Drone Aerial Videography and Photography Master Class | Blaise Sack | Skillshare
Drawer
Search

Playback Speed


  • 0.5x
  • 1x (Normal)
  • 1.25x
  • 1.5x
  • 2x

Drone Aerial Videography and Photography Master Class

teacher avatar Blaise Sack

Watch this class and thousands more

Get unlimited access to every class
Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Watch this class and thousands more

Get unlimited access to every class
Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Lessons in This Class

    • 1.

      Course Promo Vid

      2:37

    • 2.

      1 Introduction

      4:01

    • 3.

      1 New Safety & Regs

      9:02

    • 4.

      2 Safety Proceedures

      3:23

    • 5.

      3 Drone to Buy

      4:38

    • 6.

      4 Drone Controls

      2:21

    • 7.

      5 Basic Flying, 1st flight and practice

      5:07

    • 8.

      6 Drone and Camera Settings for filming

      3:33

    • 9.

      7 Basic Shots

      5:05

    • 10.

      8 Still Photography

      2:27

    • 11.

      9 Complex Flying

      7:12

    • 12.

      10 Camera Settings

      3:59

    • 13.

      11 Compesition and framing

      2:32

    • 14.

      12 EDITING P1

      3:05

    • 15.

      13 EDITING P2

      4:22

    • 16.

      14 EDITING P3

      4:07

    • 17.

      15 EDITING P4 COLOUR

      4:52

    • 18.

      16 Editing stills

      7:12

    • 19.

      17 Closing

      1:11

  • --
  • Beginner level
  • Intermediate level
  • Advanced level
  • All levels

Community Generated

The level is determined by a majority opinion of students who have reviewed this class. The teacher's recommendation is shown until at least 5 student responses are collected.

733

Students

--

Projects

About This Class

Drone video and photography has changed the game when it comes to the types of angles and movements you can capture. Aerial drones have become the most popular tool for beginner to expert film makers to capture stunning content that will "wow" your viewers.

In this course I will take you on a complete guide to mastering aerial drone flying, filming and photography. This includes a recipe that will allow you to be confident flying your drone and walk away from each flight with incredible content. No prior flying, film, or photography skills are required to excel in this course. I have been a drone pilot and running a media company (Moves Media) specializing in cinematic aerial video and photos, for over 4 years. There have been a ton of things I've learned along the way that I wish I had learned sooner. The content that I will discuss in this course will fast track you from through the learning process to becoming a competent aerial pilot who can create content that stands out from the competition.

Before you rush out to buy a drone I will cover recommendations on what drone to buy and the key factors to think about before making your purchase decision. No matter what drone you have or end up buying all the flight training in this course will be of great use to you.

Not only will I share the key flying, filming and photography secrets, but I will also go through a step by step guide on how to edit your video and photos into compelling sequences and works of art.

Whether your a hobbyist wanting to capture incredible perspectives or you are interested in starting your own aerial drone company, this course is for you. 

Meet Your Teacher

Teacher Profile Image

Blaise Sack

Teacher
Level: All Levels

Class Ratings

Expectations Met?
    Exceeded!
  • 0%
  • Yes
  • 0%
  • Somewhat
  • 0%
  • Not really
  • 0%

Why Join Skillshare?

Take award-winning Skillshare Original Classes

Each class has short lessons, hands-on projects

Your membership supports Skillshare teachers

Learn From Anywhere

Take classes on the go with the Skillshare app. Stream or download to watch on the plane, the subway, or wherever you learn best.

