- In this video,
we're gonna go through how you get cinematic footage
with the DJI Mini 3 Pro.
And a lot of these tips will work with other drones as well.
Now, instead of just showing you a bunch of pretty shots
and just telling you some different techniques,
I wanna show you step by step how I approach a scene
and what I do before I press record
and start capturing footage.
So in this video,
we're gonna go through all the camera settings and also some
ideas around what I would do with my drone to get the best
looking footage out of any scene.
But before we get into that,
I just wanna tell you three reasons why you would want
cinematic footage out of your drone.
Now, reason number one is simple.
You just want better looking footage.
And there is a standard for Hollywood movies,
for commercials, for just high-end production
and those are the techniques that we're trying to aspire to
when we're out filming with our drone.
Now, the second reason is that if you're
working with a client, well,
you wanna make sure that you're getting the best looking
footage for your client.
And typically, you wanna shoot with these standards that you
see in Hollywood cinema or you see in commercial work.
And when you do this,
your footage is gonna look more professional.
And then whenever you break from these standards,
you're doing it with a purpose and having a better
understanding of this classic cinematic look is going to
help you understand when you do need to change your settings
away from this look and you'll be doing it with intention.
So if you need to change your shutter speed
or your white bounce for a specific reason,
you're gonna know why versus just not understanding how your
camera works and you're just kind of flying in the sky
hoping that you get good footage.
And reason number three is you wanna
sell your footage as stock footage.
Ideally, when you're uploading your shots to stock footage
websites to try and earn some extra money, well,
you wanna have the best looking footage possible.
And there's a better chance that your footage will sell if
All right.
So now let's set up our camera
to get more of this cinematic look.
We're gonna change a bunch of different settings
and we're also gonna add some overlays on the camera so we
can see what's happening with your exposure
and how you're framing a subject.
So, step one, let's turn on some of the exposure settings.
We're gonna go in the upper right-hand corner
and we're gonna go into the camera section.
And we're gonna to scroll down.
We wanna turn on our histogram
and we wanna turn on our overexposure warning.
Now, on the screen, you could see right here in the middle,
this is your histogram.
I'm moving it around right now.
The histogram tells you all your light values
from darkest to lightest.
So right now, I have the camera fully on auto.
Everything is auto.
So this graph is gonna be somewhere in the middle because
the camera is gonna be finding what it thinks
looks best for the scene that you're flying in.
Now, we're gonna take control of our
settings in a little bit,
so this is gonna be important to see how much our exposure
values are shifted brighter and darker.
Now the next thing that we turned on
was the overexposure warning.
And you could see right here,
this little cloud section on the right side of the screen,
the top of those clouds are overexposing.
Now, if I turn my exposure value up super bright,
let's go to plus three,
you can see zebras across the entire screen.
Now those zebras are basically telling you where your
exposure is cut off and it's just white.
So these are both good tools to use when you're out flying
so that you could see if your footage is too bright.
Ideally, when you're shooting this style of footage,
you wanna make sure that you're not having super
overexposed sections of your footage
because that's gonna look amateurish.
You wanna make sure that you're getting
the proper exposure every shot.
So that means having your exposure values
somewhere in the middle and the only things
that are overexposing are super bright things in your shot.
So, in this setting,
you have these clouds way out in the distance.
They might overexpose slightly depending on how you're
shooting the rest of the scene, but otherwise,
you don't wanna have anything overexposed.
So let's take this back down to zero for my exposure value.
And for auto,
this looks pretty good just for a standard shot.
So step two is gonna be taking control of our white balance.
So your white balance determines
what colors are in the scene.
So we're outside, it's middle of the day,
so we're gonna wanna shoot at daylight white balance.
We don't want the color to shift at all when we're flying.
We wanna have the same color throughout the entire shot.
So there's two ways that we can do this.
We could either turn on the pro mode,
which is in the lower right-hand corner,
or we could go to the three dots
in the upper right-hand corner.
Let's go to the three dots first
just to show you that spot.
So up here,
you'll go to camera again and you'll scroll down to white
balance and you'll see it says auto.
So turn it onto manual.
And daylight is around 5,600 Kelvin.
So we're gonna slide this up to around 5,600.
All right.
So now we're locked in for the white balance for this scene.
Now, if I bring this down, you can see what happens.
I put it to 2,000 Kelvin.
Everything is blue.
