Transcripts
1. Introduction: Aerial video and
aerial cinematography have seen a huge rise during the past years due
to the accessibility of drones to the
general population, making shots like this, this, and this possible with a
device as small as your wrist. By entering this field of aerial cinematography not
only become extremely useful in the modern society and potential companies that may need your aerial
footage but you also unlock a spectacular
new way of capturing your life and making those beautiful moments
truly immortal. Hello, everyone.
Welcome to this course. My name is Lambros, I'm a
fourth-year medical student and part-time filmmaker. During my past five years
in the film-making field, I have collaborated with a
wide variety of companies, creating commercials
and videos for both my YouTube channel
and of course my clients. In addition to that, I have more than 130
registered flights [NOISE] in literally every
imaginable condition. I am very confident that I can help you make your baby steps in the field of aerial
cinematography and become confident
with your drone. This course is going
to be exactly that. This is going to be an
introductory course in aerial cinematography. During the following lessons, we're going to break down all the gears you're going to need, how to set up everything, how to fly and land
with confidence, as well as some basic editing
principles when it comes to aerial video to really help you make the best out of your drone. By the end of this course, you will be able to
complete the class project, which is going to
be the creation of a small video, of course, shot and edited by you while utilizing the filming techniques that we're going to analyze
during the lessons. I believe that everybody can benefit from this
course right here. If you're ready, click on the first
lesson and join me in this quest to become
confident drone pilot.
2. Class Project: Thank you very much for
joining this course and the small introductory
video right here. I'm going to be describing
the class project that you're called to complete
by the end of this course. Now, as I mentioned in the introductory
video of this course, the class project is going to be a 30-second shot and edited, of course, by you using the
techniques that I'm gonna show you and I'm going to teach you through those lessons. I chose this class project
because in my opinion, the best way to learn
and master skills, especially in videography,
is through trial and error. By having to create your
own drone video edit, you will gradually develop a sense of which footage to use, which footage not to
use, and in general, how to combine different
shots for the best results. This will of course, enhance
your learning experience and the next time that
you're outside with your drone again
ready to shoot, you will have the
experience to know which shots work and in general, which shots are better to be avoided for a best
post-production experience. This class project right here, the creation of a
30-second video edit is a very basic and
fundamental thing that every beginner drone
videographer should know. Because simply shooting
a cool shot and just directly saving it to
your phone is okay. But having the skills to create a beautiful 5-6 shots sequence using post-production skills
and your drone footage, in my opinion, is
the perfect way to advance in this field. In order to nail
this class project, I advise you to follow
the classes step-by-step. Of course, if you're
not 100 percent comfortable with a class, you can always replay it. Pay close attention to the
post-production lesson, as well as the intelligent
flight mode lesson. These two are the most
important lessons for this class
project to be done. Another thing is that if
you don't own a drone, but you're planning to get one, this course is still going
to be very valuable for you. For those of you that
don't own a drone, I still suggest you
to follow the lessons that I teach in this course. In order for you to
deliver the class project, I will have a link in the
description of the class through which you
will be able to download some of
my drone footage. This way you will
be able to follow the post-production lesson with my footage with no problem. Now for more details
about the class project, you can always read the class
project description below, where I will be
highlighting in more detail every single step that
you're going to have to take in order to complete
again the class project. Also, note that I will
be personally giving feedback to every single
project that you guys submit. That's it when it comes
to the class project , See you in the first lesson.
3. Setting Everything up: Hello everyone. Welcome
to the first lesson of this course in
this beautiful day outside in the mountains. In this lesson right here
we're going to discuss everything that is on our drone, everything that
is on our remote, how to connect everything, and how to be ready to take off. I'm not going to
analyze how to connect your phone with your drone because this is fairly simple, you just follow the guide
that is seen on the DJI app, so I'm not going to waste
your time with this. We're going to discuss now what is everything that you see in your remote and on your smartphone device that
you connect your remote with. This right here is
our DJI Mavic remote. As you can see, we have
two antennas that fold up. Right here, we've got the cable that connects
with our phone, of course, if you have
an Android phone. This is going to be a
micro USB cable but right now I have an
iPhone startup here, so this is a lightning cable, so you connect your
remote with your phone. Through here, we've
got, of course, our two sticks that are
going to connect our drone. We're going to dive
through what the sticks do in the how-to-fly lesson. This button right
here, actually in the top left of the remote is
the return to home button. When you press this, the drone returns to the place
that you took off. Right here, we've
got the turn-off and unbutton of the remote. In the middle of the remote, we got the support button. [NOISE] When you
press the sport mode, the drone just becomes faster, [NOISE] so keep that in mind. Right here we've got our
pause button that disables any intelligent flight mode
that we have activated. Again, we're going to dive through intelligent flight modes in the intelligent
