Drone Videography: Camera Movement & Composition

1. Intro: Are you ready to start filming with your drone? What's up? My name is Brian Garcia. I'm a wedding film maker, and I shoot real estate videos. Ever since I've been using my drone for my video production company, its brought up the quality of my work. The demand for my services have gone up, which means I'm able to bring my prices up. When I first started using my drone, I thought my shots look too simple. It looks almost as if we were looking at Google Maps in a satellite view. The more creative I got with my composition and camera movements, the more professional my videos looked. Taking this course will help you bring up the quality of your production and your work. You'll get creative with your shots, and this will help bring up your business as well. The drone I use is a DJI Mavic 2 Pro, but you can use any drone you want. In this course, we'll cover some of the safety guidelines, then we'll cover drone composition and camera movement. Then you can go out and practice this on your own. This course is for anyone who wants to create beautiful highlight videos with your drone, this will also bring up the quality of your own production. It doesn't matter if you're using this for commercial use or you're a hobbyist posting this aerial footage for social media. By the end of this course, I'm going to help you make your drone footage look really awesome. Your final project will be pretty open, just send any of your work using your drone footage. If you want, feel free to mix it up with other shots that you took on the ground. I also film with my DSLR camera on the ground, and I mix it up with my drone footage. Enjoy yourself, be creative, make sure you're safe out there, and let's get started. Peace out. 2. Class Project: Your project will be pretty simple. Based on the information you learned here, you're going to make a highlight reel showing your drone footage. You can also mix it up with some of the shots you take on the ground to diversify your skills. I chose this project so it doesn't feel like there's any restrictions, and you can be creative. I like how this is giving you the freedom to create anything drone related. I think creating something short and simple is a great way to start. You can make a 30-second highlight or a three-minute video, or however long you want it to be, it's all up to you. It's always good to plan out your production before you go out to the location. I usually look it up on Google Maps so I can scout the location, then I can start creating a shot list. My shot list will have bullet points on what I plan on shooting. You can use any editing software you like, I use Final Cut Pro. You'll still be able to follow along with this course with any editing software. Before you go out there and film, makes sure you had a safe place and you're not flying over heavily populated areas. If you already have your Part 107 license then you already know to stay away from airports and control the airspace. Don't fly over 400 feet. Drones can cause a lot of damage to property and it can cause injury. After you review the next few videos, feel free to download the PDF I have available with some of the composition and camera movements so you can get familiar with them while you're out there filming your production. When you're done with your highlight, turn it in here. If you have any questions along the way, make sure to ask them in the discussions. I'll be looking at your work. Now that you know what you'll be doing as we move to the next lesson, Peace out. 3. Hobbyist or Commercial: This is pretty important. You're either using your drone as a hobbyist or for commercial purposes. That means you're either getting paid or you're not. I'm not here to cover every drone rules and regulations for you, but I will direct it to the right place to get that information. If you are getting paid to fly your drone, you will need a Part 107 license. Our drones are controlled by the FAA. The faa.gov website, will have all the regulations and guidelines you need when it comes to flying your drones. For me, I use this for business purposes, I use it for weddings and real estate, so I need to have my Part 107 license. Before I got my license, I was flying my drone for about eight months for recreational purposes, getting in the feel of how my drone works before I actually got that license. I'll show you where to go and this page might look a little bit different, maybe in another year or two years, so just bear with me. Over here, under Drones, Unmanned Aircraft Systems, I'm going to click on that button. Now, let's scroll down a little bit. What type of drone flyer are you? Recreational flyer or are using this for commercial purposes? This is for me, for commercial purposes. You can also click on there yourself, and see what's over here. But if you're a beginner, if you're using this for recreational purposes, let's go ahead and click on here. You can go ahead and read through all the information that's provided on this website. Over here it says, "Following these rules will keep you and your drone safe, and will help keep the airspace available to everyone.' Number 1, it says, "Register your drone." You will need to register your drone if it weighs at least 0.55 pounds and up to 55 pounds. It's actually really simple. I did it for only $5, and it only took me five minutes to get this done. I printed