So this is shooting at the wrong color temperature
and you can see how much it affects the footage.
Now let's go push it the other direction
all the way up to 10,000.
Now you could see, it's super warm.
So you wanna make sure that you have your white balance
dialed in properly for the scene that you're flying in.
A lot of times,
you're gonna be shooting outdoors in bright sunlight.
Well, you'll be shooting at 5,600,
but if you're shooting closer to sunset or sunrise,
you're gonna shift this around a little bit.
And so you just wanna make sure that you dial in your
settings best for the scene that you're flying in.
And then if you have clouds in the sky and there's no sun,
well, you're also gonna shift your Kelvin slightly
so that the white parts of your image are actually white.
All right.
So step three is we're gonna take control of our exposure
and go full manual.
So in the lower right-hand corner,
you'll click the little auto button
and it will turn into pro mode.
Now you could take control of all of your settings.
If you click right next to pro mode,
this screen will pop up with your ISO shutter
and your metering mode.
And then right next to that,
you'll have this other button,
which will show a bunch of other settings.
You can have your white balance,
your resolution frame rates, you could change your color,
your coding format, everything.
So some of the settings that we've already adjusted in the
main menu can also be adjusted here.
I wanted to show you the main menu first
just to show you that there's a couple places
where you can adjust these settings.
So step three, we're turning it on full manual
and the next thing that we're gonna do is lock in our ISO.
So we wanna shoot at the lowest ISO possible because as you
bump up your ISO to something like 6,400,
you're gonna get a lot of grain in your footage and you
don't want that noise or that grain.
We're trying to get professional looking footage.
So you want the least amount of noise as possible.
So you'll just turn this down to 100 ISO.
If you're shooting at night or closer to sunset/sunrise,
you're gonna boost this a little bit
depending on your settings,
but you just don't wanna push it too far into 6,400,
unless you're in a setting where it's city at night.
That might be where you'll actually use that setting,
but you wanna try to avoid it as much as possible.
So the next thing that we're gonna change
is our resolution and our frame rate.
So let's go over to the little sliders to the left and
let's scroll to resolution and frame per second.
So ideally, when you're shooting with your drone,
you wanna shoot at the highest resolution possible.
So in the DJI Mini 3 Pro, we're gonna shoot in 4K.
Now, you're gonna shoot in whatever
your project settings are for real-time footage.
So if you're shooting in 24 frames per second, well,
you wanna select 24 frames per second
when you're shooting real-time footage.
And if you wanna shoot slow motion, well,
then you'll bump up your frame rate.
So I've heard a lot of people say that
you should just shoot everything in 60
and then you can adjust your settings later,
whether you want slow motion or you don't want slow motion.
And the issue with that is you're not gonna be able to set
your shutter speed to where you need to
to get the cinematic look.
Shooting 60 is great,
but as soon as you put 60 into like a 24 or 30P timeline
with the shutter speed set where you need to
for a 60 frames per second shot, well,
your footage is gonna be a little bit more jittery.
And I'll explain this in a little bit
when we get to shutter speed.
So what you wanna do when you're shooting real time footage,
you wanna put it in the frame rate that your project
timeline is actually going to be in.
So personally,
I shoot a lot of my content in 30 frames per second,
but I know there's a lot of you out there
that like the look of 24.
This is gonna be something that you're gonna have to decide.
And the standard for Hollywood cinema is 24,
but I think that online content,
and especially here on YouTube, looks better in 30.
I'll put a link down below in the description that goes
through a video where I compare 24 and 30
and really talk about the differences in why you might use
one versus the other.
But for the purposes of this video,
I'm gonna shoot in 30 frames for a second because that's
what I typically use.
Now, in 24, 25, and 30 frames per second,
you get this HQ mode.
This means that you're getting a little bit
of an HDR effect with the footage.
So your shadows are gonna be a little bit lifted and your
highlights might be a little bit more muted,
so you get more dynamic range in your shot.
Now, if we wanna get slow motion footage,
I would bump this up to 60 frames per second, and that way,
I could slow it down two times for
30 frames per second timeline.
Let's just put it in 30 for now
and then we'll go back to 60 later.
Now the next setting that you're gonna
wanna change is your color.
So right now, I'm shooting in the normal profile.
It's punchy, it's got a lot of contrast,
and it just looks good outta camera,
but if you wanna get the most out of your camera,
you're gonna wanna color grade.