flight mode lesson. Then we got our
multifunction button, which we can actually program to function as whatever we want. Right now, I haven't
actually programmed it because I just never
use this button, but you can program this
button, for example, to make your gimbal turn 90 degrees downwards
or stuff like that, I just never use this button. In the top of the
controller, we've got the Record button, so you press this button
and the drone, of course, records video in the frame rate and resolution that
you have set it up. Right here, we've got
the picture button. If you press the picture
button the drone takes a picture,
it's fairly simple. This is the gimbal
rotating basil. If we move this, as you can see in the screen of my phone, the gimbal is just going
to rotate up and down. These were all the buttons of the remote that you
need to know right now. Make sure you have
your antennas at a 45-degree angle for the best signal
transmission to your drone. Now, moving on to the
phone, the phone screen, I know that this sounds a bit weird and a bit complicated, but trust me, it's not. In the top left, we
have the GPS state. You want your drone to be
saying Ready-to-go GPS in order for it to calibrate its position and be
stable in the air. If it is not in a
ready-to-go GPS state, you have to calibrate
the compass. In the bottom left of the
screen, as you can see here, we have a map which tells
us where the drone is. If we press again the map, then we can see it
just becomes bigger, so we can see better where the drone is as a
satellite image. We press again the image
that we see from the drone, and we'll come back
to this first screen. On the left side again, top left, we have
the takeoff button. If I slide this
cursor right here, then the drone will
of course take off, but we don't want to
do this right now. Then right here we
got the land button. Of course, the drone hasn't taken off yet, so we can't land. The intelligent
flight mode button. Right here we can
navigate through the intelligent flight modes. We're going to have
again, a special lesson on the intelligent flight modes. Then the A pass button which
disables or enables A pass, which is the ability
for drone to navigate around objects that
block its route. In general, you need
to have A pass always activated because you don't
want to ruin your drone. In the top right, you
have other information against such as the GPS status, divided percentage,
the connection state, the frame rate, and the resolution that
you're shooting with. Right here, the small dot in the right side again is
where the gimbal is at. Again, if we turn the gimbal, you can see the dot going
downwards and upwards. Right here we can switch through video and photograph
with this button. Of course, this is
the Record button, which have the same
in our remote. If we press these three
lines right here, then we're going to mess
around with the settings of the videos and
the photographs. These are the video format settings where we
change the size, the format, the white balance. In general, I shoot in
2.7k 60 frames per second. But right here, you
can twitch from manual to auto video, I always have it in auto with the exposures that are
zero for the best results. This button here is the
playback of the shots that you've shot
with your drone. Now in the bottom left
of your phone screen, we can see all those
numbers right here. This is actually the
height of the drone, the speed of your drone, and the distance of your drone. Right now they're all
zero because of course, drone is still down there
waiting for us to take off. Now we're going to move
to the drone itself. The drone is activated. First of all, I have removed the gimbal protectors
so the gimbal is, as you can see, free. Now, the legs in the front arms of the
drone are set down, so we can have a stable
surface when we take off. Now again, I have
tagged my batteries, so this is the first
button that I use. This is the button to open
and close the battery. Right here are all the
sensors of the drone, so you just don't want
to mess with these. Just be glad that
they're there because these centers have saved
me multiple of times. Right here in the
back of the drone, if we open this small door, you can see a port to have a
micro-USB guard set there, so you can record
your footage and the small USB-C port to directly transfer footage from
the drone to the computer. This gives me support actually
is there because the drone has an eight-gigabyte
internal storage. If you forget your SD card,
just like I did right now, you can record directly
to your drone and then transfer the footage
to your computer. The drone is fairly simple. There's nothing more to
discuss about the drone. We got four
propellers, four legs. Again, the gimbal
and the camera, which is capable to
record up to 4k, I think 24 frames per second, so this is more than enough. That's pretty much it when
it comes to the drones. We discussed about the remote, we discussed about the drone. Now the one thing that you
will totally need to do, and some point is to
calibrate the compass. Right now I have already
calibrated my compass. I'm going to show you how to
do this securely and safely. You press right here
in the GPS status, and it is usually going to
have an indicator right here in the calibration of the compass that you
need to calibrate it, so you just press
Calibrate Compass, start the calibration process, and it is going to ask
you to rotate your drone 360 degrees horizontally
and vertically. We're going to get a drone
like this horizontally, and we're just going to twist
360 degrees right here. Then vertically, I'm going
to twist again 360 degrees. Right here. The
calibration process is complete. This
is literally it. Now the calibration
process is done. The green, Ready to go GPS state is exactly
what you want to see in order to be
comfortable in taking off. Now before we take off
we're going to discuss what do you need to
have with you in order to have a successful shoot with a drone in order to capture everything and be safely back at your house to store the footage. Of course, you're going to
have your remote, your phone, your drone, the cable that connects the
remote with your phone. This is very essential, and it is easily stored
within the remote, so you never take it
off, you never lose it. I also have this bag that came with my drone.