Transcripts

1. Course Promo Vid: Hey, guys, welcome to this course. Will. You will learn everything you need to know about flying drones and how to capture incredible cinematic aerial, video and photos. In this course, I'll be covering everything from the best drones to buy two proven flying and filming techniques that will give you the best footage possible. Every time you fly your drone, my name is blazed back, and I've been flying drones professionally for over four years. Now I own a media company specializing in capturing aerial drone video and photography for clients in some of most incredible places on Earth. In this course, I want to share with you the skills that have taken me years to acquire to fast track you in learning to capture stunning aerial imagery and even start your own aerial drone company . If that's something you desire, you don't need any prior knowledge or experience, and I've designed this course to cater to brand new drone pilots or people who have some experience flying a drone. My goal is to give you all the tools necessary to stand out as an aerial drone pilot and cinematographer. In this course, I will cover the basic safety requirements and implications to understand with drugs, how to select the right drone for your needs and the essential drone flying techniques and camera angles to master. On top of these topics, also be sharing a complete framework the planning and executing your drone shoots to produce the best possible video and images with tools you have. This includes the editing process and how to make your footage and photos jump out to potential clients. Toe. Being a drone pilot allows you to be creative and share perspectives, and up until recently, were not possible. Drones have changed the game for video and photography. Anytime I'm on a shoot, that drone footage is the most sought after footage because it's so unique from the typical ground respect with the right guidance. Becoming a professional drone pilot is extremely straightforward, and I'm sure we can get you there in no time at all. Alex Ford sharing a complete and simple guide to getting the best aerial video and photography that makes you stand out from other drone pilots. All my teaching points will be illustrated with aerial footage for my own drone work captured over the last four years using G I drones, including the Maverick Phantom, and inspire Siri's. I'm truly excited to have you join me in this exciting space and give you all the tools you need to get out on your own and start creating stunning aerial videos and photos. 2. 1 Introduction: Hey, guys, thanks so much for signing up for this master class on creating aerial video and photography in this course, I want to take you from a complete beginner to someone who is an expert off aerial flying aerials, cinematic filmmaking, aerial stills as well as the editing process. Take your footage to an incredible standard that clients are willing to pay for before we jump into the course. I wanted to give you a brief overview of what we're gonna cover that will hopefully give you a guide to navigating through the content and potentially skipping out on sections that you may already have a lot of knowledge in but really focusing in on those key areas that are gonna really amplify your skills depending on what your level is that in the first part of this course, I'm gonna share some key information about safety and regulations. Although this might not be the most stimulating content compared to actually flying and learning cinematic filming techniques, it is extremely important. And there's a lot of information that I'm gonna share in these sections about safety and preventing you from injuring yourself, injuring others over flying aircrafts and some key things to watch out for when it comes to regulations that can prevent you from getting some heavy fines. They're getting dished out by different governing bodies. After we finish with safety and regulations, we're gonna jump in tow. What drone is the perfect drone for you? I'm gonna cover a few different drone options to buy link of some resources. But also just share how the purpose of what you're filming is really gonna dictate which drone that you're gonna want to buy will then move into the drone controls. And I'm going to give you an overview of how to actually control your drone. Most rooms have a standard controller. So even if you're not using these specific drones that I'm showing showcasing in the course , it still should apply to you and the drone that you're using. After an overview of the controls, we're gonna actually learn to fly. So even if you're a complete beginner who's never taken off with a drone before, we're gonna go from take off the landings to basic flight maneuvers, things to watch out for. And then I'm gonna elevate you all the way to flying with filming in mind. so there's a big difference between just flying your drone and flying to film and take photos. So I got a transition you from some core flying skills and things to practice to actually flying and filming amazing contact. Throughout the course, I'm gonna jump back and forth between photos and videos. It is very different taking amazing video footage than it is to take different photos. So I'm gonna divide the sections up and focus specifically on each of these separate. I've also divided the filming into two basic parts. One focusing on getting basic simple shots while you're flying and another on how to get complex maneuvers. Ah, lot of people think it's the complex maneuvers that are gonna make their footage stand out . But in this course you're gonna learn it's more the composition and how you put it together that's going to make your footage look good versus just being an amazing pilot with the most incredible maneuverability. The last piece of this aerial puzzle is learning how to edit your photos and videos. A lot of people don't want to deal with editing, which is totally okay, but I do highly recommend that you go through this section because having a general understanding of how to edit photos and videos is really gonna amplify how you shoot and your eye for getting the best shots possible. Teoh either use as is or use for other people to edit or take to your editing room and make really incredible content for viewers or clients that they will definitely love. And that's the general overview for this course. So we're gonna jump right into it, get you to safety first and then move you through flying and filming and creating amazing content. I really hope this course gives you everything that you need to become incredible aerial pilot, cinematographer, photographer or however you want to use your drones, please feel free to shoot me questions or comments if you have some and I hope you enjoy learning how to become an aerial filmmaker and photographer in this course 3. 1 New Safety & Regs: Hey, guys, welcome to the section on safety and regulations, although I'm sure you're eager to learn what drone to buy, how to fly and filming techniques covering the safety and regulations of drone flying is extremely important. Drones can cause serious damage and injury without the proper knowledge. And I've heard countless stories off people crashing their drones on the first flight, which I want to prevent from happening to you. I've broken this section down into two parts. The first part covering regulations is an overview off the legal side of what you could do and you can't do when it comes to flying drones. These rules vary depending on the country you're looking to fly in but follow similar guidelines. In most cases, you will need to consult with your local regulatory body toe, learn the rules in the country that you're looking to fly. This includes the FAA. If you're in the US or transfer Canada if you're in Canada, this section is helpful to helping you avoid unnecessary fines and knowing what rules, if any, do apply to you when you're flying your drone. The second section will cover best practices on flying your drone safely thes air not necessarily a requirement for any law or regulation, but best to follow. To avoid crashes, injuring yourself or others around you, and avoiding aircrafts that may be flying in your area. I want to differentiate between safety and regulations. Regulations in this context cover what you legally can and can't do. Many operators choose to fly outside these parameters but still fly safely. Flying safely is extremely important, but following the safety guidelines still might not mean you're operating inside the regulation senior area. Many of the regulations I'm gonna cover are based on the regulation standards by the FAA in the US and Transport Canada in Canada. This is not meant to be a standalone course on regulations and safety, and I'm by no means covering all the laws and regulations that apply to drones. But this will be a great resource, giving you the essential information on sharing where you need to look to get all the necessary details for flying your drone legally and safely. Drone laws and regulations around drones are still very new, and governing bodies are trying to catch up to the fast moving technology to keep the public safe but also let people use these incredible tools. The rules and regulations are constantly changing, so make sure to check your local governing body about what current rules and regulations are in your area and how they apply to you. Provide a link in the resource section two common drone regulations that I'll be covering in this course. I also provide a link to the main rules you need to follow. If you just want to draw, fly your drone for fun. The first item to determine from a regulation standpoint is what category drone pilot you are. Many rules are different, depending if you're flying your drone for recreational purposes or doing commercial flying . In Canada, for example, a recreational flyer doesn't necessarily need a special license as long as they follow special guidelines where someone flying for commercial purposes. What the definition of recreational and commercial is quite great, though. If you're flying your drone for fun and posting your video for you, tube FAA or Transport Canada could view this as a commercial use operation because you're promoting yourself in an online platform. But typically, commercial refers to anyone who is actually flying their drone for money the next category that is typically a factor for the rules you need to follow is the weight of your drone. If you're using a small drone under a kilogram, you may be exempt from following the guidelines required for someone using a drone that waves 35 kilograms. The third item and probably the most important for all authorities, is the location. You fly it. Airports are by far the most sensitive areas, and you're required by law to stay far away. Typically, you need to be over 10 kilometers from any airport to be eligible to fly your drone. Many drones actually have restrictions built in, so you physically can't take off near or around an airport the height you fly. It is also a big factor for regulation. The most airplanes fly over 300 feet or 100 meters above the ground, excluding active airports. So depending on where you fly, most drones are regulated to fly below 300 feet or 100 meters. If there's an airport close to you, these altitude ceilings are gonna be a lot lower and could be all the way down to