Video Tips
CINEMATOGRAPHY TIPS
Hi, my name’s Arden Shibley, I’m a drone pilot with Yellowhouse Aerial.
I'm gonna share a little crash course on upping your drone game when it comes to aerial cinematography.
We’ll start first with spotting ‘amateur-looking’ footage and what makes it stand out (not in a good way), what you can do to up your game, and finish off with a few things that could be considered ‘limiting factors’ then it comes to producing top-notch shots.
SPOTTING AMATEUR FOOTAGE
1. PANNY PAN PAN
This one is the MOST common. Seeing footage that is looking at one thing, then quickly and suddenly pans to the right or left, and stops arbitrarily. This is usually due to a heavy finger on the control stick, no software dampening, and a pilot / camera operator that wants to ‘look around’.
If you see shots doing the panny-pan-pan, it takes you out of the shot immediately. Don’t do this, please.
2. HIGH AND WIDE
We get our first drone and the first thing we want to do is see the world from above! So we hit max altitude and just start filming everything from the sky.
Contrary to popular belief, most of our best and most interesting shots are within about 8m of the subject. Not very high at all, just a few storeys.
We do go up to a few hundred feet when we need to see over a hill or see an entire city, but that’s for very specific reasons.
Think about what you’d like to show and how low you can shoot it while still seeing what you want to see. We often shoot upward a little bit, too, for instance shooting UP at a couple on a balcony. It utilizes the drone, but doesn’t immediately look like a drone shot. See? Trickery. There’s a lot of that in cinema.
3. HIGH FRAME RATE / SMALL SHUTTER ANGLE
I could go on a lot about this one, but if you watch enough footage, you’ll start to notice a difference in the *feel* of a shot at 24 frames per second (fps) vs 60fps. We’re used to 60fps for sports and action, but when we see National Geographic or movies in theatres, they’re almost always shown at 24fps. That’s what we know as “cinematic”. The average person doesn’t know that their eyes can tell the difference, but they can, and it evokes different emotions in the viewer to see something that looks smooth, rather than like a baseball game.
To shoot at 24fps (technically 23.976fps, the cinematic standard called ‘24p’) unless you plan to slow the footage down later. That said, if you’re doing that on anything other than an Inspire 2, or SONY or ARRI or RED camera (there are a few others, but nothing you’ll get on a drone for under $5,000) you’re going to have a reduction in quality when you shoot slow-mo. Sometimes it’s worth it (people jumping off a dock), sometimes it isn’t (a cityscape or mountain view).
Lastly, watch your shutter angle. Make sure that your SHUTTER SPEED is roughly TWICE your FRAME RATE. There are lots of resources out there about this and why. If you’re shooting 24p, your shutter speed should be 1/48th of a second, or more commonly 1/50th because that’s what camera manufacturers allow.
This gives you the right amount of motion blur, not leading your footage to look muddy or blurry, or look like a war scene from Saving Private Ryan, jittery and very sharp.
4. FOOTAGE OF YOU
You ever notice you never see the film crew in the latest Star Wars movies? Or any movie, really? Hiding ‘how it’s done’ is a technique employed by film crews to maintain the mystery in storytelling and maintain the plausibility of what the viewer sees. They moment they see a film crew, or a shot of you, they stop thinking about the beauty or the possibilities, and say “Oh hey, that’s Jaclyn”.
There’s nothing wrong with taking a “Dronie”, or filming yourself doing something! But if you’re looking for cinematic results, avoid having yourself in the shot unless you’re actually the subject (skiing, hiking, wake boarding, hugging your fiancée, whatever you’re doing).
5. RECOGNIZEABLE LOCATIONS
When I see popular parks or hiking trails in footage, it takes me right out of what I’m watching. I don’t want to know where it was shot, I want to see something new and exciting. Show me a place that I’ve never seen, and if you’re really good, I won’t be able to find. I don’t want to see another shot of Lake Louise (never mind the fact that flying your drone there is prohibited).
6. ILLEGAL THINGS
Just as above, the moment the viewer sees something they recognize, the moment they see something sketchy or illegal-looking, they’re gonna forget all about how beautiful it looks. Just avoid this at all costs, for many reasons.