it out my registration number onto a label maker, and I attached that onto my drone. Number 2, fly only for recreational purposes. Unless you have a Part 107 license, you know this does not apply to you. But I do remember one of my test questions said if I'm doing this in exchange for football tickets, I will need that license. So think about that before you get your footage to help your business accounts or even your websites. Number 3, flyer drone at or below 400 feet above the ground when in controlled airspace. Basically, what that means, is don't go over 400 feet. That wording might confuse some people. Obtain authorization before flying in controlled airspace. This is what also confuses a lot of people because they don't know that they weren't supposed to fly in certain areas. That means places like the airport, it's controlled. Sometimes you can't fly above a certain amount of feet by a certain airport, and I'm going to show you on the next lesson, how you can look that up. But you do not want to get into any trouble flying your drone into national parks without permits, and airports without permits because you'll get a hefty fine even if you're doing this for recreational purposes. I hope this helps you sell. In the next lesson, I will show you what I do to prepare myself before I go out there and fly and how I look up controlled airspaces. I'll see you in the next video. Peace out. 4. B4U FLY: Let's get started. So I want to show you what I do to prepare myself before I go out there and fly. I want to make sure it's not under controlled airspace, and I want to make sure there's a lot of space out there in case my drone happens to lose connection. I don't want to hurt anybody, I don't want to damage any property. I want something that's very spacious for any accidents to happen. Here we go. I am going online. Let's do Google search, ILO park. That's the park I had in mind already. With this park, I can click on "Satellite View". I'm going to zoom in a little bit. You can see a lot of open space over here, a lot of grass. I got to worry about the streets over here because I don't want to hit any cars. I need to be careful at this section over here, but look over here towards this baseball field. I don't want to hit anybody and there might be people practicing at that field. I'm worried about my equipment, so I don't want it to fall in this swimming pool. So I've been to this park before, I know what it is like. Let me just check out where I'm going to go park. I see parking over here, and it's right next to the field. Now, if I lose connection, maybe it might go the furthest down here. Keep in mind if you have a cheap drone, it will most likely lose connection with the controller. I did have a drone that was less than a 100 bucks, and right when I flew it, it just flew off. I had to go maybe a half a mile, not that far of a walk, but I had to go look for it. If I were to fly my drone somewhere over here, look at all these buildings, so many accidents waiting to happen, the cars. It can get stuck in the roof. I don't want anything to happen. I don't want to be on the news. I don't want to get a lawsuit or something like that. So I want to go where it's safe. Look at all these houses over here. Your drone can possibly land on someone's roof and you don't want that to happen. So you want to go somewhere where there's a lot of grass like this. Now I'll just go ahead and look up some parks that are nearby. If you already have one in mind, lookup the space, how spacious it is. If you have a place that has a open field, look it up. Just think about the worst possibilities that can happen. You can lose your drone and it can get lost somewhere, will you be able to reach it? If you're at the edge of a cliff flying your drone, you are risking yourself and you might not get that drone back ever again. So I want to check the airspace. There are some places like Ontario International Airport you cannot fly your drone around there because of the airplanes. If you are caught flying your drone at a restricted airspace, you can get a hefty fine. This location is pretty close to Ontario International Airport, but it is a little bit distance, so I'm going to look it up on my phone right now. I use this app called B4UFLY. You can see that I've already looked at the airspace already. I'm going to click over here under the search bar, it's called Ruben ILO Park. It's blue, that means there is controlled airspace at that park, but I got to view details. Just click on here. I'll click more to get more info. Low altitude only. That means I have to fly it low. I need to get some more information. Let's click up here. It says, "Auto approval available up to zero feet, further coordination available up to 400 feet." So I can fly my drone no higher than 400 feet. So that is pretty high. I don't need to go that far. It is illegal to fly you drone over 400 feet off the ground anyways. After observing the location and looking at the airspace, it looks pretty safe for me to fly. I highly recommend that you look for some spacious outdoor area so you have a lot of space to make mistakes. You don't want to go somewhere where there's a lot of trees as well or having any effect with the birds in the nest out there. That's about it. We're going to move on to the next lesson, and I'm sure you're anxious to start flying your drone. 