So we're gonna go back into our pro settings
by clicking on the menu and we're gonna wanna go D-Cinelike.
This is gonna flatten out your image so that you can color
grade it later in your editing software.
Now, if you wanna learn more about
how to color grade your footage, well, after this video,
I'll put a link down below in the description to an entire
course that I've put together for creative color grading,
which will definitely help grade your footage.
So now that we're locked into our frame rate,
our resolution, our color, our white balance,
the last thing that we need to shift is our shutter speed.
So ideally, when you're doing shutter speed,
you wanna have proper motion blur,
and motion blur is the blurring that happens between frames.
If you freeze this right here,
you'll see my hand is frozen.
It's because I'm shooting at proper motion blur
to get the cinematic look for my A camera here.
And to get proper motion blur,
you wanna shoot a shutter speed
which is double your frame rate.
So for my 30 frames per second clip that I'm shooting,
I wanna shoot at a 1/60 shutter speed.
So I'm gonna go to my settings and I'm gonna drop my shutter
speed all the way down to 1/60.
And great.
Now we're ready to take off.
But why is this shot just overexposed?
Well, we're gonna have to make some adjustments
to the actual lens itself and put on
an ND filter to be able to compensate for
the fact that we're bringing down our shutter speed
all the way down to 1/60,
which let's a ton of light into the camera.
But at 1/60, you're getting motion blur.
So every frame, when you're moving the camera,
is gonna blur a little bit.
If you're shooting at a higher shutter speed, well,
every frame is gonna be frozen in time
and it's gonna have this stutter.
So if you want the more professional look
that has this commercial quality, well,
you'll notice that there's blurring happening between all
the frames with movement of the camera
or movement of the subject in the shot.
So you wanna make sure that you're getting proper shutter
speed for the frame rate that you've chosen.
So for a 30 frames per second clip, we wanna shoot at 1/60.
Now, like I said a little bit ago,
we're gonna add an ND filter,
which is basically sunglasses for your camera,
to be able to compensate for the fact that
this image is super bright.
So on my A camera here, I'll take this off for you,
you could see that this is shooting at 30 frames per second
with a 1/60 and an ISO 100.
Here is my ND filter.
Put it on the camera and there you go.
You could see that it's sunglasses for the camera.
And this is what we're gonna do with our drone.
So I've got this set of ND filters
and what we need to do is select the perfect one for the
scene that we're in.
So to do this,
we wanna set up all of our settings,
which we've already done.
And now what we'll do is take these ND filters
and just put 'em in front of the lens
until we find the one that gives us
the proper exposure for this scene.
So the ND filter that I landed on was ND 64.
And you can see on the image here,
there's nothing overexposed with my overexposure warning.
And if you look at the histogram,
it's all squished in the middle
and a little bit on the brighter side,
but it's still in the middle.
Nothing's too far on the right, too far on the left.
And so you have to go through this process with every scene
that you're shooting to find the ND filter
that's gonna fit your settings that you have set.
So you wanna make sure that you set all of your settings
before you put on the ND filter.
Now, the last thing we didn't talk about was aperture
and the Mini 3 Pro has a fixed aperture of 1.7.
So if you're flying with something like the Mavic 3, well,
you actually have an aperture that you can change
so you could dial in your settings a little bit differently
by upping your aperture and then
using less ND on the front of the lens.
And in lower light situations,
you won't even need to use an ND filter
to get the proper look.
So the last thing that we need to change before we can
start flying and getting our shots is in the menu settings.
We'll go to the upper right-hand corner to the three dots
and we're gonna change the gimbal settings
and the yaw settings.
So if we go to control,
we'll scroll down to advanced gimbal settings
and this screen will pop up.
You have pitch speed, pitch smoothness,
yaw rotation speed, and yaw smoothness.
And you have this for normal mode,
sport mode, and cini mode.
So ideally, when you're flying,
you're gonna use the mode that best fits
the type of shot that you're filming.
So if you're filming like a fast-moving car, well,
you'll probably have it in sport mode
to keep up with that car,
but if you're filming like a person or you just want
like a landscape and you're close to the ground, well,
then you'll probably use the cini mode.
The settings that we're gonna change in here is how smooth
that motion happens for each one of these
and then also how much it feathers in and feathers out.
So let's just change the cini mode
because that's gonna be your slowest mode.
And so if you wanna get these creeping shots
where it's very cinematic, well,
you'll wanna change some of these settings.