This bag right here. I actually have the case
of my phone because my phone can't fit in the
controller without a case. I also have the case of the drone that is going to need it, of course, to
store the drone. This is a very fragile
piece of gear. Of course, you're going
to need a place to store all of your SD
cards or one SD card. You don't need to
have a dedicated SD card holder like me, but this is always welcome. We're going to open
our SD card holder. Just take out one SD card right here and just put
it in the drone. You can open the backside
of a drone like this, and we're going to put the
SD card facing downwards. Here you go. Into the
drone, push it once. Now the drone has an SD card, and we are ready to take off. Now that you know everything
that you need to have with you for a successful
drone shoot, you know everything that
is on the drone and everything that is indicated in the controller and the phone. Now we're ready to actually fly a drone and capture footage. In the next lesson,
we're going to dive into the planning process
of a drone shoot. [MUSIC]
4. Taking Off : Welcome to this lesson. We've got our drone, we know everything that is on our drone. We've got our remote
and our phone. Of course, we know
everything that is on our remote and our phone. Now it is time, of
course, to take off. We place our drone in a surface that doesn't have gravel
or stuff like that. I've cleaned a bit
this side here, so we place our drone here
and we are ready for takeoff. Now there are two
ways to take off. The first way is
through your device, through your phone screen. You press this
button right here, and again, you slide
this cursor to take off. This is fairly easy,
just slide and leave it, and the drone will
take off and elevate in a steady height. Now the other way that I'm going to show you how to take off, it is pretty important
to know because sometimes you might not have your phone with you
and you're going to have to take off
without the phone. This is how you take off
just from the remote. You press the two joysticks down and in the center of
the controller, right here. As you can see, [NOISE]
the drone is now airborne. As you can see, the drone stays completely stable if you
don't touch the remote, which is of course very
helpful for beginners. Now, how to navigate your drone. Let's just bring the
drone right here. With the right joystick, you make your drone
move forwards and backwards. Let's try it. The drone is moving
forward just like this. If I leave the joystick again, the drone is going to
elevate right there. If we bring this back,
the drone is going to come towards us, backwards. The right stick makes our drone go forwards and backwards. Now the left stick makes the
drone rotate around itself. If we just turn the left stick, the drone rotates around itself. We're going to come
closer to see it. [NOISE] The drone is just
rotating around itself. [NOISE] Try to experiment
a bit, try flying away. You can try flying sideways by moving the right
stick to the right. We're flying sideways right now. Right stick to the left,
again we're flying sideways. Try to get comfortable
with it. Don't touch the left stick at this point, touch the right stick and try to see how the drone reacts
to your movements. As you can see right
here, the drone is doing circles while facing away from us if we move
the right stick like this. Try getting comfortable
[NOISE] with the movements of the
right stick first, and then we're going to
move to the left stick. Another maneuver that I want
you to get comfortable with is making your drone
facing yourself, so moving the left stick, so the camera of your drone faces yourself as
we can see here. Then just moving the
right stick downwards so the drone now is going to face away from us, just like this. This is a very basic, simple shot that you can
always imply it very easy. You just make your drone
face yourself and fly away. These are some basic
drone maneuvers that I want you to
get comfortable with. The first maneuver is the mega drone go
again away from you, very simple basic shot. Make the drone come back to you with the right stick again, facing downwards,
pointing downwards. I want you to be
comfortable with making circles with the
drone while it's facing away from you just with the right stick circular
movements like that. Always watch your drone to see how it reacts
to your movements. Then I want you to
make your drone look at you with the left stick. Then with the right
stick downwards, make it go away. Like this. This is
a very basic shot. Of course, we can
recreate the shot in the intelligent flight
mode so we're going to analyze in the next lesson. Now that we have talked
about the basics of how the take-off and some very
basic flight maneuvers, it's time to talk about some flying drills that you can implicate to become
better at this. Now, the first flying drill is actually to sturdy
yourself with a drone. What you're going to do
is you're going to go in the middle of the place
where you're shooting. You're going to
have the drone face towards you like this and you're going to watch the
screen and you can try to make the drone
circle around you. As you can see, at this point, I'm keeping them very
stable, the joysticks. But the drone is
circling ourselves. This is one flying drill
that is always easy to try and we'll help you
get better with this. [NOISE] This was the
first flying drill, making the drone circle you. It is not easy. Again,
it's not spectacular. You're not going to get any
crazy footage with this. We can recreate this in the
intelligent flight mode. But I want you to get
comfortable with the joysticks and manually
controlling the drone. Now, the second flying
field we're going to try is again to have a drone facing you
and just flying away. With the left joystick, we make the drone face us, and with the right
joystick, we just press it downwards so
they drone leaves. This is simply it. If you want to gain altitude we just point our left
stick upwards, so now the drone is leaving. As you can see, this
creates a pretty cool shot. Of course, you can keep it like that for as long as you want. Now we're not going for
crazy shots right now. Crazy shots are going to come in the final lesson of this course. Now we're just going to be
comfortable with our drone. [NOISE] The next
flying drill that I want you to do is to actually move and fly the drone just
by looking at the drone. You don't look at
the screen at all, you just look at the drone. Try to get comfortable
with navigating the drone while just
looking at the drone. Don't use the screen, just blindly use