5. Calibration - IMU & Compass: Now go ahead and cover the drone calibration. You'll have a compass calibration and IMU. I'm using the DJI Mavic 2 Pro, so this should also be similar to other DJI drones as well. You should calibrate your drone the first time you start it up. But after that, you do not need to do this every time. Compass calibration is important to ensure a safe controlled flight, you got to make sure the drone sensors have accurate measurements to fly safely. DJI recommends you calibrate your compass if you receive a compass interference warning on the app, also if you travel further than 31 miles from the last spot you flew, and if it has been more than a month since you last flew your drone. Just a quick warning, do not do this near any magnetic or metal objects, so it's best to do this outside for this. Go ahead and turn on your drone and make sure your controller is connected. Follow your drone's instructions when you're signing in, and I'll show you where to go to do the compass calibration. I'll go ahead and click on "Go Fly". You can see my drone's right here on the grass. Normally, you would get a warning over here when it is time to calibrate your drone. Right now it says cannot take off because I'm in a no fly zone. Click on the three dots on the top right of the screen. Click on the drone icon, and scroll down to Advanced Settings. Select "Sensors State", and you'll see you have the options for both IMU and compass. We're going to do compass for now. Now that I helped you navigate your way to calibrate the drone, your app should give you simple instructions what you need to do next. Over here it's telling me to rotate the aircraft 360 degrees horizontally. If I was too close to any metal or magnetic objects, it would give me a warning and wouldn't let me calibrate it yet. Once the first step is completed, I'm going to rotate the aircraft again while it's sideways. If you've already noticed my dog in the background, she's just looking for an opportunity to eat my drone. So it looks like it's completed, and I am done for the compass calibration. The IMU calibration is a little bit different. IMU stands for inertial measurement unit. This basically keeps the drone balanced during the flight, and this will help avoid crashes. So let's place your drone on a flat surface. Once again, when your controller is connected to your drone, you're going to click on the three dots on the top right of the screen. Click the drone icon and you're going to scroll down and look for Advanced Settings. Go ahead and click that, and you're going to select "Sensor State". You're back over here, you have the option to do IMU or compass. So we're going to do IMU. Your drone will give you instructions what to do next to calibrate it. I hope that I was able to help you navigate your way to calibrate your drone in both compass and IMU. On the first step, I'm going to have it sending on its feet. Then I'm going to have it sideways. I'm going to have it on the other side. Then I'll lay the drone on its back. Now the drone will be facing up. I am done. It says, IMU calibration successful. Now you know how to calibrate your drone for both IMU and compass. That should be it for now, if you have any questions, feel free to let me know. Go ahead and start taking your drone now. 6. Flight Controls: Now, let's go over the flight controls. This will be similar to most drones unless you decide to customize it. With my DJI Mavic 2 Pro, to turn this on, I'll press the power button once and then I'll press and hold to turn on the drone. I'll go ahead and turn on the controller and connect it to my drone. Now, keep in mind your drone should have some information on how to calibrate it. Feel free to follow those instructions and you should be able to follow along. Now that I am connected, we'll go over the joysticks. To start the propellers, you are going to move the joysticks inwards. When you're ready to launch it, go ahead and push the left joystick up. We'll first cover the left joystick and to raise your drone, you'll throttle up. You can see this is like a crane shot. Now, if you push the joystick down, it's called throttle down. This will bring the drone lower. We are going to turn the drone towards the left, so it's called yaw left. I apologize if you're getting a little bit dizzy, but you can see it's turning from its pivot point over here. Now, we're going to go right, so it's called yaw right when you turn the left joystick towards the right. Now, we're going to use a right joystick and move forward. You're going to push the right joystick forward and you can see you are moving closer to the subject. If you go backwards on the joystick, you are going to push backwards, and you're getting further away from the subject. Now, if you push the joystick left, it will move the joystick towards the left instead of turning it from its equivalent point. Same thing if you turn the joystick towards the right, it is moving the joystick towards the right. Now, with your left pointer finger, there should be a little wheel that you can turn to tilt the gimbal. If you turn the wheel counterclockwise, you should be able to tilt down. If you turn the wheel clockwise, you should be able to tilt back up. These control settings are pretty standard on most drones, but you can pretty much customize it any way you like. Now, we're going to land it and it's real simple. You just find a landing spot. With the left joystick, you're going to throttle down. Always make sure it is clear from other people because it could cause a lot of damage. Now, whenever you're ready, we're going to move on to the next lesson, so we can start talking about camera movement. 