Cinematic Drone Moves to Practice & Master
Lesson 8 from: Intermediate Drone Videography and PhotographyDirk Dallas
Cinematic Drone Moves to Practice & Master
Lesson 8 from: Intermediate Drone Videography and PhotographyDirk Dallas
Lesson Info
8. Cinematic Drone Moves to Practice & Master
Lessons
Lesson Info
Cinematic Drone Moves to Practice & Master
So we're at one of my favorite parts of the course. We're down here at the river. I'm going to show you how to get cinematic shots. And the thing that you really wanna think about for these moves is to think in 3D. What do I mean by that? Well think of a foreground, a middle ground, and a background. It's not as easy, like maybe when you're shooting on the ground because you have a drone way up high in the sky, so the view is really wide. So think of what are subjects that you can put in the foreground, maybe it's trees in this case. What's a subject in the background, maybe it's the mountains really far off in the distance. And then from there, once you're starting to think in 3D, then think about a point A and a point B. Really what I mean by that is a starting point and an ending point. Where do you want to start, where do you want to end, and then what's happening in the middle. So each of these moves that I'm gonna go over, we'll talk about those in different ways. So let's give t...
hem a try. So this first one is probably the one that you've seen all over YouTube and Vimeo. It's just a standard push-in move. So I'm really focusing on my right stick. If I want to mix things up, I'll also add some altitude with my left stick. So I'm gonna hit record, actually, I'm gonna make sure I'm in the right settings. I wanna be at 150th of a second. I want my aperture to be determined after I figure out my ISO. So I'm gonna kick my ISO down to 100. And my aperture, maybe 2.8. So I really care about that 150th of a second on my shutter since I'm shooting 24 frames per second. So I'm gonna hit record, I always give it just a second or two before I start the move, so that makes it easier in post. And now I'm just gonna push toward my subject. I'll add a little bit of altitude by going up on my left stick. And that's a standard push. Okay, so the next one that might be pretty cool to try is I'm gonna get right over my friend and then I'm going to bring the drone a little lower and then I'll start to raise up the drone and get a cool scale effect. So first we need to line ourselves up. And I'm gonna get a little closer. So I'm close on my subject, I'm recording, and I'm now just gonna bring the drone up and I'm revealing the scene. If I wanna make this a little more interesting, I could start to yaw and I'm twisting my camera as it's going up. Trying to keep my subject frame the whole time. And this is a cool move to practice really smoothly with the yaw, because you want to be nice and smooth, and if you can, like I just did, you want to end on the subject. So this is a really cool effect, practice it. It's just going straight up. Try that first and if you feel like you got that down, add a little bit of yaw as you're going up. And then we can do that same shot reverse or you can reverse it in post. So I'm gonna try to fly down on my subject and I'm gonna make sure I'm focused on my subject. So I'm just tapping on my screen and I'm gonna descend with my left stick, and I'm going to, just to make it a little interesting, I'm going to yaw as well. And this is a subtle yaw. And I'm making sure I'm watching air okay. So I might cut it a little bit sooner just because she was slipping a little bit to the right. So one of my favorite moves to do is the tilt reveal. And what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna use the sun as my subject. So, I'm first going to figure out where is my sun, I'm gonna tilt the gimbal up. And it's basically straight on there, you can see us. And so what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna point my camera all the way down and I'm gonna start moving the drone towards the sun. And as I'm doing that, I'm gonna tilt the gimbal up and I'm gonna go up over the trees. So I'm gonna hit record. I'll start moving the drone forward. And this shot looks real abstract at first. I'll get over the water, I'm gonna start tilting up. So I'm tilting my drone cameras up. And I'm gaining altitude, I'll let go of my gimbal. And now I just revealed the skyline. So this is a pretty cool shot to do to kind of set the stage when you get to a location, it could be a nice opening shot. So one of my tips for you to practice is you don't have a lot of opportunities to have a foreground subject that you can easily just position in place. So what you can do, though, is you can use the landscape. So I have some trees out there that I'm going to use as the