the controller and try to understand how the drone
reacts to your movements. This is very important
because many times the controller is
not going to have a signal and you're
going to have to fly and land the
drone by yourself. Remember as a rule of thumb, as you can see right
here that when you see the red lights, the red lights are located
in the front of the drone. If you see red
lights, it means that the drone is facing yourself. If you see green light, this is the GPS light from
the back of the drone. If you see green light,
it means that the drone is facing away from you. Finally, try to move
the drone just by looking at the screen of your
phone and the controller, face away from the drone, and try to move around. Try to navigate in the place
where you're shooting. This is not easy. It's actually harder than just
looking at the drone. But again, you need to be
comfortable because many times you're going to lose
eyesight of the drone. [NOISE] We just have a
low battery warning, so we're going to
see how we land. I've set my low battery warning
indicator to 25 percent, so when we have 25
percent battery the controller is going to
make this stupid sound, [NOISE] and it's going
to ask us the land. It's perfect time to see
actually how we land. In order to land, just place a drone
somewhere [NOISE] near you. You just point the
left stick downwards [NOISE] and the drone is
going to automatically land. When you're in a place like
this, with gravel downwards, you pretty much don't
want to land because you might damage the
gimbal of the drone. This is how we land when we have a rough surface like this, check it out, we bring
the drone towards us. [NOISE] Just as a take-off can be done with this
cursor right here, the same thing can be
done with the landing. Now, if we slide this, the
drone is going to land. We slide this, and the
drone starts to land. Now, if we place our hand here, we're going to have an
indication that it can't land. We just force-land and we
grab the drone as it lands. This way you can land your drone without having it to
touch the surface. This is perfect when
you're landing in, for example, a boat, or you're landing in a
rough ground like this, where you don't want
to damage your gimbal. Now let's change batteries
and go to the next lesson. [MUSIC]
5. Intelligent Flight Modes: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the intelligent
flight mode lesson. In this lesson, we're
going to be analyzing each and every single one of the
intelligent flight modes, building the DJI app that you can indicate
in your drone to capture flawless footage with the minimal amount of skills. Let's fly our drone. Let's take off.
[NOISE] Here it is. I'm going to just press
this button right here to open our intelligent
flight mode menu. In this menu, we can
select QuickShot. Now, you can think
of QuickShot as the first category of it
doesn't flight modes, and it is honestly just a menu of some predetermined
drone maneuvers that just look cool and
you can apply it fastly in any
shooting conditions. This is why it's
called QuickShot. The first subcategory of
QuickShot is the rocket, during which your DJI drone flies straight up into the air with the camera moving
to point downwards, following your subject
that you've selected. We're going to
move to the second intelligent flight
mode of QuickShot, which is going to be circle. Starting with the circle again, we point the gimbal
towards us and we see this green circle
around the subject. We record and press
this green circle, and of course, the
process is completely. Automatic now, the drone
is going to circulate. As you can see right here, I'm not touching the
control at all and the drone is just circling us. This is pretty much of this circle intelligent
flight mode. Pretty cool, pretty easy. Again, you don't have
to control it at all. Everything is automatic
intelligent flight mode. Now the helix, one
of my favorite intelligent flight
modes of QuickShot. Again, we press the
green circle and again, right here you can see the percentage of the completion of intelligent flight mode. Now, during the helix, the drone actually
circles the subject, but also gains attitude
while doing that. It creates this
beautiful sequence in which it looks like a helix, like a spiral that
goes upwards the shot. It's really interesting,
especially if you're in the edge of some cliff or stuff like that. So
this was the helix. As you can see, the drone just gains altitude
while circling us. You can see the percentage here, 91 percent, 95 percent, and 100 of the drone
is going to stop and come to the place where you started the
intelligent flight mode. The next intelligent flight mode is going to be the boomerang. The boomerang is pretty
similar to the rocket, but during the boomerang, the drone just makes a smaller settle
around us and again, ends up in the same spot
in which it started. So you can create this boomerang
effect and you can just loop this video
again and again. The speed must be boomerang
intelligent flight mode. It's pretty similar to
the helix, honestly. I never used the boomerang. The asteroid intelligent
flight mode, I never use. It is pretty cool, but I'm just showing you how it looks like. It just scans the environment
and creates a video in which it looks like you're in a mini world or
something like that. I never use it because
it looks fake. It doesn't really apply
to my cinematic style, but of course, you can use it if you want. It's
called the asteroid. As you can see, the drone is just scanning
the environment to create this tiny world illusion. The next one is ActiveTrack. The ActiveTrack intelligent
flight mode is a huge success and it's the main
reason why people keep buying those DJI drones in 2022. If you have ever tried to film someone with your
drone while they're doing some activity,
for example, riding a bicycle or
writing a car or surfing, you know that it is very
hard to keep them in the center of your frame while
capturing smooth footage. ActiveTrack uses the drones artificial intelligence
to evaluate live feedback from your
drone's camera and always recognize and keep the subject in the
middle of your frame. In the ActiveTrack
intelligent flight mode, your subject will always be
in the middle of the frame and recognized by the artificial intelligence of your drone. Of course, you can set
yourself as a subject, but you can also set
vehicles, again, surfboards. There's a wide variety
of subjects that the artificial intelligence
of the drone can recognize. ActiveTrack is subdivided into three different categories; trace, profile, and spotlight. This is the most used