the surface. One thing that a lot of people don't realize is that even if there's not a typical airport close to you, there are emergency response helicopters, hospital airlift flight pads and float planes in areas and other zones that aren't necessary, necessarily a designated airport. There are a ton of great tools online called Airspace Viewers, where you can see your country and all the different airspace types within that given area . So right now I'm using a tool that I use for Canada because that's where I live. And it basically shows me all the designated airspace types, and it'll give me details for each of those areas. So you can see here that there's basically B c D E f class airspaces, and if I want to see all the different, let's just use D's airspace. You can see it there, or here's see, which is the main control areas or airports. So these are all the sea control zones in within Canada. So if I'm gonna be flying in this area, then I can just hover over wherever I want to look where I'm gonna be flying. Let's just say it's here, and if I over the overlay, if I hover over it, it will give me some details that it's classy airspace, the classy airspaces designated between 800 feet to 2500 feet. And that's a control zone. So that's regulated if I want to fly within those parameters, If I hover over this area, though, you'll see it changes its still classy airspace. But now it's SFC to 2500 feet. SFC is surface area, so our service surface level so basically from the ground up, and so then that means it's surfaced to the 2500 foot mark is all regulated, so that's regulated airspace. If I'm gonna just lift my drone off the ground if I'm out here, though, it looks like I'm fine. But I also want to check the other designated spot. So this is a Class D airspace Class E airspace. Now this looks like it's everywhere, so you might be like, Oh my God, I can't fly my drone anywhere. But if you hover over these areas, you'll see class ease way up in the air. It's for commercial airliners 2200 foot above ground level to 18,000 feet. So you're probably not gonna get your drone way up there so most of classy is just way up in the air. So you don't typically need to worry about Class e's will inject that in class F. I do need to worry about. You'll see there's a lot of surface Teoh 3000 feet right there and other high levels. So I'll put a link to a few different airspace viewers, depending on your country. This is a great one that all linked to for Canada. But there is a ton of them out there. So great things toe look at for the region you're looking to fly in to check what airspace , urine, and then determine what steps you need to take to get approvals if they're necessary for that particular place. If you're flying in control zones, which are essentially airports air Odomes and you want to fly here, you're gonna need to get permission from the tower that controls the airspace. That often involves either first getting licensed or contacting the tower directly to request permission to fly wherever you wanted to fly, so they will know. OK, your operation is happening here, traffics gonna be air Traffic's gonna be over here so you can as long as you stay well below 100 feet, then you should be fine. But if you're in that controlled airspace, you do need permission from that controlling body to fly legally. Aside from over flying airplanes, the next major restriction and concern for regulating bodies is proximity to the general public. Typically, you're legally required to be over 30 meters away from people, buildings and roadways not associated with your drone operation. If you live in an urban area, this may be very challenging and in some cases, impossible without leaving the city limits. Now, these regulations I've covered are just a few of the main rules you need to follow. If you need to fly within any of these parameters or other regulation that does exist, you will need a special flight operating certificate issued by the air traffic authority in your region. This is an extensive document where you demonstrate your safety procedures, emergency action plans, sample flight paths, preflight site surveys and other procedures that you intend to follow for safe flying. Alternatively, if you just wanna have fun flying your drone, you need to make sure that you're flying outside of sensitive areas and well clear of the general public 4. 2 Safety Proceedures : and the previous section, I covered the key regulations that apply to flying drones In this section. I want to cover important safety procedures that I recommend you follow before every flight to protect you from getting injured, keeping others safe around you and avoiding other over flying aircrafts, which are a key safety concern for drone pilots. I know there are many people out there operating their drones without necessarily having permission. And to be honest, many people do get away with it. No one, however, who's flying their drones wants a crash, injures someone or have an accident with an airplane. So this guide is intended for you to use a framework to have safe flying. It is not intended to cover you from the legal restrictions in your area, so I do always suggest consulting the rules that apply to drone flying in your region. The first thing that you want to consider is what airspace that you're flying in. There are several airspace, viewer tools online that you can use to figure this out. One example is this guide for Canada. It shows all the air space classes on a map, and you can figure out what? Airspace? Urine, Depending on your location. The key item for these guides is determined how low aircrafts will be flying in the air in the air space that you're flying in so you're not flying any close to their altitude. The second factor to consider is what potential hazards are in your flight area and surrounding area. This may include buildings, roadways, telephone poles, trees or anything else that could cause you to crash. Typically, you should be over 30 meters away from people buildings of roadways. In the event that you lose control of your drone, it'll give you a buffer to avoid injuring others. Fourth item to use as a safety guide is having a spotter. When you're flying your drone many times, you'll be looking at a screen. When you're filming and taking pictures, you can easily lose track of where your drone actually is in the air. In the event your screen feed cuts out, you may not have any idea where your drone is and how to fly it back to where you are. A spotter can maintain visual contact line of sight to your drone and identify where you are. And in the event of an issue can guide you back to safety. The last safety guideline I wanted to share was landing your drone. Many people fly in areas that don't have easy landing and require you to hand catch your drone. There are tons of people that get severe cuts and injuries from doing this. A gust of wind operator error and other factors can cause the drone to move suddenly and have one of the propellers to catch your finger, which is not fun. If you plan to do a hand catch, use protective gloves to avoid injury. That's it for the section on basic safety guidelines. These are just a few of the key safety areas that I would recommend following. I also wanted to share with people worried about fines and getting caught flying their drones illegally, that authorities do troll social media, YouTube and other platforms to find video of clearly illegal drone operations. So it's not just about getting caught at the time you're flying, but also if you intend to post your video or photos anywhere in, might not be worth the risk in. The next section will be getting into the best drones to use and how to fly 5. 3 Drone to Buy: now that we have safety and regulations out of the way, we can get into the fun stuff, starting with different drone options and what's the perfect drone for you? There's no one best drone to buy the best drone for you really depends on what you plan on using it for and your budget. Are you trying to become a professional drone operator and take your videos to the big screen? Or are you just a hobbyist that wants to put videos on YouTube and have fun flying? If you're a traveler and a hiker and you want to use your drone for the places that you're going, you're going to need something small and compact versus if you strictly need, ah, high powered drone For commercial purposes, you might not need something. A small drone size is something I consider as one of the most important factors to consider for new pilots. I'm very active. I hike a lot, and having something that I can easily fit in my backpack along with my belongings is essential. Without that, there is no way that I'm gonna bring a big drone with me, and I just won't get a ton of the shots that I don't want to get. If I had a drone that's not gonna be small and compact. The drone brand that I always recommend and have a ton of experience with is D. G I. They're the leaders in the drone game and have the most advanced intelligent flight modes, including a return to home function where the drone will fly back to you if it loses connection with the remote. DJ I drones are ready to fly out of the box and are definitely a step above their competition as far as he's used. Stability in the air picture quality and accompanying software go. So whether you're a professional who wants to make money, creating drone videos or hobbyists who wants an easy to fly drone that takes great video and photos. DJ I is a perfect place to start. DJ I also makes amazing cameras, and from what I've seen, there, the best quality at the best price and the best size. So if you go with my recommendation, I wanted to provide three d g I drones that I can definitely recommend depending on your budget. This might tell you the exact drone you can afford and want to buy the DJ I maverick, the DJ Phantom and the DJ I inspired to our three drones that I highly recommend. The Maverick is extremely compact and captures amazing video and pictures. Given its size, I've used it to keep up with high speedboat chases and all kinds of high speed flying shots . It's actually the drone that I probably used the most because of its compact ability, for when I'm hiking back under skiing and doing other activities where size really matters . The Phantom drones are also great tools and come in a fair size. The quality that you get from the Phantom is a small step above the pictures and video of the maverick. The legs on the frame are also nice toe have for safety landings, protecting the camera or hand catching. If that's necessary for your flight, I still personally prefer the maverick over the Phantom because of its size and comparable quality. The inspired to is the third drone that I can definitely recommend, but it is a huge jump from the other two DJ at Jerome's. This drone is designed for commercial work, more than just recreational fly it's a bit more complicated to fly. It weighs a significant amount more and your risk for flying it is just way greater with the extra weight and price tag attached. The cost of the inspired to is also very significant, and typically you purchase a separate camera gimbal combination like the X five s, which gives you cinema level quality and images that are comparable to DSLR campus. To summarize the key factors for purchasing a drone are your budget, your intended use and your need for portability? I've included a link to opposed highlighting these factors to consider for buying a drone, and my recommendations in the resource section in the next section will jump into drone flying skills as well as filming and taking photos. 