7. Push In & Pull Back: The first camera movement we're going to cover is the push-in shot, just like if you're going to dolly in. I use this shot to show the objects passing by the camera. You'll get a different field to it depending on how high you raise your drone and how you angle your camera. The higher you raise your drone, the slower all the objects in the frame move because you're further away from everything. The closer you are to the ground, the faster everything just flies by. You can do the same thing if you decide to pull back, just like a dolly-out shot. This is a shot that I would use if I'm transitioning to another scene or another location, so this is my way of ending one scene and starting a new one. Let's talk about using the same movement, but with different camera angles. You can have your camera look either straight, have it diagonal, or you going to have it look straight down, which is that aerial look, I'll show you the difference. While you're pushing the camera and tilting it, you can see what it does with the camera frame. The first one is my most common shot. If I were to set up my camera at a 90-degree angle from the ground, pushing in will show objects passing through the bottom of the frame. I'll lower the camera if I want objects to pass around the frame. There's a difference when you have the camera raise or lower. Other times I want to adjust the tilt of the camera so it's diagonal. When I'm too high and not getting enough movement in the frame, tilting the camera diagonal will help create more movement in my frame. Then there's the aerial look when the camera is facing down, but it's the least of my favorites because I'm not getting enough depth in my shots. Out of all these different ways to push in or pull back, which one is my favorite? I like to stay low to the ground, have my camera looking straight at a 90-degree angle from the ground and pushing in. There's more action and movement. You can play with it however you like and find out what works for you. That's the end of this lesson, and whenever you're ready, we're going move on to the next one. 8. Lines: Now we're going to cover composition and the first one we're going to cover is lines. But what is composition? Composition refers to the visual structure and organization of elements within a design. Why should you even care? Applying composition is a method of expression. It communicates a visual message. I think it's good time to understand composition because it does make your shots look so much better and it does bring up the quality of your production. The first one we'll cover is lines. Lines is a visual path that enables the eye to move within a piece. You can see in this shot that I'm using the row so your eyes can follow the path that it's taking us too. You can see in this aerial view right up above this couple, I'm using lines to draw your attention within the couple. Now that brings us to leading lines. Leading lines is a composition that will draw the viewer's eye to the intended subject. You can see here I'm using leading lines to draw your attention to the altar. Here's another example of this bridge over here. For this real estate video, I'm using this tree as leading lines is directing everyone's attention to the amenities over here and the same thing with this street right in between these buildings. Now let's talk about vertical lines. Vertical lines creates a bold statement, it suggests power with the strong foundation being firm or strong. I'll use vertical lines to show the height of the subject, so it's going above the frame. In this case over here, I'm using it as I'm raising the Jon up and it's going into my next composition which is horizontal lines. Horizontal lines suggest balance, harmony, and in some cases an ending, it indicates stability in a calming way. This shot over hear to me, looks pretty relaxing. I use this for a real estate video. This next shot over here at this wedding, I'm using the horizontal lines as a relaxing fill and I'm tilting down to the couple kissing. My only problem with this shot was those garbage cans towards the left. But even if I was going to turn the camera a little bit towards the right, there were still going to be more garbage cans over there. This next one is diagonal lines. It will lead the eye to a certain point in the image. This creates a strong fill but indicating sense of energy. This was actually my opening shot for a real estate video just to give them a fill of the city. Here's some more diagonal lines to show you the railroad and little street over here. I'm not a 100 percent sure if I was really successful, but I wanted to draw the viewer's eye towards the swimming pool. Then we got organic lines which appear natural and imperfect rather than man-made or mathematical. I'm using organic lines to show the road scattered all over the golf course. I know that's man-made, but at least it's uneven and it's making your eyes move around a little bit. Cool. That's everything I have about lines. Now we're going to move on to the next lesson so I can talk a little bit more about camera movement. I'll see you on the next video. Peace out. 9. Twist & Turn: Our next camera movements