- Ever since I bought my first drone,
I've been curious to capture the world from above,
breathing in a new appreciation for places
and documenting my adventures.
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Drones have been that catalyst,
allowing me to capture imagery above everything,
complimenting my storytelling.
So in this video, I wanted to share some of my tips
for capturing cinematic drone shots
to help you improve your visual storytelling.
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To become a better visual storyteller,
specifically with your drone,
you're gonna have to get off the training wheels,
and what I mean by that is to get off using auto mode.
Intentionally start to set your drone settings up using pro,
and when you're using pro mode,
you're gonna wanna set your shutter speed,
if you're shooting in 60 frames a second,
like we did for a lot of our daytime shots,
I was using a shutter speed of 1/120
paired with ND filters.
Little twist off with- - [Anna] A twist and a turn.
- Off with that one.
That's pretty good.
ND32.
Check.
Beautiful lookout.
- [Anna] Check.
- All right.
- [Anna] Let's do it.
(drone buzzing)
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- So ND filters act like sunglasses
would to our eyes.
Blocking light coming into the lens
in a natural way without changing the color of the light.
They have two awesome purposes.
First is so we can use a wider aperture
to capture beautifully shallow depth of field,
and the second is to use a slower shutter speed
to capture long exposures and motion blur.
Now, the beauty of motion blur
is that it makes your drone content look way more cinematic.
It makes it look like there is emotion in your shots.
A big difference from just using auto
and everything being really sharp
and high in contrast, having that motion blur
in your shots gives more of a feeling, an emotive feeling
and will enable you to become a better visual storyteller.
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Next up is just shooting in a flat profile.
Now, very specific to the DJI Mavic 3
is the ability to shoot in ProRes.
Now, there's really only a few differences
between the standard Mavic 3 and the Cine model,
and that is that the Cine also supports
ProRes 422 HQ.
This is basically a high quality compressed Kodak.
And if you're making films and you're an editor,
this is great, but for those that aren't,
it doesn't really make much of a difference.
As a prosumer or filmmaker,
the main area you're gonna wanna check out
is D-Log, available on both versions of the Mavic 3.
D-Log is a color profile, which preserves
the shadows and the highlights and gives you
an amazing amount of dynamic range to,
in post production, color grade.
Like, just look at these shots that we captured here
at Djinda Falls or Wallaman Falls in far off Queensland.
We were able to preserve so much of those lights
and dark tones to fine tune our colors to what we want.
I think that is absolutely paramount
to improving your visuals and improving that,
and going that next step.
You're getting off auto,
you're being intentional with pro mode.
You're also choosing to shoot in D-Cine
or your flat color profiles.
So you can really have control in post production.
Remember, we're visual storytellers, we're going out
and we're using the tools to the best of our ability.
We're not just using auto
and we're not just shooting from the hip.
We wanna have intention.
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Playing into all of these tips
is what any film school will tell you,
and that is time of day or lighting.
You know, whenever we are setting up our shot, like,
look now, I've got side lighting here.
There is a light behind this camera.
You do this, the same, when you're flying your drone.
Now, time of day is paramount to how your image will look.
Now, if you're wanting to get those
really harsh, long shadows,
if you're capturing big bold, wide landscapes,
that's probably when the sun is setting
or the sun is rising,
but if you're wanting to shoot
on a subject like on a beach,
like a single person top down,
maybe that's the middle of the day.
But my point here is understanding how lighting
and time of day will have an impact
on the shadow and therefore the depth within your shot.
So, I think there's a really good example
that we captured here on Whitehaven beach.
When we were at this tiny little cove,
the light had completely gone.
The sun was hid behind a shadow.
When that sun came out, the image drastically popped out.
We were able to see those shadows carved on those rocks.
We were able to see shadows on our subject,
that being Anna, who's sitting on the beach.
We were able to see the blues, the turquoises, the aquas,
really evolve and come to life,
and this purely comes down to lighting.
If you're shooting on a cloudy day,
you're not able to capture these colors
and therefore going to have a less impressive visual story
than one who does choose to harness light.
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- If you've been enjoying this video
make sure you punch the thumbs up button,
and while you do that, I'm gonna tell you about the sun.
That's right.
Light has a drastic impact
on the look of your drone footage
but so does the position of the sun in the sky.
And what I mean by that
is that you wanna be aware
of where it is placed in relationship to your subject.
Most likely, if you're trying
to achieve some rich contrast in your image,
you'll want the sun to be either
on the right or left hand side of where the drone is facing.
Alternatively, you're gonna get a very flat image,
if you're shooting with the sun straight to your subject.
That's just gonna create sort of a flat profile
that's not necessarily desirable
if you're trying to make things look cinematic.
So be aware of where the sun is placed in the sky
and rotate around your subject
until you have a pleasing image.
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- Another aspect which drone shots bring
to your visual stories is scale.
Now, this is something that can be used as an opening,
an establishing shot, or something that you compare
with your protagonist to reflect on nuance, thought,
or emotion within your stories.
There isn't any right or wrong way to do this
other than to fly away from your subject,
just to showcase something other than, I guess,
the point of view,
or lived experience or the eye level
of what we see as in our day to day.
I guess what's important here
is to not be afraid to fly your drone away,
is to really press the maximum altitude and height,
within reason of safety,
making sure that you're able to showcase that scale,
that depth and that distance.
These will all equip your stories with more flavor.
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In regards to objects with drone shots,
the reason why we fly close to objects is to showcase speed.
Now, if we were to just capture a wide shot
of a landscape and we were flying forward and back,
it would be really difficult to understand
how fast that drone is moving.
When you place a tree
or a rock or an object that the drone is able to fly past,
you're able to showcase movement,
and how fast that camera is moving.
So something to incorporate
and something to think about when you are looking
to create these more cinematic visuals.
Think about having blockers,
think about moving around trees,
think about objects as well as the motion of the drone.
Now, you can either fly forwards and backwards,
you can fly in an orbit,
you can pan, you can dolly zoom.
Something that Mavic 3 does better
than any other drone out there
is this ability to dolly zoom,
is to move, to create movement whilst also zooming.
If you don't feel confident dolly zooming,
manually moving the camera whilst also operating the zoom,
then I highly urge you to check out Mastershots.
Specifically for beginners, are an incredible way
to capture all the necessary cinematic movements
of the camera with one click of a button.
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If you're interested in picking up a DJI Mavic 3 Cine,
which I will say is my drone of choice,
and I have used the Phantom 4, the Air S2.
I've used almost all of DJI's hobby drones.
This Mavic 3 Cine is by far
my favorite drone out of all of those.
And if you wanna pick one up for yourself,
then you can click the top link in the description.
Thank you guys for checking out today's video.
I hope that you have learned something from this video.
If you have, punch that thumbs up button
and I'll see you guys in the next upload.
Ciao.
Peace.
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