intelligent flight mode of mine. I'm going to start with trace. As you can see right here, I am tapping this circle around me, which of course, is a
subject at this point. We are recording
and during trace, the drone will rotate around the subject based on the speed that
you apply to it. For example, right now, we're about 50 percent speeds which is going to circulate
and it is also going to follow us
as we are moving. You're going to blame most
intelligent flight mode. Again, we are moving right
now, as you can see, and the drone is
going to be circling us. This is pretty cool. Again, we're not touching the controller at all,
everything is automatic. You can literally be driving a car and having controller
in the passenger seat, and the drone is going to circle view and create this
beautiful sequence. The second intelligent
flight mode of this category is the profile. Now, during the profile, again, we're going to
select our subject, which is us in this case. The drone is going to stay again at the place
in which we started this intelligent flight mode
and we're just going to be moving and the drone is going
to be stable right there. It's going to follow us in the same state that it was when we started this
intelligent flight mode. Right now, it is a profile view. I set this drone to
about 45 degrees angle in my view and it is
following me around. Of course, when I
stop, the drone stops, when I go back, the
drone goes back with us. Moving on to the
third sub category of the ActiveTrack,
we've got spotlight. Now, the spotlight
intelligent flight mode is a hybrid between and it ends in fight mode and the
freedom of your controls. Right now, again, we start
this intelligent flight mode. When I move, I'm going to be
in the center of the frame, but I can also control
where the drone goes. I control where the drone goes, but I'm always going to be
in the middle of the frame. The drone makes sure to
have me in the middle of my frame and I can control
the movements of the drone. All the drone does in this
intelligent flight mode, is to have me at the spotlight. This is why we effect of
course, is called spotlight. Now, I am controlling the
drone, but wherever I go, again, I'm going to be in
the middle of the frame. This pretty much partly the fact the spotlight intelligence
flight mode is my most used intelligent
flight mode of all. Because again, it gives me
this freedom to also use the controller and between the footers in the
way that I want. One, of course, utilizing the artificial
intelligence of the drone, giving me this
beautiful results. Now, we're going to move
into the smart counter mode, which is more than a game rather than intelligent
flight mode. You just again
press the subject. The drone knows where we are, it knows that we
are the subject. Now, we're just going
to raise our palm and we can control our drone using our motion of the
hand, is pretty interesting. We should move left,
the drone goes left, if they move right,
the drone goes right. [NOISE] As you can see, we can just move like this. It's like a jet, I think. This pretty much,
its more capturing. I never use it, I used it in the first
time that I bought my drone. This is my capture. The next intelligent flight
mode is the tripod mode. Now, the tripod mode is an
intelligent flight mode that pretty much works as
the normal flying of drone, but all sensors of the drone
are activated and hyper stimulated to keep your device as smooth and
stable as possible. During tripod mode, the speed of your device is going to
decrease significantly, giving you the
perfect setting to record the smoothest
possible footage. This is perfect
when you're flying in high wind scenarios. In scenarios in which you're not confident with your drone,
you don't want to lose it. The tripod mode is pretty much the perfect way to capture steady footage
with your drone. It is not very interesting, it is just this drone becomes
very slow and very stable. Finally, my favorite
intelligent flight mode of all is the point of interest. Now, you've seen those
phenomenal videos in which the drones circle around a subject that is always in the
middle of the frame. Flying such maneuvers takes a huge amount of skill and time, and sometimes you might
need two or three batteries to achieve one of those shots. Well, you're very lucky because this intelligent flight
mode right here, the point of interest
does exactly that. This is how the
point of interest intelligent flight mode works. You simply activate this
intelligent flight mode, fly above the subject that you want to have in
the middle of your frame, you record the point of
interest and then fly away from the subject at least five meters and confirm the
location of the drone. From this point, you
only need to set the speed that the
drone is going to circle the point of
interest and the direction, then you press Go and the
drone is going to circle the point of interest and
move around it flawlessly. Your drone will use the artificial
intelligence built-in intelligent flight mode and will rotate around the subject that you said as the
point of interest, making it the center
of your videos. Of course, during
this flight mode, you can also operate the
camera and you could turn your gimbal
up and downwards. This is one of my most used
intelligent lighten modes, and I encourage
you to get used to it and use it as much as
you can. Here we have it. We are directly above
this mountain right here. We're going to go ahead and
record the point of interest. Now, we're going
to set the radius, so we're going to move our
drone a bit backwards. We're going of course, you can set the radius as
much as you want. I'm about in 30 meters and
we're going to press Apply. Now with this, the drone
is going to again to rotate around the
point of interest. We can set the
speed of rotation. Right now, it is 12
kilometers per hour and the drone automatically rotate around the point of
interest that we have set. Anything can be a
point of interest. A rock, yourself. It is the best to
have a point of interest that does not move. There is not mobile, so
they drone, of course, you're going to have it
in the middle of a frame. But this is a very
spectacular and easily used in flight
mode point of interest. I always use this in
terms of flight mode, it is absolutely
amazing and I suggest you do big deeper into the point of interest in flight mode
and learn how to use it. You can see the
footage that we are considering is
absolutely amazing. Again, when we're ready with
an adult is in flight mode, we can just hit Exit. Bring the drone in the
place where we started. Here's drone and these were
the intention flight mode. [MUSIC]