sounds like a dance move, and that's because your drone will be dancing around while we watch it twist and turn. Make sure you have your camera gimbal tilted down and you can yaw left or right to get this twisting motion. Just try to press into your joystick lightly so you can have a steady in slow motion. You don't want to press too hard. You can see how I'm using this to reveal something important like this swimming pool for the real estate video. Doing this to the amenities gives you that dreamy feel. Speaking of dreamy, I think this is a perfect shot to get the bride and groom kissing while the drone is twisting in the air. I just told them to keep on kissing until I said done. I wanted to make sure I had enough coverage for the highlight video. Just for safety reasons, it's better to have the drone just little bit aside from them, so it's not directly above them. This was a reception of a wedding and I think this shot works because most of the activities that's going on outside in the backyard. Imagine if their wedding was mostly indoors, we would've been missing out on all those lights and tables out there. Now we're going to be a little bit more creative by twisting your drone and raising it up. Over here, I'm going to yaw left and throttle up. This adds a little bit more to the aesthetic. This is my way of starting up close then revealing the surroundings around the area. You can see something that I mostly use for weddings. This shot over here was taken by my second shooter and he just slightly moves it up just a bit. Don't forget that you can also turn the joystick the opposite direction. You can see over here he yaws right and throttles up. Here is the exact opposite. I'm going to yaw left and throttle down. This works if you want to show the surrounding area and then draw the viewer's attention closer to this subject. This shot over here I wanted the viewer to draw their attention towards the lights in the backyard. Now the drone will literally be dancing around this subject. You can also get that parallax effects by moving the background a little bit more than the foreground. Take a look at my controls over here. I'm pushing both joysticks towards each other so that drone is dancing towards a left, but still facing its partner. Here's an example of a real estate video. I'm going very slowly. Sometimes you just need to lightly touch the joysticks so you can get that slow movement. Now we're going to go towards the opposite direction, which I think is easier. If you look at my joysticks, I'm moving them away from each other and I'm dancing towards the right that is still facing my partner. I think this is perfect for weddings. Just have a couple of start kissing and you just circle around them. Here are a couple more examples. This next shot over here, I use this at the beginning of one of my wedding videos. Now that you know how to take your drone out for a dance, feel free to go back and watch how my fingers were controlling the joysticks. Go ahead and have some fun with it, and I'll see you at the next lesson. Peace out. 10. Rule of Thirds: Rule of thirds is the process of dividing an image into thirds using two horizontal and two vertical lines. I'm just using this grid as a guideline. Instead of placing your subject in the middle of the frame, you can place your subject a little towards the right or towards the left of the frame. You can also place it in the upper or lower thirds as well. This gives a more natural look and you can still draw the viewer's eyes to the subject. There's different ways you can go about this, you can see this house over here intersects between the upper and left, there's other frame. This just helps you get that natural feel without it looking two-staged. Here's another example with this wedding video here, I tried to get this parallax effect while getting the rule of thirds. You don't have to be exactly on the grids, there's no rule to anything you film. It's just good to keep this in mind so you can create more tension, energy, and interests in the composition than simply centering the subject. Though it's pretty short and simple, go ahead and try that out and whenever you're ready, let's move on to the next lesson. Peace out. 11. Editing with Final Cut Pro X: Now we're going to start editing the footage. I'm going to go over a brief rundown on how I edit this footage on Final Cut Pro. Like I said, you can use any editing program you want. If you are not using Final Cut Pro, I'll still have some editing tips here so feel free to watch. I do have another course here on SkillShare, that goes more in depth in editing with Final Cut Pro. If you have Final Cut Pro open, make sure to create your own library and events. We're going to start creating a project here. I'll go to File, New, and Project to create a new project. Now give it a project name. I'm just going to go ahead and call this Drone Example. If your screen doesn't look like mine, I'll show you how I did this. Just go ahead and click on "Use Custom Settings" and you should be able to see the format resolution and the frame rate. I put my resolution at 1080 and the frame rate is at 23.98 frames per second. Go ahead and click "Okay". Now I'll go ahead and select my project. Make sure you have your Inspector window open and click on "Show Inspector". You can check over here that the project resolution is set by 1920 by 1080 and the frame rate is at 23.98 