- This video is all about
how you easily get cinematic-looking footage
out of your DJI Mavic Air 2.
All right, guys, let's get into it.
(upbeat music)
So, I'm a big fan of the DJI Mavic Air 2
just because of the size,
it's so small and it can pack up nicely in a backpack.
So, I recently shot a documentary or like a vlogumentary,
up in Northern California at the Belcampo Farms
and I brought my DJI Mavic Air 2 with me
to shoot all of the drone footage.
Now I got some amazing shots with this drone
and I got some footage that really helps tie
the whole piece together.
I'll put a link down below in the description
where you guys can check out the full documentary
and I highly suggest you check it out
after watching this video,
because it's an interesting story
and you'll really get to see
how I integrated the drone footage in
with some of the other footage that I shot
whilst at the farm.
Now, what we're talking about
is how you get cinematic-looking footage fast,
and there's two parts to this,
part one is shooting and part two is editing.
There's a few things you need to do in shooting
to be able to set yourself up to get the best look
when you get into your editing software.
So first, let's just dive into how you fly the drone,
because to get cinematic-looking footage,
I found that combining two or three movements together
gives you that more cinematic look.
So, a lot of times I'll push forward while tilting down
or push forward while rotating into the left or the right,
and that gives you dynamic-looking footage.
You can see this shot here,
when I'm pushing in on the main offices for Belcampo,
I'm using my left thumb stick and pulling it to the left
while I'm pushing forward and to the right
on my right thumb stick.
So, not only does it create a diagonal forward motion,
but it's rotating around just slightly
so that it gives you this dynamic-looking shot.
So, the key is when you're shooting drone footage,
you wanna put two or three moves together,
and then you'll be able to have these movements
that really give it a different quality
than if you're just doing like
a single direction on the thumb stick.
Now, that's not to say that a single movement
on your controller won't give you cinematic-looking footage.
Something that I like to do is go in one direction,
but do it with just a slight movement,
so very subtle.
You don't always have to be flying at full speed
in every direction to get good-looking footage.
I highly suggest slowing down the drone
and really creeping along in one direction
and that's gonna give you a completely different look
than when you're flying with multiple directions
with a fast pace.
I think the key here is you wanna vary up your shots
and you wanna have these different styles of movements.
Now, one thing that I default to
when I don't know how to necessarily shoot a scene
is when in doubt orbit it out.
And what I mean by that is just create an orbit
around the subject or the scene that you're in.
So, that's a two direction movement,
that's where you're moving sideways left or right,
but then you're also rotating the drone
so it creates an arc.
Now, yes, the DJI Mavic Air 2 has a function
where you can lock onto someone and do an orbit
and those work great,
however, I highly suggest learning how do this manually
because you'll be able to control the direction of the arc,
and sometimes you'll wanna spin
it inwards towards the subject or spin it outwards,
or you might wanna add some other movements to it.
So, being able to fly fully manual
is really gonna give you more flexibility
when it comes to creating these dynamic-looking shots.
Okay, the second part to filming that you wanna do
is you wanna shoot in D-Cinelike
And the reason for this is you're gonna get
the most dynamic range,
and you're gonna be able to get flexibility in post.
Now, when it also comes to shooting,
I shoot everything at 4K 60.
And the reason for this is that
it gives me the flexibility to be able
to slow it down in post.
And the DJI Mavic Air 2 is unique
in that you can shoot 4K 60.
So everything I do is 4K 60,
it's D-Log,
and then I use these arcing motions,
and that's basically how I set myself up
to be able to get cinematic-looking footage.
All right, so let's jump into final cut.
I'm gonna show you how I edit my footage
and what I do with it to really make it look
that much more cinematic.
Okay, so this is the shot that we're gonna work with,
and you can see the final color grade here and how it looks.
So, the first thing you wanna do
is just set up your project for the framing.
Now, in my videos here on this channel,
I typically do a two-to-one aspect ratio,
and that's a little bit wider than 16 by nine.
Now, the reason I do that
is it looks a little more cinematic.
And with this documentary that I shot,
I actually did it in 21:9,
and if you look at it on your phone or something else
you'll notice it's got that wider look to it.
So, I suggest if you're going to do the wider look,
you actually edit in the wider look,
you don't put the black bars on the top and bottom,
unless it's like a cinematic sequence
within your video where like the black bars fly in,
then there's just a section where it's 21:9,
but then the rest of your video is 16 by nine.
There's different ways to do it,
personally if I'm going for more of the cinematic look,
I'm gonna edit in a two to one
or 21 to nine aspect ratio.
So, you could see this as a 21 nine aspect,
and you could see my full project down here at the bottom,
this is the entire documentary that I shot.
So, let's set up a new project here
and we're gonna set up a resolution.
That you can either do 24 frames a second or 30.
Now, I personally say that you can do either
and have cinematic,
I've shot a lot in 30 and I've shot a lot in 24,
it's a preference thing.
If you like that look then potentially yes,
that's more cinematic.
The documentary was shot in 24,
this video is shot in 30.
Just so you can see a little bit of the difference.
So, I'm gonna drop in the clip that we're working with
and you could see right here,
it's a slow push in on the Belcampo main offices.