6. Planning the Shoot: Welcome back inside.
In this small lesson, I'm going to guide you
through my planning process before I grab my drone
and I go out to shoot. As we discussed in the
first lesson, of course, before you go out and shoot, you should have all the
gear prepared for you. You should have a drone, a controller, a phone,
which, of course, going to link with
the controller, as well as SD cards to store the files that
we're going to acquire. But in addition to that, before you take off, you must be aware
of some things that may alter the route
of your flight. We're going to
start by analyzing two factors that are part of the planning process of
each shoot and have the potential to alter the
flight of your drone. Don't worry, everything's
going to make perfect sense. The first factor is the wind. Note that if it is a windy day that you chose to
fly your drone, if you fly against the wind, this will obviously drain
your battery way faster. This is why I always
tend to fly my drone against the wind in the
beginning of the shoot, so when the shoot progresses
and my battery level drops, the wind is going to help
me to propel my drone faster to the place that
I am right now to land. I can't stress enough
the importance of flying against the wind at the beginning of
your shoot and with the wind at the
end of the shoot. I actually once made
the mistake to fly with the wind when I
started my shoot, and when I have the low
battery warning which indicates the 25
percent battery left, my drone was two kilometers away with the wind
flying against it. I was in support mode with my
left stick all the way up. The drone was giving
its maximal tries to reach again the point
where I'm telling it to go back to myself
so I can land, but the drone was
literally standing still from all the wind that
were blowing against it. My battery percentage
dropped even more, and when it reached
to one percent, the drone made an emergency landing right there at the spot. The problem is that the spot
where my drone was stuck, obviously because I was in
full throttle and the wind was blowing against it was
right above the sea, so the emergency
landing of the drone was to be done in the water, so I would lose my drone. This is when I
chose to crash-land in some rocks that were nearby, and then I just was looking
for the drone for two hours, and I was lucky
enough to find it. What I've got out
from this experience is actually the knowledge to never fly the drone with the wind at the
beginning of the shoot. Always fly against the wind in the beginning of the shoot, so you can use the
wind to propel your drone towards
you at the end of it. Another factor that you need to take into consideration while planning your shoot is actually
the direction of the sun. The camera sensors of
the drones are actually very small and have a
very small dynamic range, which in the language of
geography means that if you put direct harsh sunlight
in front of your drone, it will make the highlights look white and the shadows look dark. It will create a rough image, which we don't like that much. As a rule of thumb, remember
that is better to shoot at a object that is
lit from the sun. This means that usually you want your back of the drone
to face the sun, and the front of
the drone to face the object that is
lit by the sun. Just like in every
other single camera, the best natural
lighting conditions to fly your drone are either during sunrise or during sunset. This is when the light
is going to have the best vibrancy and
it's not going to be that harsh to your
camera sensor. Try to plan your shoots to take either place very early in
the morning or during sunset. Now from my five-year experience while shooting
stuff with drones, I realized that
drone shoots can be categorized in two
major categories. The first category are shoots in which you have a
point of interest, a subject that you
want to capture, and you plan your whole
flying based on this subject. An example of this category
could be a football game, or perhaps a landmark in your city that
you want to capture. There is the football game,
there is the landmark, and you just fly your
drone around it, try to capture as much
of it as you can. The second category of shoot is a shoot in which you're
in a beautiful location, but you don't have one
specific thing to capture. Everything looks perfect, so you want to
capture as much as you can from little
bit of everything. An example of this category
could be a trip on a beach. You don't have something specific that you
want to capture, but you're in this
beautiful location and you want to have as many videos
as you want from it. Now depending on the nature
of your shoot, again, it could be a point of
interest shoot when you have a subject and you want to capture everything
around that subject, or it could be a general
shoot in which usually in a beautiful location and
you don't have something specific in your
mind to capture, you can brainstorm your
mind into different shots and different drone
maneuvers that fit into each situation. Try to ask yourself
before you grab your drone and go out to shoot, what am I looking at today? Am I going to shoot something
specific, for example, a car in a track day
or I'm going to have more creative freedom to
shoot more stuff that I want? For example, a day in the
center of a town in Europe. Now, this final part of this
lesson we're going to talk about the two ways
to record videos. There is not really a
better way from the other. The real difference
between those two ways of recording
that I'm going to explain you right now is
really in post-production. The first approach
of shooting video is to press the record
button wherever you're ready to perform the
cinematic maneuver that you're ready to
use at your edit. As you're going to see during
the complete shoot video, the drone need some
time, of course, to head into the
location that we want in order to capture
this beautiful footage. If you follow this first
approach of recording, you would wait for
your drone to reach the point that you
want to perform this maneuver and then
hit the record button, perform the maneuver, hit again the record button
and save this video. At the end of the
shoot, this will give you a list of shots. Each shot is going
to be, of course, a different maneuver of the
drone and you can combine these in the post-production
to create a beautiful edit. The second approach is way more simple and I know of
many people that do it, you literally record
the whole flight. You press once the bottom