6. 4 Drone Controls: Now that you have picked a drone that fits your needs, it's time to learn to fly. If you already have a drone or know how to fly your drone, the section may be worthwhile skipping, but I would encourage you to check out the preflight checklist in the resource section as that may help you. Anytime you're setting up your Joan to make sure that you're not forgetting anything, your first flight should be in an open area away from people, buildings and roadways, as well as nine kilometers from any airport nearby. I'm using the DJ I maverick for this flight training, but all D J drones have the same controls, and most other manufacturers also use a similar set up. I wanted to cover the basic remote control buttons and what each does to start things off on the deejay dramatic remote. You'll find the power button, which turns the drone on like most G I products. You need to press the button once and then press and hold it for a few seconds to power. The return to home button will allow the drone to automatically return to the place that it took off from the left control stick controls altitude and rotation of the drone. Moving the joystick up increases altitude. Moving the joystick down decreases your altitude. Theo. Moving the joystick to the right position will rotate the drawing to the right, and moving the joystick to the left will rotate the drone to the left. The right control stick controls the drones or is on till movement pushing up on the joystick will advance the drone forward. Pushing down will move the drone back, and going side to side will move the drone either. Side relatives, where the drones facing the display screen on the remote will display information like height, distance and battery life while flying. So it's a good thing to monitor at all times. You also have your mobile device attached to the remote control, which will give you your display screen and other information. Pertinent filming and flying your drone that's it for the section in the next section were actually going to take off and learn how to fly 7. 5 Basic Flying, 1st flight and practice: in the section on basic flying skills, you're gonna learn how to take off land, how the different flight controls work, the gauges on screen and the different flight mode options. Now that we have an understanding of what the controls do, we can get into flying. Once you've established a safe flying area and powered on your drone as well as the remote , you want to wait until your GPS signal is strong enough. Once the GPS has a strong enough signal, you can take off. Take off first, push both joysticks facing in and down. That should activate the propellers to start spinning. Once they're spinning, you can release both joysticks and then to take off. You'll simply hold up on the left joystick, and the drone should lift up off the ground. Release the joystick when you're about 10 feet in the air and let it hover there for a few seconds. Then, when you're ready, pull the joystick down and practice a landing by bringing the drone all the way to the ground until the legs or landing gear is touching the floor. Hold down on the left joystick until the propellers stopped moving, and now you have officially completed your first light. Do this a few more times until you're comfortable with take offs and landings, and then you can move on the next step. Now that you know how to take off land, you can practice a little bit more movement once the drones in the air practice spinning the drone and changing the orientation with the left joystick by pressing left and right on that left George joystick, you can also practice using the right joystick on moving the drone in the horizontal plane by pressing left and right back and forward, um, in the direction that you want to go. It's always a good idea to take off and land with the drone facing away from you so that you're confident on what the joystick on the right hand is gonna do when you choose which direction that you wanted to go. Spend some time practicing flying the drone on the horizontal plane. One common cause of crashes results from flying sideways or backwards when you don't have the camera view. If you're flying your drone by looking at the monitor, it's easy to lose track of how much distance you cover You also might be flying slightly off access that you thought your on, and objects can appear in the drones path very quickly. If you are flying sideways or backwards, make sure to fly with your drone in sight or do checks every 3 to 5 seconds to make sure that your flight path is completely clear of obstacles. Here's an example of one of my flights where I was filming a boat close to the shore. What happened when I was filming was that I was basically focused on making that the boat was staying in the frame and my drone was coming around the corner and eventually going into a slightly sideways path so that I couldn't necessarily see the side of the objects ahead of me. I thought I was flying parallel to the shore between the boat and the rocks. But what actually was happening was that I was flying about 45 degrees, getting further away from the boat, getting closer with rocks and then eventually smacking right into the rocks at full speed. Now I'm happy to report that there were, amazingly enough some people on the rocks and that heard the drone crash Luckily, I didn't hit them and they were able to recover the drone and there wasn't too much dabbing damage. I did have to send it back to DG. I'd to get repairs. But overall, pretty lucky considering could have lost the drone completely. The main take away from this section is just to constantly check your drones flight path. And don't just rely on your monitor as it can fail. Now that you know how to fly your drone and you've had some practice doing it, I want to help advance your flying skills and help you practice flying to create great video footage. The most important thing to keep in mind is that everything can become a shot. So do your best to fly as smoothly as possible and practice smooth, seamless turns. What I mean by this is that if you're getting a specific shot on location A and then you need to fly to location, be for the start of the next shot. That you want fly there in a very smooth path is that you may get a shot during that transition that may be worth while using flying smoothly during those transition periods. Also, helps you practice smooth flying overall and gives you an extra option to use a new clip that maybe you didn't plan on getting. If you just spin and jerked the drone to the new position, then you'll lose that chance of getting that segment as a shot and just won't develop that extra practice when you could be doing it. One of the essential techniques to understand to execute smooth, better turns and maneuvers is using both joysticks in tandem, focusing on the left joystick to control the sharpness of your turn and the right joystick to control the speed of your turn. This is a great technique to practice and will become extremely useful when filming central objects of interest during follow tracking and doing anything that requires more maneuvering than just a perfect straight line. And those are your basic drone. Flying controls in the next section will get into more advanced flying skills as well as flying with filming in mind. 8. 6 Drone and Camera Settings for filming: Now that we have a strong understanding of controlling our drone, I want to get into filming and the photography settings as well as flying techniques specifically for filming. One of the most important things to think about before adjusting your camera settings is the purpose of your shoot. Were you planning on making a short video? Are you creating a video for a specific client? Are you gonna be editing your video? The purpose and details of whatever final product you're gonna be creating are gonna sculpt what you're gonna be capturing the final product you want to create, and knowing what that is will streamline the process and reduce the amount of unnecessary time filming and editing. Editing is a huge part of filmmaking, and knowing how to edit will actually improve your filming and flying skills because you'll develop a better grasp for what looks good. In a final video, I'll get Maurin editing in a later section, But one suggestion that I do have is toe watch other videos and do a bit of analyzing about what shots are the best or what you like. The most clip length flight path and other elements of the shot that you think would be cool to replicate. The first thing that you want to set when you're editing your settings is the resolution you're filming it. Typically, drones have an option to film in four K or 10. 80 p with a variety of frame rate options. I always recommend filming at the highest resolution possible. That way, even if you're making a video that's lower resolution, you'll have a bigger frame to use, and you'll have a buffer area that you can zoom in on without losing quality. You also have the ability to change the camera settings, including shutter speed I s o an aperture. If you aren't familiar with these settings, you can film on an automatic. But learning the manual settings will definitely improve the quality of your footage. I have a course that covers these settings and how to use them to your advantage. So if you are interested in getting more detailed knowledge, make sure to check that out. One of the most important things you want to do after you take off is set your focus for D G. I drones. This simply involves tapping the area on the screen that you want to focus on. I've heard of a ton of drone pilots who forget this step, and we'll finish an entire day of filming without thinking about it. And then when they get to the editing room, they noticed all their footage is out of focus, which is basically impossible to fix. So each time you take off, tap that screen to set your focus. Another area that you'll want to adjust is your gimbal. The gimbal is what stabilizes your footage, and you can control the up and down movement using the designated scroll wheel on your remote. I like to adjust my gimble settings to be super smooth, which affects how fast it'll start penning. I also like to adjust the speed to be a bit slower to allow for nice, smooth panning shots. With that in mind, I want to go over some key filming techniques. I always start a shoot with the most basic shot types First. Once I get those in the bag, I'll move on to the more complex maneuvers. Often it's those simple shot types that I end up using in the final video, and the more advanced maneuvers often don't work out as I wanted him to, because you're more risk of having bumps and imperfections. So having those simple shots done and in the bag really gives you a good backup. The key shots that you're gonna want to practice and nail first are establishing shots, closing shots, slides, shots for logo placement and framing text. I'm gonna get into the details of each of these basic shots in the next section. 9. 