How to become a great aerial videographer... and out shine other people...

Warning you should take the title with a pinch of salt... On paper everyone has the potential to become a great pilot but it really comes down to becoming arsed with the work of learning the features and practicing your flying skills...And being able to quickly move or set up the drone and camera for a particular look or angle...

To begin you are gonna have to practice your drone flying skills indoors... This means using a toy drone to learn what's up and down, whats left and right in the opposite direction to you and the other way the drone is facing... Or at the very least, fly indoors without crashing the drone inside...
Fine motor skills comes at a price of practicing for a long time in close quarters...
Much like the skills and reactions of playing asteroids in a arcade game... The aerial videographer needs to negotiate the complex environment of his surroundings...

One example is to fly through a series of complex obstacles that baffle and confuse the viewer...
Its fairly easy if you fly slowly through objects and things... but this requires a combination of flying FVP style with line of sight for extra judgement...
But this is only one style of filming, And if not careful you'll end up clipping the wall and the edges with your propellers, just for a 10 second shot... "Threading the needle shot" still looks impressive and does stand out... But in my opinion , it can only be done  sparingly as I dont think the whole video could be carried  on this one trick pony...

The basic tools  for the drone videographer is his movements in relation to the landscape or the subject he is following...
A basic "orbit shot" is a great way to transition the front facing shot to the side profile... Or to turn the light around as you fly in a circle for a landscape... In fact the moving light trick is what I often do to lengthen the clip and to reveal the landscape in general...
In certain circumstances the orbit can evolve the follow tacking shot... Usually tracking a person is difficult enough to follow... But if I overshoot someone I can often turn this mistake by orbiting around the subject... I call this a "Lasso Shot"... as the subject is traveling and I'm trying get ahead to capture the front profile before he is too far away...

The next is the "rising shot" which again is a basic one dimensional move... But along with camera gimble tilt the landscape seems to warp when both lift and camera tilt are moved in the right way...
When performed correctly, you can move the gimble tilt and drone lift  and descend with great visual appeal... Another appealing factor is the ground when traveling at a steady pace...
Capturing the moving ground at high speed is quite mesmerizing... As you use higher frame rates you can get a great moving canvas effect with flying over the floor...

To execute a descending shot and skim off the floor with gimble movements is quite a beautiful shot in itself... I am often on the beach and this move on a wide boring landscape can look great... ( be careful of sudden bumps and sharp rising objects)
Practicing this means you'll have to set a distance before you'll crash land on the floor... I usually set a 5 -10 meter limit before the drone automatically trys to land... Practicing often means getting comfortable with rising and lowering with gimble movements so that the video looks smooth as possible, when skimming the floor then rising the drone...
Once you've perfected this, the next stage is to put both orbit and lift and decent together... whether its a "lasso maneuver" with a lift or a descending point of interest orbital shot... You'll soon find you are hand stretching your fingers and distorting them to get the right movement.. A bit like twister for your fingers, you'll find with practice you can make the camera move to how you want it...
If not it takes a while for you to get the camera movement right... Another thing to practice is the speed of which you can do a orbit or lift or decent... You can try to limit your maneuvers to a set time, by recording one minuet while trying to orbit or rising point of interest...
This will hopefully tidy up your shot while quicken up your pacing for a viewer friendly result...
The 1 minuet rule, helps to match your footage to music as most instagram movies are usually 1 minuet... While reducing very long landscape shots for those never ending drone footage...
Being able to quicken your movements will often help you to position and spontaneously fly round the subject...

Micro movements can often be seen as the drone or pilot trys to correct the drone... Setting the brakes or attitude to a lower value will help iron out the movement corrections when following or adjusting orbit speeds... Although the rudder still continues to be very sensitive especially when attempting a orbit maneuver...

I like to lower the exponential values to get smoother turns, I found that lowering the EXPOS and the braking gives me slower smoother turns with the drone sliding in the corners to reduce gimble wobble during the process of the drone performing a fast turn...
If you are going fairly fast with quick precise movements around objects or subjects at close quarters you will find that the settings on your camera for cinematic 24fps or 30fps., can often make the

camera view look like there is a drop in frames or a strobing flicker book quality to your footage...
I tend to film now in 60FPS, so what I lose in display resolution, I gain in video clarity for action and movement shots, as motion blur takes away the appeal of high speed action... see my last blog on the reason why I use higher frame rates and instead of trying to film with cinematic techniques...

Most drone pilots are equipped to the regular up, down, forwards and backwards movements... But to stand out, I try not to edit short ten second clips and what seems like clip after clip of high altitude landscapes...
You can film the most perfect beaches or beautiful landscapes ever... But that footage is likely to be glossed over by viewers because its just a long boring clip...

I personally like to showcase my pilot skills by maneuvering high and low altitudes in one go or long following shots with a orbit on moving subjects... Taking account of where the light source is and make it fit to a piece of music...

I like to think I stand out in my own right when I make Drone videos as I employ tips and visual tricks to draw-in the punters... Using parallax and mesmerizing flying angles with high speed chases as I fly in-between the landscape and the subject to get the maximum appeal with-in a certain time limit...

In the end it comes down to what looks good to you... and don’t be afraid to edit out the mistakes to get the best Compilation of the drone footage of that session... I started out with lots of edit cuts with lots of reject maneuver footage but eventually, with practice you end up with options rather then reject footage when you practice flying regularly...