- See if I can keep to two minutes.
(high energy rock music)
(rewinding sound)
(laughs)
Like that's gonna happen.
(high energy rock music)
What's up everybody?
Peter McKinnon here and welcome back
to another Two Minute Tuesday.
It's so good to have you here
and see all of your smiling faces.
I'm back from Iceland,
it was cold, it was awesome, it was incredible.
So much good footage,
so much fun hanging out with great people,
and one of my best friends,
which would be Matti from Travel Feels.
And this Two Minute Tuesday is sort of an exposee
on his drone skills.
I've learned a lot from watching Matti,
and over these past few months,
shooting different projects,
and traveling to different parts of the world with him.
I've seen a lot of similarities that he does
every single time that he goes out to shoot.
So, I've kinda compiled them into five tips
to help you guys become better drone pilots.
It's basically an analysis of his drone piloting skills.
So, that's today.
Let's throw two minutes on the clock.
(explosion noise)
Not that I'm gonna stick to it
but I'll do my best.
And let's go.
Here's the thing with Matti.
He makes the most of each drone battery that he has.
If you were to compare my drone clips
with Matti's drone clips,
there'd be two significant differences:
mine would be like one super long clip,
that's like 15 minutes and a massive file size,
and I just kinda fly around to different spots,
almost more of like a sightseeing tour.
Now, I do get some banger shots out of that,
and a lot of them you've seen in different vlogs.
But what I've noticed about Matti,
he maximizes that juice,
that battery right down to the last percent.
And it's everything he does between full and empty
that we're gonna talk about today.
So, the first thing I wanna talk about
is planning before you fly.
Not just sending the drone up and sightseeing,
which is what a lot of people do, including myself.
I can almost see him visualizing the shots
before he takes them.
Looks around, he checks out the views,
kinda getting a grip of,
"I wanna be up high, I wanna be over there,
I'm gonna go over here, and I'm gonna go over here."
Because let's be honest,
you don't have a lot of time with drone batteries.
You know, some of the best drones
you get less than half an hour.
So, when you're up there flying and the winds are high
and it's taking more battery to get that drone further,
and back, and forth,
you wanna make sure that you're maximizing that.
So, planning out your shots ahead of time,
it's gonna make sure
that you get the shots you need in time.
The second point I wanna talk about
is utilizing each battery with variety.
This is, by far, what I think Matti excels at the most.
When I look at his shots from just one area,
there is so much variety,
from low panning slider shots to pullbacks, push-ins,
super high up, super far back, circling shots, 360s.
He does everything he can
to basically get every type of angle and shot that he can,
so, when you're working in post,
you have more flexibility, more freedom.
You have the option to choose any of these shots,
should one of them not work out.
If you're just zipping around, checking things out,
checking out the view, doing the classic zoom in, zoom out,
let's pull back and rotate the gamble up.
And there's nothing wrong with those,
but if that's all you're doing,
everything becomes so stagnant and repetitive.
The next thing you know, four vlogs down,
four videos down, four projects down,
four assignments down,
all your footage looks the same,
it just happens to be in a different place.
So, by mixing it up and adding variety to these shots,
you're getting an eclectic mix of camera moves,
that you're gonna be super happy with that,
give you that extra flexibility in your edit.
That you guys may saw in yesterday's vlog
on that Black Sand Beach.
Here's an example of just a few of the shots Matti got
while he was flying his drone with one battery
at the Black Sand Beach.
I'm gonna roll them through,
so you can see the amount of variety he got
for just one flight.
(upbeat, inspiring music)
Okay, number three is showing scale.
This is massive, if you want a cinematic look
to your drone shots.
A lot of people like to get up nice and close,
as if you were following that Defender
through that Black Sand Beach.
Nice and close is cool,
but when you pull that all way back
and you show how small that Defender is
with this massive scale,
this huge incredible landscape.
That's when things start to look very cinematic
and Matti is a master at that.
You can get those profiles shots
with the truck moving to the side,
start flying really really high,
but again, showing that massive scale,
show the shape of the road,
how small the truck is to give off that feeling of grandeur,
which makes things feel cinematic.
Showing scale is very important,
not only as to show off the landscape,
but makes your films and drone shots super cinematic.
That kinda leads into point number four,
which is having a subject in your drone shots.
A lot of people shoot landscapes,
it's just beach, it's mountains, it's sky.
Let's be honest, I do that too, we all do that.
Part of flying a drone is just fun to do that,
so there's nothing wrong with it.
But if we're talking how can we make this cinematic,
and how can we step them up,
is by adding a subject to those shots.
What Matti does a lot of the time with his drone work,
is he includes a subject as the focal point.
So the drone shots are sweet,
but what he's actually doing is tracking either a human,
or a vehicle, or an activity that's happening.
It's not just an around the world of a mountain.
It'll be an around the world
of me standing on top of a Defender,
or a follow shot of a car
instead of just that follow shot of the road.
So, having that subject in your frame helps tell the story.
As we all know, story is very important
and this is going to help you with that.
And last, but not least,
number five is having ND filters for your drone.
Just like it's important for a camera,
like we talked about in this video here,
or whatever it pops out.
It's just as important to have that on your drone.
Your drone is also a camera, it's also sunny outside,
you wanna make sure you're following the same rules
that you do in your shooting with your actual camera,
that you're doing that with your drone as well.
So, I've linked below some ND filters,
if you wanna check them out,
those are the ones that we use,
they work exceptionally well
when you're shooting with DSLR and D-Log,
those types of things if you're flying a DGI drone,
which are the settings that we use.
And these ND filters really really help
give you that dynamic range.
And we also talked about dynamic range in this video,
and the jest of that was
more dynamic range equals more cinematic.
So when you have more dynamic range,
you're following a subject,
you're showing the scale,
you're planning out your shots,
you're getting that variety with your batteries,
it's a no-brainer.
You're gonna get some super incredible cinematic work.
And if you guys don't know who Matti is or Travel Feels,
I highly suggest you check him out below.
I've linked his channel in the description,
he's an exceptional filmmaker, a great friend,
and some of that I look up and inspire to
as a filmmaker myself.
That's it for me, guys.
I hope you enjoyed this video.
Hit that Like button if you like this video.
Smash it if that's something that you're gonna do.
Subscribe if you aren't already and
I will see you guys on Thursday for part two
of the Iceland vlogs.
And yes, I definitely withheld drone footage for that vlog.
(upbeat inspiring music)