7 Basic Shots: When it comes to drone video, I classify aerial shots into two categories. Basic and complex. Basic shots are extremely simple flying and camera movements, but still look incredible when you put them into a video. Complex. Shots involve more dynamic flying, which require a higher level of flying skill and as a wow factor to the actual movement of your shots. A lot of beginners think that it's the complex shots that they need to get in order to have a great video. But this is definitely not the case. Your frame and what you're filming always comes first, and the flight movement comes second. It may enhance your shot to add a complex movement, but it also can ruin your shot if you don't execute that movement seamlessly. Having smooth movements without shake or jitter is the big difference between amateur and professional drone videos. Whenever I'm on a shoot, I'll always nail those basic shots first and then spend time getting the more complex shots , knowing that I have those backups of the simple shots and in my bag, the first basic shot I like to get are establishing shots. These typically push in on a point of interest, bringing something into frame or interview. They're used for starting a video or establishing a new location. Whenever I'm feeling something, I'll start with doing a few straight line flights towards and away from whatever I'm filming. This gives me some options and checks that important shop the list right away. Closing shots are typically just the reverse of this establishing shots and are used to end a video or and a scene so you can often get these with your establishing shots as they're just the opposite off those bullets. So if you pull into a subject or location for your establishing shot, then you could do a pull away right afterwards. And use that as your closing shop. The next shot ultimately get are a few different slides. This is another basic shot that I use a lot and just involves the drone flying sideways facing the point of interest. One tip that will make a huge improvement on your aerial footage is to use the terrain and objects around you to add perspective in your shots. An example of this is this shot where I flew just above a tree on a pull away shot of capturing this gorgeous lake. Compare this to flying extremely high and away from any object in the same location. Flying close that tree creates a much more apparent point of reference for the viewer to see that the drone is actually moving. This makes the shot look much more dynamic and cinematic. If you don't have objects around you, you can always just fly lower to the ground. It's really highlight the drones movement. When most people get a drone, they want to fly as high as they can. But I actually think it's the low flying shots that typically look best because the movement in speed is much more apparent. I don't want to take away from the importance of those high altitude shots. Which brings me to my next step. It's always a good idea to get all the different basic shots you can at different angles and altitudes. One of the most appealing parts of drone footage is seeing different perspectives that you don't typically get from the ground contrast ing. Those low flying shots with the top down shots from higher vantage points really looks good , getting the basic shots that I previously described at different heights, camera angles and orientations is extremely useful when you go to edit your footage. I always like to place my drone in different areas, facing different angles so that whatever I'm seeing in the frame looks different from the other shots that I've taken. This adds variety and contrast to your video and helps set up the scene for whatever you're shooting. Then when you get to the editing room, you can choose whatever angles you like best and pick and choose the different shots you've taken the next shot. I like to get our shots where I may want a place logos or text in the frame. I'll frame the shot, picturing what the logo is and where where I want it and try not to have details in the background covering that area. This goes back to planning what you want to capture and the purpose that using it for before you start shooting. Noting knowing that I'm making a video for a certain company and knowing that I want to have their logo in the video, keeps that front of mind that I want their logo in a video and I need to get a shot to complement that. The main thing to think about when it comes to logo placement is just having a nice, open, clean space where there's not a lot of detail, so that when you do place your logo in the frame, there's not too much stuff in the in the frame to interfere with the details of logo. And that logo is the point of focus. Once I have all these basic shots complete, then I'll start to get a little more technical with my flying and filming. You could very easily make cinematic videos just by using those basic shots that I've covered. But to take your aerial footage the next level, we're gonna dive into more advanced creative filming and flying techniques. After we discussed drone photography will get into more advanced creative tool kit for video flying shots. 10. 8 Still Photography: drones are a great tool for capturing stunning aerial photos. It is a challenge to focus getting great video and photos of the same time. Many people who are focused on video forget to take photos because it does take time capturing different angles in flight movements and then switch from the video recording mode to get still photos on D J drones. There is a simple camera or video icon you can tap to switch between photo and video mode. There are also different settings for video mode and photo mode that you can select. I'll get MAWR into the effects and results from different settings in a later section. I always suggest to focus on the medium that's important to you first and not overwhelming yourself, trying to get photos and videos at the same time, often times that can lead to bad footage and bad photos. My approach is to typically capture my basic video maneuvers first, and then once I've seen all the different vantage points to go back and get still images of the perspectives I found the most attractive also pause at the end of whatever I identify as a shot, or if I'm repositioning the drone for another flight path and switch to photo mode and capture a still image at that point, if it looks worthwhile, getting a good aerial photo follows a similar process as great video. We'll dive deeper into this in the composition section. But the key elements to look for include finding unique angles, contrast in colors and identifying any symmetry in the landscape to use to your advantage. Using different camera settings also helps improve your photos, which I'm gonna cover in a later section. Two of the most common mistakes people make with Ariel. Still, photos are forgetting toe Focus the camera on the area that you want to highlight and having a low shutter speed. If the drone is moving or vibrating or battling some wind, your picture may come out a bit blurry. If you have a low shutter speed, we'll get back to all these factors and a lot more in some later sections in the course. But I just want to give a quick overview of some key things to look out for. If you wanted to shoot photos at the same time you're filming in the next section, we're gonna cover more complex flying movements for filming and some of my favorite cinematic drone moves that are going to make your videos look amazing. 11. 9 Complex Flying: there are a variety of complex flying techniques that will really make your footage standout. Adding smooth, dynamic movements with unique perspectives really captures people's attention and enhances the beauty of a location or video. These techniques require more advanced flying skills to execute on Do take practice The more flying time you get, the better control that you're gonna have over your drone to execute the more complex flight paths and get extended aerial shots. Typically, videos produced use clips that are no longer than a few seconds, which helps maintain the viewers attention by adding variety to a video. But with the age of Gimbels and smooth filming, cinematographers are now breaking. These rules of short, simple shots toe have more complex, longer extended footage in one take. Having a long, continuous shot can be more impressive if the location is right. The filming of Smooth and the Frame angles change throughout the shop. Some of the more complex filming and flying techniques I'm gonna cover in this section will give the editor the option to cut these clips into shorter segments or use them as one long accepted cut. There's also things like speed ramping, which look really cool, with longer, smooth extended shots. A very popular shots. Doubt used if you have a point of interest like a house or event site, is to do slow a slow circle around the central point, keeping the camera facing the point of interest for the shot. I like to go nice and slow, focusing on making each turn in one continuous motion without any noticeable jumps, as discussed in the learn to Fly section. You typically get best results if you use your right joystick in one position, which will dictate the speed and then use your left joystick. To make the drone turn in a smooth, continuous fashion, you'll need to adjust your controls depending on how tight you want your circle to be and how fast you want your drone to fly. Here's an example of a smooth point of inter shot, where I'm keeping the drone smooth in a continuous turn and keeping the radius from the drone to the point of interest consistent. Another great technique that adds a lot of professionalism to your aerial shots is gimble adjustments. Using your gimble while flying is a great way to turn a basic shot into one that is much more dynamic. A great example of this is the rising gimble down shot you'll see in a lot of real estate videos. Whatever you're doing, Gimble moves. I want to make sure that the settings on your gimble are adjusted so that the movement is a smooth and steady as possible. You can add Gimble moves to any shot toe. ADM. Or Dynamic movement. Here's an example of adding gimble Pan Tau a point of interest. Circle shot. This is definitely a more complex shot and adds another element that could ruin the shot completely if you don't have the gimbal pan completely smooth. In the basic filming technique section, we learned about establishing shots and how they're great for using opening a video or starting a new scene. I shared how basic push and pull shots were great for this purpose. A more dynamic, advanced establishing shot, which I really, really love, is the fast forward gimble Pan reveal. His shot works best when you fly it relatively over the ground and you fly faster to do this reveal. You'll fly it straight forward with the camera facing down and then slowly pan the gimbal up to reveal the scene. You want to adjust your gimble settings to be a bit slower to ensure that you have a nice, smooth, continuous pan. This works great as an intro scene and gives you a nice clean spot to place a logo or text . When the reveal occurs, the next advanced filming technique I want to share is tracking subjects. These are probably the most challenging types of aerial shots because they're always different and require a combination of all your drone flying skills to execute smooth and seamlessly. The first key step for any tracking shot is planning the path of the