Now, right away because we shot in 4K 60.
We can just re time this and make it slower,
it's down to 40%
because I'm in a 24 frames for second timeline,
and all of a sudden,
now you're gonna get an even more cinematic-looking shot.
So, just re timing the 4k 60 to your timeline
is gonna give your footage more of that dreamy quality.
So, right there is one thing
that's gonna make your drone footage stand out
from other people's because things are gonna be moving
in this more cinematic style.
Doesn't always work,
but yeah, it's a good tool to have.
And that's why I always shoot 4K 60.
And so everything's set up ready to go
to get into your color grade.
Now, you can use color grading tools
that are in any editing software.
You have your hue saturation Curves,
your color curves,
your color wheels,
your colors board.
You can be premier, resolve, final cut,
personally I'm gonna use a specific plugin
because this allows me to do all my corrections,
but then also save them as a LUT.
And so LUTs are a great way to speed up the process.
Once you've developed a look
or you've found a look that you like from another creator,
you could just drop a LUT on and then do a few tweaks
and you're ready to go.
For me when I'm starting a project what I do
is I come up with a look and
then I'll export that as a LUT
and use that as a preset
to do the rest of the color grading for that project.
So, let me just show you the color grading process
for this clip
and what I go through so you can just see the sequence
and then you can decide
if this is something you wanna do in your footage,
or if you just wanna go find a LUT that fits
what you're trying to do with your footage.
So, the software that I'm using is Color Finale Pro.
And when I put this on,
you'll see that I have a bunch of tools over here.
The key to doing a color grade is first fix the footage,
and then second,
is come up with your creative color grid.
So, first I'm gonna edit the layers,
and then I'm just gonna do a basic exposure fix.
And I've found with DJI Mavic Air 2 footage,
I typically bring my mids down more than anything,
and then I'll stretch out my highlights,
just so that they're not overexposing,
but I wanna bring them up.
With Color Finale Pro,
I also add a tad of contrast.
So, let's add seven here,
and I wanna pivot this up to about here.
So right away you could see all of a sudden this clip
is much different.
Now, the next thing you wanna do just in a basic color grade
is add saturation.
The way that Color Finale Pro works
is I'm working in layers.
And this is how you can edit
in a lot of different color grading softwares.
And personally, I like to go layer by layer,
just so if I wanna go back and tweak something,
I can do it as a single layer
versus tweaking a bunch of different things in one layer.
So we're gonna boost the saturation up,
and then I'm gonna tweak the white balance a tad,
because this was at sunset,
and I wanna have more of that sunset coming in,
and I'm gonna take out a little bit of green.
And now that shot looks like it's much more natural
to what I actually saw when I was there.
First step of any color grading process
is get your footage to looking good and natural.
And now we get into doing some creative elements.
So, I'm gonna add some curves to this,
I'm gonna make it a little bit of moody.
So I'm just go...
it's a little bit more contrast.
Then we're gonna add some blues into the sky.
Now, one thing with Color Finale Pro
is that you can actually create masks
on parts of your footage.
So, I'm gonna create a mask
that only affects the top half of the footage.
And what I'm gonna do with that top half
is inject some more blue
and bring down the exposure a little bit,
that way it's retaining more of that sky.
Because it's not fully overexposed,
and I wanna show more of that blue sky in the background.
Now, the next layer I'm gonna add
is gonna create focus on the subject which is the building.
So I'm gonna add another color wheels layer,
and I'm gonna create a mask
that's a circle around the center.
So, it's only affecting what's in the center of that circle,
and I'm gonna bring up the mids.
So, that adds more focus on that center
because it pops compared to the rest of the footage.
Now, I'm gonna duplicate that layer and reverse the mask,
so now I'm effecting everything outside that mask
and bring down the mids.
So, essentially what I'm doing
is driving focus to the center of the frame,
wherever my subject is.
The outside is gonna be a little bit darker
and I'm not doing like a full vignette here,
it's just playing around with the mids.
So it's more subtle than if you were to put
like really dark edges around your footage.
Now, I've created some preset vignettes
that I can then add on top of this
if I wanna darken the corners even more.
And these are a little bit different
than your typical vignette,
because they only affect the mids
and the darkest part of your images,
and we'll leave the sky untouched.
So, I add this in,
bring down my opacity and here's the before and after
of this shot.
(cinematic upbeat music)
So, the key to getting cinematic-looking footage,
out of your DJI Mavic Air fast
is one,
shoot with the intent to have these dynamic movements.
Then you wanna set up your editing workflow
so that, you know, you have the right framing,
and then you go in and do your color grade.
And use your color grade to really emphasize
a time of day or mood that you're going for.
Guys, I did another video on this channel
that's about color theory,
and I highly suggest checking that out,
to look at some different ways
that you can grade your footage to be able
to get different looks that are more cinematic.
But guys, I highly suggest checking out the full documentary
that I did when I was at the Belcampo Farms.
And you can really see
how this footage was integrated into a story driven piece.
And then I'll also link down below here to another video
that I think you guys should check out.
All right, guys, that's it,
I'll see you on the next one.