foreground and once I get over those trees, you'll see the sun in the background and it will reveal all of the beautiful golden light. So I'm starting low and I'm just going to start raising up. There, I got my sun flare. And that was a really easy shot to capture and all I did was use the foreground of those trees to block the sun. Alright so next I'm gonna do tilt while tracking. So just go ahead and hold there. I'm going to fly away from my subject and then I'm going to start flying towards her, and as I'm flying towards her, I'm going to start tilting down and once I get right over her, if I'm doing it right, I should be looking straight down. This usually takes a few times to practice, but it can be a really dynamic shot because it creates almost like a vertigo effect. You can make the viewer feel like they're falling a little bit because the planes are shifting. So let's try this out. I'm gonna frame up my subject. And the key for this is you're moving forward and you're tilting at the same time, your camera down. So I'm gonna move forward. And I'm gonna start my tilt. I'm gonna straighten that out a little bit. Okay, I'm tilting, tilting, I'm almost right over her. And I would cut right after you see the gimbal kind of like do the jerk, because I went all the way it could be extended. So now I'm gonna try to do an orbit shot. And this can be cool because you're basically circling your subject. It maybe gets a little more interesting if you add in some altitude, so you ascend or you descend. So we'll try this shot and see how it looks. I'm going to frame my subject, looks really cool with all the clouds there and the reflection, I love that. I'm gonna start my move. You can see she's coming out of the shadows there, you're getting some reflections. You see all those planes moving, shifting, just really dynamic. Okay so let's try that move with just maybe one more element where I'm going to ascend and see how that looks. So what I have to do is I need to focus on giving my left stick some throttle. So first I'm gonna get into my move. I usually like to start low for this and then go high so then I don't have to worry about if I was high and trying to go low, I'd have to worry about the ground, it's just one more thing for me to think about, so I'd rather do it the other way. And if you ever need to, you can obviously reverse that shot, but it's easier going up than going down. So I'm gonna enter my move. And I'm going higher. Let me do it again, it's a little tough. I'm gonna reset and I'm gonna get a little lower and I'm gonna pull back. If I'm a little further from the subject, it's easier, I'm maybe a little too close. Alright, I'm gonna start my move. I'm pulling back as well, so I don't have to worry about getting her in the frame. There we go. Being mindful of those trees, alright. Alright so what I'm gonna try now is I'm going to try to cross the action. So I'll have my friend start to kayak downstream and I'll have the drone cross over her path. So if you remember when we were doing the gimbal settings, I had you check on the gimbal tilt up 30 degrees. And the reason why is because I can get a really cool shot on this tree by pointing the gimbal up if I'm really low with the drone, and as I go higher in altitude, I can tilt the gimbal down, and I create a really dynamic effect where that background shifts completely out of frame and you see it coming into frame. It's a really cool, dynamic effect. So let's give it a try. Alright so for this next move, I'm gonna pull out from my subject. So I'm gonna get really close to her so it's focused right on her, you can almost see her face, and then I'm gonna kick the drone back far and out to reveal the landscape that she's in, to show how small is in this vast spot. Alright so we just heard a train, so I'm racing over to see if I can capture it right now. I flipped my drone into sport mode to make sure I can get there fast enough. And right now, I'm just gonna wait until I see the train coming through. I'm gonna make sure my settings are ready. And I think what I'll do is I know that behind me there is a big, open, obstacle free zone, so what I'll try to do is I'll pull back and I'll do an orbit so I can get a nice little arching follow shot. So let's see if I can get that. Alright, yeah that's cool. Alright, yeah, I think I got it, so we'll roll with that.
Ratings and Reviews
a Creativelive Student
There was some good and helpful information here! However he stated that when shooting video he sets the camera focus on a stationary subject and then put it in manual mode so as to avoid the camera re-focusing on a different plane, but I would have liked to have heard his tips for camera focusing on his shots where the subject was moving toward or away from the camera.