subject and your flight path you wish to fly. It's very easy to get caught up monitoring the subject and the shot and then forget the hazards around you, which can lead to a crash. Once you planned your flight path and the path of the subject that you're following, you can get into the specifics of your frame and camera angles. One of the best tips that I've learned for filming moving objects is to always put the subject into the back third of the frame. This allows some buffer if you don't have their speed calculated perfectly to move forward in the frame without them moving out of the frame. It's a lot easier to slow down your speed while you're flying that it is to catching up to a subject that's moving too fast When tracking a subject much like any shot, it's always good to get different angles and capture the simpler follow shots before you get into the more complex follow shop maneuvers. When you're tracking a subject, a great way to make the subject release stand out is to fly as close to them as possible, with some space between them and the background. Any adding any movement and keeping your camera focused on the subject will separate them from the scene and really capture the capture. The viewer's eye. I also generally, I prefer flying lower to the ground to really showcase the speed that you're flying at. It's great to get the high scenic shots for context, but the lower you can get to the ground, the faster the movement of your flight, and the subject really appears there are an endless amount of other cinematic shot types you can create with your drone. I've included an extended list in the resource section of this course that you can refer Teoh or even bring it with you to a shoot to practice different techniques. The great things that about the tips that I've taught you already are that there are an endless amount of combinations. Just using these shot types alone, providing a point of interest art with a gimbal pan or tracking a subject while circling are just a few examples of how you combine techniques that you've already learned. So by learning the shots and fly techniques that I've discussed, you've actually learned an arsenal of options to create cinematic aerial shots. I highly suggest any drone pilot or camera operator tohave a shot list or basic plan before flying your drone. Thinking about the shots that you want to get and where you gonna use them will help you get the shots you need efficiently. Once you have the shots you've planned, you can always add some extra stuff and just be creative and have fun flying for more spontaneous shots. Using your landscape and putting your piloting skills to the test is a lot more fun and can reap rewards as long as you know that you already have your essential shots complete in the next section. We're gonna dive into camera settings and then editing your footage to really make a difference on the quality of your videos or photos. 12. 10 Camera Settings: in this section, I gonna cover a basic overview on the three primary camera settings that you can adjust when filming or taking photos in manual mode on your drone. This includes Shutter speed, Aperture and I S O. If you knew to drone filming and photography, it might be best to just keep your camera settings to automatic. This allows you to focus on flying and framing the best shots possible and not have any extra things to worry about. As you start to get more comfortable with controlling your drone and capturing great shots with movement, you can start adjusting your camera settings. Changing the camera settings is much better way to expose your scene and maximize the quality of your images. I'm not gonna jump into too much detail here, as there was a lot of information in theory that could explain. But for the purposes of this course, going to cover the basics of these three settings that you have an easy to follow overview of how to manually adjust them. I eso is the first setting to adjust. You always want to set the eso to be as low as possible. I eso will change the brightness of a scene. It's a digital enhancing mechanism that's great to use but can also ruin your shot if it gets too high, depending on your drone or the camera that you're using. If you're isil gets too high and dark environments, you may start to get grain in your image, so always do your best to set the I s so as low as possible. Or check your camera settings to see what is usable. Aperture is an important setting, an aerial video and photography. This changes the focal distance of your scene. Lo aperture. It means that there's a small area that will be in focus vs high aperture or high F number , which means there's gonna be a larger area that's gonna be in focus. It's not as easy to notice the focal points when you're flying high off the ground, but the important thing is that you do set your focus before you shoot. A lot of people will forget to do this, and the focal point could be really close to the camera, living shots slightly blurred and essentially unusable. If you're filming sick things far away after you've taken off and you're really high up off the ground. The main thing to note here is that it's the distance from camera to object that you want to consider. So if you're filming a certain distance away from an object and then you fly your drone really high up, we're really far away. You want to reset your focus point to make sure that it resets because the distance from the camera to your subject has changed shutter speed. It is another important setting for aerial video and photos. Typically, I keep my shutter speed over 120 because there are times where I'm shooting video and photos where there may be vibrations caused from the drone flying. Having AH higher shutter speed will reduce the amount of motion blur in your video and your photos caused by unwanted shakes and vibrations. This is especially important for photos because a lot of times, if you're taking a photo, you're not gonna want added blur that could be caused by moving movement of the drone. Each of these three settings changes the amount of light let into the sensor and affects the brightness of your image. You always want to expose your frame so that your shadows and highlights are visible and your whites aren't too bright and your darks aren't too dark. As I mentioned, there's a lot more theory in detail that I could get into about these three settings. But if you want to just keep it simple and you do want to shoot in manual mode, then hopefully this guide will give you a brief overview toe. Let you do that. Typically, I'll start with eso getting it nice and low and then move on to shutter speed, setting that and then changing the Apertura to make the final touches and expose my scene. I'll put a link to a resource that summarizes what I've just covered that may help you if you want to take another look. Otherwise we're gonna move on to the next section, which involves the composition and framing your shots. 13. 11 Compesition and framing: now that we've covered all types of movement and camera techniques to create really cinematic video and photos. I wanted to discuss what I consider as one of the most important factors of aerial cinematography, and that's the composition and framing of your shots, the location you choose, and the way that you frame your shots is really what makes it stand out from other drone footage. When you're choosing a location to fly, you should look for a location that has varied colors and complex scenery. Flying in an empty field just doesn't have the same wow factor as a mountainside lake, for example. Weather conditions will also drastically affect the quality of your footage. Sunsets aren't always an extremely popular time the film and take photos because the light is so unique and much softer than in the middle of the day, where there'll be a lot of shadows cast. Generally, I like avoiding filming at high noon because the shadows are the most harsh and it's just it's hard to get nicer images when you're filming at that time. How you frame your shots is also really important, looking for patterns in your scene and adding symmetry really makes your images and footage looks more pleasing and unique to the viewer's eye. This is really noticeable when you're filming shots when you're moving. If there's a natural path, river or roadway and you're getting a straight pull or push up, it looks much nicer to fly completely parallel to the path or the landscape versus having some kind of slight angle off that path. Composition definitely takes time to develop a knife, or I always look at other aerial footage and try and dissect what I like about it and then apply those principles to my filming and flying too costly. Improve my abilities. A lot of these rules that I have discussed are great to follow, but I also encourage you to break them because being creative and being different is always something that I strive for, an adds value and wow factor to your videos. You always want to make sure that you want to tell your story and get your point across. And being creative often does the best job doing that, even if it's not necessarily following a specific rule in the next section, we're going to start discussing the next steps in mastering, mastering incredible aerial footage. And that's editing, which is a key step turning a random mix of images or video footage into a masterpiece that people actually want to watch from start to finish. 14. 12 EDITING P1: flying a drone and capturing amazing cinematic aerials definitely takes skill and planning . But it's the editing that will transform your footage into something that people really love to watch. Understanding how to edit and combine footage will also greatly improve how you shoot and your eye for getting great aerial footage in this section. I'm gonna share my editing process and break it down into a simple, easy to follow guide for you. Apply the footage you capture. Being a good editor definitely takes time and practice, but there are some basic techniques and tips that you can follow that will make a huge difference to the quality of videos that you're creating. When I was learning how to edit, there were so many things that I wish I learned in the beginning. I had no formal training and was completely self taught, and there were a ton of mistakes that I made along the way. It definitely took time to refine my skills and create videos that people actually wanted to watch and clients were willing to pay for. I'm gonna share a lot of things that I wish I learned right from the start to accelerate your editing skills and take your videos to the next level, no matter what video you're creating. The main objective in the editing process is to create a sequence of clips that best showcase your footage. You want to hold your viewers attention with every click change and leave a lasting impression with every person who sees your video, depending on what kind of video you're making, this can be done in a variety of different ways. But there are certain principles that are gonna really improve any video you're working, Daddy, your videos. There is a lot of different software options that you can choose from. I won't be going into detail onto the difference software options in this course. But you can't take my other course on how to make videos and started YouTube chattel, which does go into this in more detail, explaining some of the free and paid, adding to editing tools and breaking down the editing process down for complete beginners. What I will say about software is that you don't need the most expensive software to make expensive videos. Some people use free programs like high movie make incredible videos. This is because they know how to use it well, and they're good at composing a sequence. The most important thing to think about when choosing your software is what program will you be most comfortable? If you're a beginner, you may want to start with a more basic program and learn those basics before diving into an advanced tool where you won't be able to use most of the features included. Or you may want to use a more advanced program so that you don't have to make a switch later. And it's a lot easier learning one program than having to learn one and then upgrade and change and learn the whole process and functions of a new program. This choice is entirely up to you, and there's no wrong or right answer. For the purposes of this course, I'll be using Adobe Premiere Pro. All the techniques and principles that I teach can definitely be applied to different programs, and it's more the concept that I'm sharing versus the actual program and the software that I'm using to show you that's gonna amplify your video 15. 