when the drone takes off, and you press again the
button when the drone lands. This way, you have
the whole flight in a single video and you can trim down the parts
that you like, and of course, throw
away the parts that you don't like in
post-production. People that follow
this second type of video recording tend to never lose a single shot
that they perhaps thought they were regarding
but didn't even record it. But of course, in
post-production they have to work with way bigger files. Personally, I follow the
first type of recording which is just record each beautiful maneuver that
we do with the drones, and then import
it in my computer as different files and
construct and edit. But I can see the value in
this other recording style, and especially when you're a beginner and you have to think about one million different
stuff while flying the drone. It's completely
understandable just record the whole flight and have the recording part
out of your mind. These were pretty much the things that you should be aware of before heading
out for a shoot. Make sure to make
your choices and to analyze the shooting
conditions before taking off. If you feel ready, charge your batteries and join
me in the next lesson, in which we're going to perform a whole complete drone shoot using all the
knowledge that we have obtained through
all those lessons. [MUSIC]
7. A Complete Shoot: Welcome everyone to the
final lesson of this course. In this lesson right here,
we're going to perform a complete shoot from
the start to the finish. I'm going to show you my
whole shooting process, and of course, then we're going to head out in the post-production lesson to see how I edit those videos. Here we are in this
typical location and first we're going to
take off with our drone. Let's place our drone in a
stable surface, for example, here and when I press go
fly and start the device. We have ready to go GPS,
of course, in our phone. The GPS signal is perfect. Let's go ahead and pick off. [NOISE] Here we go. Now remember, in a
complete shoot like this, you want to have a variety. You want your shots to be creative and you want to
have a variety of shots. The first one we're
going to get is, just like we said in the
intelligent flight mode lesson, a point of interest
intelligent flight mode shot of this rocky
mountain right there. If you remember,
we just go here. Press the button
point of interest and we're going to fly in
the top of the mountain to record the point of interest as the first shot of the edit, I always like to
start my edits with an establishing shot
and this is going to be the establishing shot
off our edit right here. We're going to fly in
the top of the mountain. We're going to point
our gimbal downwards, I think right there and now we record the point of interest. We're going to move the drone, of course, backwards, fix the gimbal right there
and I think this is perfect. We apply it and we record and recapturing
of course again, this typical footage
of the point of interest shot of this rocky
mountain right there. This again is an establishing
shot to introduce the viewers to the
environment of the edit. It's perfect to start with an establishing shot
using the point of interest, intelligent
flight mode. This is what I usually
do in my edit and I think that now we can exit
this intelligent flight mode, stop the recording, and bring the drone back to the
place where we started. Now another shot that
I want to take is the shot of the drone flying and the gimbal gradually going upwards to reveal
again the series. What we're going to do is
we're just going to record, fly the drone towards us
and as we fly the drone, I'm just going to turn the
gimbal rotating vessel a bit slightly upwards. We're going to have this
beautiful revealing shot of the city that we're
flying right here. Beautiful. Again, we're doing this as we bring our
drone back right there. Great. Now our drone is
back and now that we have introduced our viewers to the environment we've
been establishing shot, I think that the best
thing that we can do is to capture ourselves, of course, in the
environment because we need a subject
for the setting. We're going to point
the drone towards us and we're going to enter the intelligent right mode
menu in the quick shot. So, quick shot, and we're going to start
with the helix. Let's record a helix. We press force in the green
circle ourselves that we are the subject and we just record, and of course the
drone is going to perform the movement
flawlessly every time. So, this was the helix. Now
the helix is completed. Another shot that I want
to take is the drone actually flying away with the camera pointing
at ourselves. We're going to do
with the floors of the intelligent flight mode, but I'm going to try to do it with other intelligent
flight mode. We have our camera
pointing at ourselves. I'm just going to disable intelligent flight mode, record, and again, just press this stick downwards so the
drone is going to leave. Just like this. Another drone
is just going away from us, revealing the mountains
of course, behind us. This is a shot that looks
pretty cool every time. The final shot that I want
is a shot with the gimbal pointing downwards so we can see the trails right
there in the mountain. I'm just going to
place our drone here, the gimbal downwards. Now we can see the trails directly and we're just going
to gain some attitude here. Now, I just saw this rock
right there so I'll just want a shot in which the drone goes between those
two big rocks. You can see that the sun is pointing from this
direction towards us. Again, we don't want to shoot directly against the sun so I'm going to shoot
this row right there, which is lit from the sun. I think this is a cool shot with the city
revealing in the back so let's fly above those rocks carefully. This
was [inaudible] the shoot. We've got a big
variety of shots, we've got establishing shots, we've got intelligent
flight mode shots, shots which we managed directly with our
skills in the remote. Now it's time to land our drone and head for the
post-production, which is where the
real magic happens. You can see that the
real drone shoot is not that difficult,
not that complex. Really all you need to do
is make your mind up to capture creative thoughts
so now let's land. [NOISE] Right here we've got a surface without
that much gravel, so I think that it's
safe to land here. [NOISE] Right there. Just point the stick downwards
and the drone lands. This was the shoot. Now let's head for
the post-production.