frames per second. Don't forget to import your footage. Now I'll go over a couple of the shots that I got at a wedding ceremony. This first shot over here is my pushing shot. Now I'm going to click on it so I can show you the resolution. This was shot at 4K and the frames per second is at 29.97 frames per second. Since the project settings was at 23.98 frames per second, that means I can slow it down by 20 percent. I'll select all my clips and press "W" to insert all the clips into the timeline. This shot here is actually not a drone shot. It was done on the floor with the gimbal. Remember that you had the freedom to mix up your drone footage with your other shots that were done on the ground. If your timeline looks like this, you can press "Shift Z" on your keyboards so your clips going to fill up the screen. I'll go ahead and bring the audio levels down over here in this shot, because we won't need that. Remember these clips can be slowed down a bit because our project frame rate is 23.98 frames per second. I'll select on my "Drone Footage", click on re-timing options and select "Automatic Speed". I'll do the same thing with the shot over here that was done on the ground. You can see over here it was shot at 59.94 frames per second, that means we can bring the speed down by 60 percent slower. Now it's playing at 40 percent. One of the most common questions I hear people ask is what frame rate should they run their drone footage? If your drone is in the air, it's going to look slower because the further your camera is from the ground, the slower everything looks. That's why my last clip over here was recording at 60 frames per second because the camera was on the ground, and my aerial footage was recording at 30 frames per second because it was shot in the air. I'll go ahead and move my playhead towards the beginning so I can insert the music. I'll go ahead and click on it and press "Q". Now I'll go to the beginning so I can match the cuts with the music. Let's go ahead and review the footage that I have here. You can drag the edge of these clips, so you can either trim it or extend it. I'm going to extend it out a little bit so it matches with the beats. I'm going to trim a couple of frames of this clip just a little bit. Let's check out the four shots we have over here. We basically have three pushing shots and one twisting shot. I want to extend this clip a little bit longer, so I'm going to move it two beats out. This is what I want to show you over here. It's moving too fast and I want to slow it down. I'm going to have it selected, and I'm going to click the read options button. Instead of clicking on "Automatic Speed", I'm going to click on "Custom". I'm going to bring it down by 40 percent. I want to make sure the ripple is not selected, so it doesn't extend the clip any longer. Now as we review the clip, you're going to notice some glitchy going on. That's because I don't have enough frame since I recorded it at 29.97 frames per second. I'm going to go ahead and click on this media inspector and if I scroll to the bottom, I want to change the frame sampling to optical flow. Once it's done loading, I'll go ahead and play it and you're going to see that it is smoothed it out. Cool. Now it flows what the rest of the clips. Since I didn't throttle up, I'm going to show you how to make it look like it's raising up here on Final Cut Pro. Go ahead and click on the triangle next to the Transform button select "Crop" and select the Ken Burns button. Now this green bar over here will be the start of the frame and the red square is where the frame will end. I don't need that much of a crop, so I'll pull out the square boxes a little bit so they're closer. This button over here will reverse the direction of the star in the end, since we want it to push out instead of pushing in. I'll go ahead and click "Done", and let's review it. That looks like I raised the drone up a little bit even though I faked it. Let's go back to the beginning and let's review the four clips. This is just a small part of a full wedding that I actually finished. I'll go ahead and click on my other project over here, so I can show you the full wedding I have here on my timeline. Let me get this adjustment layer out of the way over here. [inaudible] On our first day, my palms were sweating like crazy, and from that day on and everything in between I really can't take anything. That's just a quick example of what I was working on. You go ahead and make your video anyway you want. Now I'll show you my export settings so you can have it at the best quality as possible. On the top right, I'll click on the Share button and select "Master File". If you need to change the file name, go ahead and do that over here. After that, go ahead and click on "Settings". I want the format to be the best as possible for the Internet, so I'll have it under a web hosting. Under resolution, I want it as high as possible, and the highest I can go over here as 1920 by 1080. Once my settings are correct, I'll click "Next". Go ahead and save your movie file somewhere onto your hard drive. Whenever you're ready, let's move on to the last video. 