13 EDITING P2: The first thing that I do after any shoot is import my footage into my editing program and lay out all my clips on my timeline will then scrub through my cliffs, cut the sections of the clips that are usable shots and delete clips and sections of cliffs that are not usable for the video I'm making. After you've gone through all your clips, you'll have a bunch of usable footage, and then you'll need to fine tune for the project that you're making. I was like to start a new sequence to leave all the usable clips on one sequence in case I want to go back and look for other footage later. Throughout the video spending on your project, you should have an idea of the duration that you're aiming for. There is a ton of research from promotional videos and videos on YouTube. Review it your attention span and the majority of viewers can hold an average viewers attention for no longer than two minutes. So typically, for any video video you're making, you want to make it shorter than two minutes. I always tell students and clients that the shorter your video is the better a lot of people think that it's more work to make a longer video, but often times it's actually the reverse. And making a shorter video is a lot more difficult because you need to tell or convey the same message in a shorter period of time. So you really have to be meticulous with which shots you actually use, and you've probably shut the same amount of footage, so you have toe cut down and delete a lot more. Making a shorter video forces you to use the absolute best clips from what you've got and what that will result in is just having an overall higher quality video. Another huge part in making your video stand out is the music. Choosing a song that fits the mood of your video is essential music at its atmosphere, excitement and feeling to any video. Good music will dramatically increase the impact that each shot has and have really helped people feel the video you've created. Depending on where you plan to post your video, there are some parameters that you may want to follow to avoid copyright issues. When it comes to using mainstream music tow. Avoid these. You can also use stock music libraries that won't have copyright issues. I'll provide a link to this at two these and music libraries that you may want to consider in the resource section of this course. Music is a component that I would not take lightly. Good videos could be really impacted if bad music is chosen, so make sure to select your track carefully based on the tone and style of your video. The next step I like to follow when I'm editing is arranging my clips in the timeline. I'll place my establishing shots at the beginning of my sequence, place my glory shots or climax shots in the middle, and then put some shock that I might want to use for a closing scene near the way. You really can organize your cliffs in a number of different ways. Depending on what you want, your final product will look like. You may want to have things viewed chronologically by location, or follow a specific story line. One technique that always is going to keep in mind is to order your clips in a way that builds the audience is interest slowly leading them in a on a journey to the best moments and the best shots that you captured on your shoe. This will help hold people's attention and creates a bit of a story leading up to those glamour shots that you created. I also like to put some of the most amazing shots at the beginning of my video to make sure that I really catch people's eye, because people are gonna decide if they wanna watch your video in the 1st 5 seconds Really , that you see it. So you always want to have some really eye catching clips in the beginning and then build people's attention and excitement up to your kind of glory. Main extended shots somewhere during the middle of your video. In the next section, I'll cover how to put the key touches on organizing your clips to the music, cutting things down, to look professional and arranging your different shots to blend together seamlessly. 16. 14 EDITING P3: Now they have your selected clips in sequence and in a general order that you wanna have them play waken, start working towards your final masterpiece. You also complaints your music track in the timeline under your clips. One of the best tips that I ever learned in filmmaking was how short each clip actually is in a video. There are some variations, and this also depends on your videos mood, but typically, clips should only last 2 to 4 seconds each. If you're new to video production, this may come as a surprise, but following this rule will instantly take your videos from beginner quality to someone that can be taken seriously in film. Just for the record, every rule and video production can be broken, and often the best videos do break the rules. But learning these fundamentals on teaching and take them into practice will give you a framework to crush videos and understand how to make your footage the absolute best. Having that knowledge and knowing when it's a good time to break the rules is gonna come with time, so try to stay within that framework, and then then you can start building your creative freedom after you get that core, those core skills mastered. I know when I started out, I didn't want to lose a piece or a segment of a video clip that I shot. And my videos were really long because I just wanted to keep everything as I thought it was great. And knowing and learning how to make cuts and what to cut is a really difficult part in video production because you almost develop this bond with your footage. But letting this go and forcing yourself to just x out clips and make your video a lot shorter and concise is really going to improve the overall quality. I can guarantee that once you get over that hurdle hurdle of letting go of footage that you really love just for personal reasons, your videos will really become exponentially better. What you want to do with your footage is aligned. The cuts between collapse to the beat of the music music becomes an audio cue for the viewer and seeing screens switch at the same temples. The music creates a natural, smooth flow between shots. If I had to give a new film a filmmaker, the simplest advice to make a great video. I tell them to make a 1.5 minute video, which each clip about two seconds long, and make sure that all the cuts happen to the beat of the music. Just following that advice should allow them to create something that looks semi professional. Often you can stretch out aerial clips a bit longer, but still, as a general rule, shorter is better. You don't need fancy transitions and lens flares and anything of that nature. As I said before, keep it simple and let your beautiful shots be the focus of your video. So by now you should have your sequence complete with your footage cut down into short clips in the order that you want them to be displayed and with the cuts to the beat of the music. Depending on your project, you may want to add intro titles, logos and closing titles to your video. When it comes to adding titles, it typically looks best to avoid titles over detailed areas of your frame. Finding a clean, open area to put a title makes it easier to read and looks like the shot was designed specifically for the title This is definitely something to think about when you're filming . If you do want to have logos or titles in your video, the other important thing to think about is the flight or camera movement. If it'll look a lot better to use static clips or clips where your drone was flying in a straight line, any side to side movement will make your text stand out as a foreign Payson element and not blend into your scene. In the next section, I'm gonna cover how to fine tune your videos person extra professionalism using color correction and title placements. 17. 15 EDITING P4 COLOUR: At this point in the editing process, you should have your video sequence cut the music with a variety of different shots. You may be completely satisfied with your video at this point and ready to export and upload to whatever platform you want to share it on. But if you are looking to get some additional wild factor to your footage, you can manipulate the colors to make your video really shine. Depending on what mode you set your camera on your drone to. It will determine how much color correction will be required in the editing program. If you film in the standard setting than your footage may look good as it is with vivid colors and sharp outlines. Once you've had some experience with your drone, you can start playing with a different picture profiles. Thes color profiles can make your footage look unique or actually make it look worse. But store more information so that you can improve the picture and colors when you're editing the video. In post. Any type of professional filmer will use a flat color profile to film with. This maximizes the amount of information in the file and gives you the most flexibility in the editing process to adjust the clips, color and brightness. It may not look good right off the bat when you're filming it, because it's gonna look a lot flatter and really just not as riel or vivid. But what that's doing is giving you a lot more information so that when you take it into post, you can really punch out each color, have a lot more customization and make it look even better than if you just shot it in a regular format. Any type of professional filmmaker will always use a flat color profile to film with. This maximizes the amount of information in the file and gives you the most flexibility in editing the process to adjust the clips, color and brightness. As a beginner, I wouldn't worry about filming in a flat picture profile. First, build up your skills as a pilot and editor before you tackle this side of the equation. If you are ready to take your footage to the next level and want to make your colors really stand out, then this is how you accomplish that. Filming in a flat color profile looks very unappealing at first sight on