8. Post Production Editing: Welcome to the final
lesson of this course. Welcome to the video
editing lesson, the post-production lesson
in which we're going to take the footage that we acquired
in the previous lesson, the complete shoot,
and edit them in this spectacular
drone cinematic edit. A small disclosure
before we begin, you do not need to have a
fancy editing program like me in order to deliver this class project and
in order to be able to, of course, create a drone edit. Of course, having a
great editing program is recommended but not needed. You can always edit
your drone footage with any free video
editing app on your phone. But I would recommend you
to use Final Cut Pro, which is the best
editing program for Mac or Premiere Pro if
you are a Windows user. So without any further ado, let's launch our programs
and start with the edit. Now I'm not going to
go into much detail on how to make a edit look more professional and
better because I have a complete course on this,
you can check it out. But the first thing
that you need to do is to choose the
right music track. So here we have it. So
here we have our sequence. I have trimmed down our clips to the most impressive
parts of them. This is the first
clip that we have, the revealing sort of the city. This is the second clip, the point of interest,
intelligent flight mode. You can see it looks perfect. Then we have the
clip, the helix. Finally, this is just
the shot that we got at the end with the rocks. These are the four clips that I chose to use in this edit. Now let's move with
the edit itself. First of all, you need to choose the correct
music for the edit. It is very easy to choose a music track for
your drone edit, you just type on YouTube, cinematic music or drone music, or a bit much any song
that you like and you think that would fit
the edit, you can use. Me, I use this song right here. It is pretty much a action
movie trailer type of song. It builds up suspense and
I think it fits this edit. So this one I'm going to use. The first thing that
we're going to do in this drone edit is to
tweak the speed of clips. You can really play
with the speed of the clips when you're
shooting with drones because the vast majority of the footage is
going to be stable. To speed up or to
slowdown a clip, will look pretty
good on the camera. In this part of the
song right here, it actually becomes
more dramatic. Writing the part
becomes more dramatic. I want to speed up my clip
a bit so I can add to this dramatic effect with this point of
interest right here. I'm going to just select
a part of the clip. I'm just going to
speed it up 20 times. This will add to dramatic
effect. Now we have this. The next shot is a
shot of me, again, being the subject
and the helix mode, of course, of the
drone circling me. It's again, a pretty normal
so we don't have to tweak. The only thing that I
actually would like to tweak is the fact that
the previous shot, the point of interest shot, follows a certain direction. I think it is clockwise and this shot is actually
counterclockwise. I'm going to reverse this clip. Now the movement of the
camera matches the two clips. We have this, looking good. Now this is the final shot. What we really did in this
editing process until now is the fact that we trimmed our
clips to the wanted parts. We get the parts, of course, of the recordings that we wanted and in the middle
point of inner shoot, I just spread apart.
That's pretty much it. We also reversed this clip right here so the drone movement matches between
the previous clip and the one of course
that we reversed. Think this is a
pretty good baseline to have in order to work on it. Now, the second thing
that we're going to do is to tweak the colors. We'll go through the colors
in every single clip, and in just one clip that
I'm going to tell you, we're going to
tweak the exposure. Let's start with the first clip. The only thing that
we're going to want to move is the saturation. Drone footage tends to
be a bit unsaturated, so you can just increase
saturation a bit. This will make everything
look a bit better. Let's do this in every clip
so we increase the saturation to just add vibrancy to those colors,
especially this video. This video is
pretty unsaturated. Again, saturation just makes colors more vibrant. This is what we're going to do. In this video right
here, I'm just going to increase the exposure a bit with shadows so we
have a more bright video. I think this looks perfect. I'm going to add a
transition in the end so it closes smoothly. You could just add this cross dissolve transition right here. Another video is going
to fade with the music. The final tip that I
have to give you to make this video look even better is to add something
which is called the letterbox. Now,
what is a letterbox? Now the letterbox or the
cinematic clients are just two black lines. We just change the aspect
ratio of your video. You can download a
free letterbox image. You can just go to the
web type letterbox.png, and you're going to have
a transparent image of the letterbox. Let's go ahead and
drag and drop it to our edit. Here it is. It is just these black
lines which add to the dramatic effect
of our video so we scale it to fit our timeline. If we play, this just
looks way better. This is pretty much it when it comes to the editing
of those clips. Remember, you can get really
fancy with the edits. But what I want you to do as a beginner is to, first of all, know how to trim down
a clip and select the portion of the clip
that you think is the best. Do this in every single clip and remember that when it comes
to drone footage edit, you can really play with
the speed of the clip. Drone footage again, is short, relatively stable with a drone. So you can really speed up or slow down clips with no problem. Play with the speed,
select the part of the clip that is the
best in your opinion, of course, then match the footage with the
music that you're using. If you want your videos to look more cool, you can, of course, add the letterbox and give this cinematic
effect to your edit. Now let's watch the final
edit one more time. [MUSIC] I think this edit looks
great and I can't wait to see your class projects
submitted in this course. Thank you very much for sticking with me through those lessons. I really hope that you learned some things and I
really want you to grab your drones and go
out there and shoot because practice makes perfect. Thank you very much. See
you in the next course.
LAMZ, AI Creator & Camera Addict