12. Setting exposure: Now I'll show you how I adjust exposure with the DJI Mavik 2 Pro. This will be very similar to many other DJI drones. Just a reminder that this course is not necessarily going to be too technical, because I have many of you with a completely different drones. But maybe this lesson will help some of you understand how exposure works. I decided to give these instructions out in the field just to be outdoors. Who wants to stay home during a pandemic. Let's get started. I got my drone turned on, I have my smart controller ready, I'll click the "Go Fly" button. Here is my screen. I know some of you might be using your phone and the app, so that's still fine. Now I'll go ahead and launch my aircraft so I can start flying it up in the air. On my screen, I want to tap on this subject just to have it in focus. If you look over here on the top right, you have the option to have it on autofocus or manual focus, whichever is green is the one that is selected. As I change this to manual focus, you can see how I can adjust the focus through this wheel. When I'm flying my drone, I prefer to have it on autofocus, and I'll tap on the screen to focus on my subject. This icon over here on the right will allow you to switch to photo or video. Since this is a videography course, I'm going to switch back to Video. Underneath that is the record button. If you have a smart controller, you can see over here on the top right, you have a button to go back to photos, and you can press the button again if you want to take photos. You don't have to use your touch screen all the time. On the left side you see I can go to Video, and I can press it again if I want to record a video. Underneath the record button over here you can see this other icon, this will allow you to adjust the settings. After you click on that, you can see this button here on the top, this is going to allow you to adjust exposure. The first one I'm going to show you is the auto-exposure. This will control the ISO, the aperture, and the shutter. Your drone will make the settings as best as possible. If exposure is something new to you, remember this determines how bright and dark image will look, and these settings also determines if your subject is properly exposed. I can start by showing you how to control the aperture over here. Now we can control the aperture and the camera will automatically adjust the settings for your ISO and shutter. As you can see, while I'm adjusting the aperture, the shutter is automatically making adjustments itself. The ISO can't get any darker, so the lowest it will go is 100. Increasing the aperture will darken the image and give you a wider depth of field. Decreasing the aperture will brighten your image and give you a more shallow depth of field. Since I'm filming outdoors and getting landscape, I prefer to have a wide depth of field, but the image will get darker. Just so you understand, depth of field means everything that's in focus. When you have a shallow depth of field, that means you have less of the subject in focus, that means more of the foreground and background will be blurry. When you have a wide depth of field, that means there's less blurriness in the background. Right now I'm at a F10, that gives me a wide depth of field, it makes the image darker, but my camera already adjusted the shutter speed so it can brighten it up a little bit. If you're brand new to exposure, go ahead and play with the aperture for a little bit, and when you're ready, let's click over here to control the shutter speed only. Over here you can control the shutter and your camera will automatically adjust the aperture and the ISO for you. The ISO is still at its lowest number, so you're not going to see that move since we're outdoors. Your shutter speed will control the sharpness and blurriness of the movement. Setting a brighter image with your shutter will make the movement more blurry. Setting a darker image will make the image a little bit more sharp. If you want to learn more about shutter, just go ahead and play with it and practice with movement. After you're done practicing with lower and higher shutter speeds, let's have full control by pressing the M button, which means manual exposure. Now you can adjust the shutter and aperture at the same time, and those zebra lines on my screen are just indicating what part is overexposed. Now we'll control the ISO. The higher you bring the number, the brighter it gets, but the more grainy the footage will look, so you don't want to bring that number too high. The darker, the less grainy. You always want to bring that number as low as possible. The benefit of filming outdoors is that I can compensate for the brightness by adjusting the aperture and the shutter. If I want a smooth cinematic motion to the movement, it is recommended to have a shutter speed double the frame rate. My frame rate is at 30 frames per second, now my shutter speed is going to be at one-sixtieth. Image is a little bit bright, so now I'm going to adjust my aperture to darken it up a little bit. Now I have my ISO, aperture and shutter set, and I have perfect exposure. Now everything really depends on how you want it to look. There's no rules into any of this, but right now I'm also facing the mountains. If I turn my camera around and I'm facing the skyline, you can see the clouds, everything's a little bit more overexposed. I'm going to show you the footage from the actual camera, and I'm going to adjust the settings for this specific angle. Just wait for it and you're going to see the exposure settings starting to change. I'm actually going to bring this shutter up a little bit. I don't mind if the movement is a