of different angles
and start coming up with the list
that you like in your head.
Think about, "Okay, I like side shots of someone running.
I like a big wide shot, tripod shot, of someone running,
or I like close up right behind them or in front of them."
Once you have an idea of what shots look good
for something like a running scene,
then you're are gonna know,
"Okay, I need to grab this, this, and this,"
and you're gonna focus on getting those shots
and then moving on to the next shot.
And the next thing that you need to think about
is getting ahead of your subject.
So for my client that was running,
she was just going and I just had her do the action.
I wasn't gonna start and stop her
because we were limited on time.
So as soon as I got enough footage of a shot, you know,
something like five seconds to 10 seconds,
well then I would move ahead.
So I'd fly further ahead, get myself into position,
and then as she came into frame
I would start working on the next shot.
And so I was always playing this leap frog
to make sure that I could get these different angles
so I could get on of that footage of her entering frame
and then also some of her exiting frame.
Now, when she finally got to the end of the run,
I made sure to do an orbit.
I just think that's a great move to use
to show a lot of parallax and it's the perfect
like hero shot as you get to the top of the mountain.
And then as soon as I got enough footage of that,
I just move on and reverse everything that I just did
continually getting new shots
as she came back to where we started.
Now, one thing that I like to do
when I'm out flying my drone,
is I just let the camera record.
I have 128GB card in my drone
so I don't have to worry about running out of footage.
And especially if I'm only shooting a short scene like this,
there's no reason to start and stop
because a lot of times just having the camera roll
you'll end up capturing parts of shots
that you might not have captured if you waited to hit record
until you're perfectly set.
So if you do want some ideas on some different drone moves
you can use when capturing a scene like this,
make sure you check out this video right here.
It's gonna go through a bunch of different drone moves
that you can use when you're filming a subject.
See you on that video.