the monitor. But what you get from a flat profile is a lot more information on the camera with higher dynamic range. Dynamic range is the difference between the brightest highlights in your frame to the darkest shadows in your frame. If you have a scene with high contrast, you may know notice the brights to be blown out or white. But this is because your sensor essentially can't handle this amount of dynamic range from the dark shadows to the really bright highlights. Using a flatter picture profile will tell the sensor not to worry about the vivid colors and just focus on getting abs much dynamic range and information into the shot as possible . Then, when you take that footage to the editing room, you can add it the colors to make, um, vivid and also get that extra dynamic range or information in your shot. Here are some examples of raw footage filmed in different picture profiles and what the edited versions look like to make these changes in Premiere Pro. You could do that manually in the limit tree scopes panel or use. Let's lots of basically filters that have all the information to change the colors built in , so you don't have to worry about changing things manually. Let's also have a lot more detail and information than premier and luminary scopes or editing software has, so you can really get into different colors and changes. And when you add that let in your editing software, it's gonna make things really pop more than just the customization that you'd make in the software itself. In the resource section, I've included a link to a free let that you can use for D. G. I drones. If you decide to film in a flat picture profile in the Lumen Tree Colors panel, you can adjust the white balance, exposure, contrasts and highlights and shadows of the image. You can also adjust the saturation, which is a common way to make colors more vivid. There are other, more advanced adjustments that you can explore, but we won't get into those for the purposes of this course. I've also provided let package that you could purchase at a link of the resource section. If you are interested in using a bunch of different color profiles and having more variety , your options depending on your scene and how you shot it toe. Add to your videos. Once you've adjusted your colors in your video to look how you want them to, you can export your video and upload the video file to whatever platform form you wish in the next section. We're gonna cover the process of editing photos to get the best quality of your aerial still images using light room. 18. 16 Editing stills: most drones on the market take great images and in the built in settings, make pictures look good straight out of the camera. If you're happy with the quality of your images and don't want to take extra time editing, and this section might not be worthwhile for you. But if you do want to have the extra level of control to make your pictures look more unique and professional, that's when editing your photos really comes in handy, much like what I discussed in the last section on color grading. If you do want to customize your photos using an ending tool, it's best of film in a raw format and flat color profile. For the same reason I explained earlier, there are a number of different photo editing programs that you may want to use to edit your photos. My preferred editing tool as faras manipulating batches of photos and editing colors, is Adobe Light room. This is the program I'm gonna cover in this course. Adobe Photo Shop also gives you some similar functions to manipulate your photo butts more designed to change the photo itself, like if you wanted to remove some part of the photo or if you wanted to merge different photos together. Another great program to use is Adobe Illustrator, which is great program for editing, text and graphic elements. All of the adobe programs can integrate seamlessly, and you may want to consider purchasing the full adobe suite, which gives you access to all the programs, including, including Adobe Premiere Pro. Okay, so I just want to give you guys a quick overview on how to edit your photos using light room. This is light room. This is a photo that I've edited. You can see the original photo that I took here. So edited photo, unedited photo. Um, and I'm going to go over the process on how to do that really quickly. There are a lot of details and I guess more fine tune that you guys can do. But here's the quick way on how to edit in light room. So the first thing you're gonna want to dio is go to your photos and then import them into light room so you'll end up here, um, and then basically switch from the library to the develop module, which is where you make all your adjustments to your photo so I'm gonna reset this photo so it goes to the unedited version. So this is the raw photo that I took out of the camera looks pretty blank, pretty flattened, unappealing. And I want to add some saturation, some contrast and whole bunch things. So this is how I do it. First thing I do is basically just go through the exposure. This is a bit overexposed, so I'm gonna just bring this water down a little bit. And essentially, all these tools on the right panel are what you can adjust and play with to fix the color highlights and all the other things. So I'll just make my way down this whole area. I want some more contrast, So that's gonna change the You'll notice the change here on the meter. It's gonna basically spread out the whites from the darks. Highlights are a bit high, so I'm gonna move those down shadows. I want to really bring out the shadows, so I'll bring this down. Whites are the brightest areas in the photos, so I'm actually okay with this. That's like these zones here. Darks. I want to make it way more contrast, E So you see how that pop those rocks were like, boom. The darkest areas of the photos came out. Clarity helps the sharpness. It's gonna really add definition to your photos. So I like the always boost that little bit. D. Hayes will clear things up a bit so you can see it. Really add It's a nice color saturation. A lot of people overdo this. This is what really makes the overall colors in the photos. Pop. If you go if you overdo it, it's just gonna look way too weird and passed. Ellie. So I like to add a little bit of saturation really Will depend on the photo. Um, this is your tone curve now, really common. You could do anything you want here, but a really common kind of photography trick is to adjust your tone curve into an s shape and what that does is it really, um, amplifies the separation between the darks and lights? Um, this is kind of overkill, I'd say. So I'm actually reset this like this, and what I want to do is actually bring my highlight sound a little bit like that, which is good to me. So now you can see these photos already looking riel. We'll go back to the original for a second. You can see it's quite a bit different, and the last thing I wanted to show you guys was the color changes that you could make, which are really cool. This is what really will separate your photo apart from the for other other photographers. So basically, you have your hue saturation and luminous you. You could actually change the colors, all the colors in your photos. So if I look at these turquoise and blues, you'll see I'm changing the them in this part. If you look at the green areas in the photo now, you'll see I can make a more yellow or it can make it way more greens. It's like, Wow, that's very green. The next thing I could do is adjust the saturation. So if I just want to make individual colors in the photo more saturated, I can do that by just selecting. So here's the aqua that's gonna make just awkward, more saturated. Or I could do the same thing to the blues. Get that really saturated? Just the greens. You can see there they anything that's green the photos get really saturated, so I'll just put all just to fix the greens. Everything else is OK. The last thing is, the luminous luminous is just making your individual colors brighter or darker. If you watch the blues here in this photo, everything's going to get all the blues get really dark or they're gonna get really, really light. So I'll leave that one there. Awkward. I might change just a little bit, but again, I just like to play with this to see what looks best greens gonna keep that nice and bright . And that's basically it. So you can see before and after There's the before photo and there is the after photo. I purposely took this photo in a flat color profile so I could get more dynamic range. And then when I go to the editing, I can make the adjustments to make it really pop and shine. Another really great thing you can do in light room is actually save your presets. So save all the settings you made here, so you don't do that to each photo. And to do that, you go into the develop module hit new preset. I'm just gonna call this drone one. And these are all the settings that are gonna be saved. So I'm not going to save lens corrections or transformations everyone or that kind of thing . But everything else is gonna be saved. I'll create that. And it's gonna appear here in my presets panel so you can see I've got a ton of different presets that I use depending on the photo and that I've taken. But right now, here's the one I just did. And then when I import my photos, all I need to do instead of adjusting all these settings is all reset this right here. So now everything's back to normal. This is the original photo is will come into my, um, my my panel at my preset panel and go ahead and click on that preset that I created. And boom, I'm done. I can apply that to other photos. Here's another one that I took in that same sequence That's done. And so that's a great tool. You can also export these presets and then import them in tow places like Premiere Pro to adjust your video settings to really customize. Look, you want to your photos I'm gonna link you guys to a free lunch which is essentially a light room preset in the resource section. I'm also gonna add a link to my favorite 10 presets of 2018 that you can purchase if you want to do that. And these are these detailed color profiles that you can add to your photos to make them look incredible. So if you are interested, you can either make your own or check out the ones that I've included in the resource section. 19. 17 Closing: thank you for taking the time to trust my tips, recommendations and instruction. I truly hope this course was helpful to you and your mission to become an aerial pilot. There is so much I have learned through my years of flying drones, and I hope my goal of fast tracking you passed a lot of the learning curves that took me years really pays off. If you like this course, please let me know by reading a short review. Giving this course of five star rating means a great deal to me. Not only doesn't show others that this course is worthwhile, it tells me that I'm actually helping people, which I really want to dio. If you're looking for more free resources and inspiration, make sure to follow me on YouTube, where I share a lot of behind the scenes videos, logs and how twos and tutorials to create amazing content. I also would love to see some of the videos you're creating, and YouTube is a great way to do that. I wish you all the best on your aerial drone journey, and I look forward to see the photos and videos that you create online