little bit more sharp. The aperture is already at its max, so I can't get it any darker than that. The ISO is already at its minimum, so it can't get any darker than that, so my only choice is to adjust the shutter speed. I also have a filter on my drone, which is even making it even more darker. If some of you don't know what filters are, it's basically having sunglasses, but for your drones. I always recommend filters if you're filming outdoors, especially if you're using a drone, because you're going to be getting a lot of sunlight while you're filming landscape. That's about it for this lesson. Just remember that this course is mostly about composition and camera movement, but I also don't mind covering exposure during this course. If you have any more questions, feel free to let me know. I'll see you on the next video. 13. Active Track & Parallax Effect - DJI Mavic 2 Pro: I'll be showing you this feature on the DJI Mavic 2 Pro, but this also applies to many other DJI drones. Now, I'm going to show you active track, which I think is a great feature to get a smooth parallax effects without your fingers messing up the joystick movements. We're going to go ahead and click on the "Intelligent flight mode" over here on the left side of the screen. It will be the third icon down here. Go ahead and click on "ActiveTrack" over here on the right. There's three options and you'll see a pop-up of the first one explaining to you what that is. I'm going to go ahead and click "Okay" and I'll explain that to you myself. The first one is Trace. Once you have that selected, you're going to go ahead and draw a green box around this subject that you want to follow. I'll be the moving subject and I'm going to press "Go" so I can get it started. As I start to move the drone will follow me. You can also get a faster moving subject and the drone will follow as it's moving. You can move left or right by swiping here on the screen. I'm getting a little bit of a parallax effect as well. Or this can be another way if you want to just change its angle as you are moving the subject. I'm just trying not to roll down the hill even though it's not that steep. When you want to stop it, go ahead and click on the middle and your drone will stop turning. Now go ahead and show you profile. I'm going to turn my drone a little bit and pause it right over here. On the left side of my screen, you see that icon on the bottom of that X. You're going to go ahead and click on that and you are going to click on "Profile." You'll get another pop-up on the screen explaining what it does. I'll go ahead and click "Okay." Drag that green box around the subject and press "Go" and your drone should follow the subject. As you can see when I'm walking down that hill the drone is moving sideways keeping that profile shot. Your subject will always be positioned at the same angle or keep this same shot consistent following along with you. I don't know how fast it will be able to go because I'm not moving with quick moving object. Let's go to the next one. Under the red X button there's this icon over here press that and press "Spotlight. " You can click "Okay" or "Don't show again." I'm going to have an explanation what Spotlight does. I'll drag a green box around my subject, which is me, and I'll click "Go." This time your drone will not be moving left or right. It's going to pivot as your subject is moving. As I'm walking down that hill my camera follows me but the drone stays still and I just keep on moving away from the drone as the camera follows me. It's like having a tripod way up in the air. You can still see it as an example as I'm walking back up this hill. You can still move your drone with a joystick and it'll keep the camera on the subject. You'll get a nice parallax effect. I'll show you an example over here. It's still currently on Spotlight, but look at my hands I am moving the joystick. The cameras stays on me while the drone is still moving. Now, let's look what happens when I throttle down. The camera is still focused on me. I'll go ahead and throttle up, much better than spending money on a crane. Here are some examples how I use that same feature for weddings and real estate videos. I had it on Spotlight and I used my joystick to move my drone, and I was able to get a beautiful parallax effect. When you are done, go ahead and click on the red X button over here on the left side. Over here on the left side, you can click on this button over here for intelligent mode and click on "Normal." Go ahead and practice that at a safe location. Let me know your thoughts and that's about it. I'll see you on the next video. 14. Conclusion: All right, we did it. Congrats for making it work. We covered ways to prep. We trained our drone how to dance. We covered composition and editing. If there's one thing I hope you take away from this class is that composition will capture the viewer's attention and camera movements will build on the aesthetics. Upload your project to the project's gallery on the class page so we can all take a look. I'm also hoping some of you will be able to start a class discussion. I do read those and I do respond to them. Make an awesome video and be safe doing it. Make sure you're following this class and follow my Skillshare profile. Over time, I will be adding content to this course. I hope to see you in my other courses and this is where I check out. Take care now. Peace out.