So you have your pitch speed,
that's how much the gimbal moves when you go
full rotation on the controller,
and the pitch smoothness is how
much it feathers in and feathers out.
So first, let me just turn this down to zero
so I could show you the effects of it.
I'm gonna turn this pitch speed up to 100
and pitch smoothness to zero.
So now when I do the gimbal move,
so it's just pulling it super fast.
Whereas I'll do the opposite, so I'll take my pitch speed,
put it down to like 10, and put my smoothest up to like 20.
Now when I pull, you could see it kind of stop.
It takes a second to feather in, move, and then feather out.
That's still too fast for this kind of movement.
My cini mode,
I want it to be very gentle and I want to have that movement
just slowly ramp up as it moves into the scene.
So let's go back to our advanced settings.
I'm gonna turn this down to five
and I'm gonna do my pitch smoothness at 25.
Now, when I move it,
you can see it slowly creeps and I let go
and then it slowly fades out of it.
I think that's pretty good for this kind of scene because
now I can just adjust it slightly
and then it'll give me a nice little ramp up and then
feather out of it.
Now, you could do the same thing
with the pivoting in the sky, so your yaw rotation.
That's how much the drone twists on an axis.
So you'll do the same thing.
You'll find the settings that work best for you
for your cini mode.
Now you could also adjust your normal and your sport mode.
It really comes down to finding the settings that look best
for the types of scene that you're flying in.
So, it's gonna all change depending on what you're filming
and what your specific look is going for, but ideally,
you don't want jerky motion.
So you wanna have smooth ins and outs of all your shots
and you wanna make sure that everything just feels fluid.
In general, to get better cinematic looking footage,
you want no jerky motion,
so no (grunting) throwing the drone around, but rather,
you just want drone movements that feather in and
feather out and then move nice and slow
and there's no jerky motion that calls attention to the
actual drone moving in the sky.
Now, when it comes to what you're actually filming,
there's a few rules that are gonna
help you get better looking shots.
Now, the first is you wanna get a variety of shots,
so you don't wanna just shoot the same angle over and over.
You don't wanna just go way up in the sky
and just get the same big, wide perspective every time.
Try to vary up your shots.
Low, high, medium, close, far, play around with them.
And then with that,
you're gonna be changing your perspective
and changing your angles.
And then finally,
you wanna play with how fast or how slow
you're moving the drone.
Now, I did a super detailed video
that goes through 100 plus drone movements
and these are what you're gonna use
to get cinematic looking footage.
And so I'm gonna link that video down below in the
description so that you can see some different drone
movements that you can use to get some
better looking shots in your videos.
And the last thing I would suggest is
flying closer to sunset or sunrise.
I know, I'm out here in high noon.
The sun's right above me,
But I have two young kids and I help out
with my wife in the morning and at night,
so I miss most sunrise and sunsets right now.
But when I'm out traveling and I'm working on a project,
I'm always trying to get footage right at sunrise or sunset
because you're gonna have more color in the sky,
you're gonna have better lighting,
your shadows will be longer,
there'll be more of a roll-off in all of your highlights.
Like, it just looks better overall.
And a lot of times when you see cinematic looking footage,
a lot of it is just shot time of day.
That's a big part of it,
is just shooting at the proper time of day
to get the best looking shots.
And so you could see from some of this footage
that I'm showing you right here,
this was up in Alaska a few weeks ago.
I was shooting at sunrise and sunset
and I just got some amazing shots
in the middle of nowhere in Alaska.
And if I was to shoot this at high noon,
it just wouldn't look that good.
And shooting it just before the sun goes down
or right after the sun goes down, well,
you're gonna get the best looking footage.
And one thing that you should try to do
is always get the best looking shots
closer to sunrise or closer to sunset
and plan your shoot around that.
You can get a lot of good shots during the day,
that's no problem,
and especially if there's like clouds in the sky,
but if you have the opportunity to get some of those
beautiful sunset looking shots, well,
that's gonna help make your edit just look so much better.
All right.
So here is a short little sequence from this area that I'm
at with the proper settings to get cinematic looking footage
and with a few different angles and a few different
perspectives filming me just walking around
because that's what I'm doing.
(inspirational music)
Now next, make sure you check out this video right here,
which goes through 100 plus drone moves that you can
use when you're making your cinematic videos.
I'll see you over there.