Hi all, new member here.
First couple of flights were purely for airmanship practice, and today was my first time out shooting footage.
Went to Warsash (thanks @macspite for the location recommendation on Dronescene).
As the title suggests, this is also my first time editing video (always been a still photographer in the past).
I welcome all critique positive and constructive, however harsh (no feelings will be hurt).
My own critique points:
Due to still learning flight, a lot of my drone movements were very slow which meant I ended up having to speed up a lot of footage in post which I think has led to some of the choppy footage.
I had some idea in my head before hand of the shots I wanted, but in practice I ended up making it up as I went along which I think has lead to a somewhat disjointed video, although I did try to keep it varied and logical.
Overall I am happiest with the ‘detail’ shots, I think because these felt more comfortable to me as they are the most similar to what I am used to capturing as a still photographer versus the wider shots.
The transitions are something I’m still playing with, I forgot about planning the transitions while shooting (i.e. using the gimbal to pan down as a transition etc.)
Lots of good in here, and yu have a good dieea of how to improve, for a first video it is excellent, well paced, good footage and some great detail shots…
Keep going, keep shooting, keep critiquing yoour own work until you reach a point you are happy with it…
I think as I become more comfortable with my drone, I will be able to rely more on cruise control, auto tracking, and even some of the pre-programmed movements.
So far today, everything was manually controlled (no focus tracking etc.). That will help smooth things out, and allow me to do some more complex moves rather than straight lines.
The auto functions are brilliant, and for the beginner are absolutely fantastic, as you get more accustomed then you will find flying manually is more challenging and rewarding, althugh I still use the POI function occassionally…
The most smooth footage is usually from keeping movements simple and constant, so keep whatever movements you are making constant throughout the shot, gimball movemments need to be properly feathered - check Ian in London’s video’s for how to set up the advanced options and make things as smooth as possible…
Watch as much video from others as you can and do it actively, critique it, and look at what they did that you like and use those techniques yourself…
And get out and fly, as often as you can - and give yourself some practice time at the beginning of each flight to get your focus in place…
If that’s your first video, you are on the right track, well done Mine was terrible!
Here it comes …
With practise, you can avoid slow flight / speeding up the clip - as these are noticeable, and detract from the end result.
I never plan the entire video up front. I plan each clip before hand, and try and do that. Then move onto the next. As for the vid being disjointed, it seemed fine to me. That’s the great thing in post, you can lay all your clips out on the timeline, then adjust to suit.
Transitions are subjective. Some love it, some hate it. Personally, if and when I use transitions, I use cross fade. No flashy stuff.
I would advise checking out Ian’s @ianinlondon vids on YouTube to smooth out your gimbal settings. He covers most, if not all, DJI camera drones. And the results pay dividends.
I thought it was great. Not a fan of using different transitions though but that’s a personal thing. You can use CC for orbits too. Start the manoeuvre and when your happy with the speed and arc hit the CC. Vary it in tems of height will give it an extra dimension too.
Welcome to the forum’s! I think that looks like some perfect video footage. I do have some suggestions though but completely up to you as this is just about flight preference, maybe get some nice shots if you can like getting closer to the parked boats (of course not too close to people) and getting a shot moving sideways and yaw to the left a little whilst flying right and then slowly start flying backwards revealing more boats? This is of course for a more detailed video but again this is completely up to you, just find your comfort zone and work from there upwards
I would suggest doing exactly what I did when I started drones a few years ago. Just shoot some footage for fun like this and get used to your drone, the next step from there I would say (your choice) is like the last message I said get kind of close to your subjects then try some speedy stuff and then do some nice coordinated plans for a shoot, these for me where what began some of my nice footage.
Oh and quick suggestion. Watch Johnny fpv and Porsche behind the scenes and you can get an idea of how they plan some of there crazy shots like flying through the windows of a Porsche traveling at roughly 100mph
@clinkadink thanks for those links, the gain & expo settings I suspected I needed to tweak, and I never realised that the bypass/brake setting had an impact on flight! SO much smoother and easier to fly (especially lining up for landing). Your other feedback noted, especially ref transitions - I think I was experimenting as it was my first time. I also wasn’t sure if using the same transition each time would be ‘boring’ but I’ll keep experimenting to find my style.
@AlbionDrones I went out again today (video to follow shortly) and I tried some of the auto functions, and actually I find myself not trusting the auto tracking too much, it gets a bit jumpy particularly when tracking boats and so I found myself switching back to manual control which I feel is better practice anyway.
I think maybe waypoints are one of my underused features, I shall play with those more in future.
@AquaticJedi I think with the parked boats, I feel like I’m invading privacy by getting too close. Although if the boats name or registration isn’t visible, I don’t see why it should be a problem. The other issue was I was flying on the limit of VLOS at times so I wasn’t too comfortable judging distances for collision avoidance just yet.
Hi @Camera-On, as a newbie myself I was very impressed with your presentation. Some great footage ideas in there. You mention that you’re new to video, as am I, so could I ask what software you used? I understand that a lot use Davinci but I believe that it has a big learning curve. Well done.
Having never used video editing software before, I wanted something that was easy to learn and preferably had some AI assistance to speed things up.
I really liked the simplicity of Lightcut (as reccomended by DJI) however I couldn’t stand trying to edit on my phone, and when I googled ‘Desktop version of lightcut’ Capcut came up which appears to be made by the same company.
I don’t have anything to compare it with, but it seems perfectly adequate for what I want - and as so far most the features you might want are on the free license. I did pay for Pro however, as auto colour grading is a ‘pro’ feature.
Do note, there is an ONLINE version Capcut, however I am using the DESKTOP version.
As a first effort, I’d say that was an impressive effort.
You already seem to be aware of how you might improve over time, so just keep practicing…. That’s part of the fun.
Mine was terrible!