7. TOO LONG
Showing off one thing: 30 secs
Showing off a location with different views: 60 secs
Telling a story: 2 mins
For ALL DRONE FOOTAGE, it’s easy to overdo it. Don’t go over a minute for most videos - this will ensure that you’re using only the best shots, that you’re keeping the viewer’s attention, and that the viewer will likely finish watching the video which is good for you, and good for your social media algorithms. Videos that get dropped half way through by every single viewer get punished and shown less in news feeds and search results.
Our drone reel, that summarizes an entire year’s worth of work, is only 1m 55s long. Under two minutes, for showing footage from over ten different shoots.
8. MUSIC
If you’re gonna snag copyrighted music (I know lots of folks do) at LEAST credit the artist both in the description and in an opening and closing credit.
Better yet, use rights-free music (there’s LOTS on YouTube and SoundCloud) or subscribe to a service like SoundStripe where YOU get the synchronization rights to use their music for gain or profit, and the artist gets paid for every song you use.
GETTING IT RIGHT
I’m going to talk a little now about upping your cinema game. These are hopefully things you haven’t considered that will up the production value of your footage and final drone videos.
1. STORYBOARD
Draw out ALL of the shots you want, IN ORDER, before you shoot. Get used to planning and following a storyboard. It will save you time, save you shooting too much excess, and save you hunting for ideas while the drone is in the air.
2. ND Filters
Just like with photography but even more importantly with video, you will likely need an ND between ND8 (0.9) and ND64 (1.8) to limit the amount of light entering the lens and allow you to keep that shutter speed at 1/50th instead of 1/2000th, which will drastically and negatively affect your image.
3. PLAN AND FLY SAFELY
Know where you’re flying. Look around. Know the closest airport and the type of airspace. Is it a popular area? How do you plan to ensure you have a safe flight and maintain Visual Line Of Sight (VLOS) at all times?
See what I wrote on Avoiding a Crash for the features of a good place to fly, methods for safe flight, and things to check before and after flying to ensure you’ll be ready to fly again.
4. WORK WITH A FRIEND
It’s always wise to have a second pair of eyes on the drone or on the shot, to help you see things you might not, and collaborate on ideas and ways of showing your subject.
They can double check your settings, watch your shot, suggest new flight paths, and give you more options when editing later.
5. EXPORT GOOD BIT RATES
When exporting to something like h.264, for 1080p export at 8mbps, and at least 20mbps for 4K. Unless you’re using a REALLY nice drone, exporting higher will just take longer to upload and process on social media, without many noticeable differences in footage quality.
6. USE A HOOK
What can you do to WOW the viewer in the first 3-5 seconds?
This is when most people decide whether they’re going to watch your video or not. Don’t open with something mediocre. The only time you want to open slow is when you’re absolutely positive that the shot is something intriguing that is going to make the viewer want more.
7. USE THE LIGHT
Shoot at sunrise, shoot at sunset. Shoot in the morning and evening, mainly. Shooting midday is a sure sign of a drone pilot that didn’t plan, and I can guarantee you’ll have a MUCH harder time making the viewer say “wow” when you shot your drone footage just after lunch.
Get up first thing in the morning and go drone that, come home and see the difference. I guarantee you will. Fog, cool clouds, long shadows… all sorts of beautiful things happen when the sun is low.
WHAT’S HOLDING YOU BACK
This section is a bit of a reality check, but also a bit of a nudge to just get shooting.
1. COMPRESSION
Y’ever watch footage from a DJI Mavic and feel like the shot is going jut-jut-jut-jut? That’s the compression of the drone using keyframes. The motion doesn’t show as well when the drone compresses the footage, only keeping every eighth frame or so. This shows in footage from all sorts of different compact cameras and there isn’t a lot you can do about it, sorry. It’s what we get for not having $5,000 for a Sony A7iii and wanting our camera to also be able to perform the miracle of flight.
2. SENSOR SIZE AND SENSITIVITY
Smaller sensors = less light and more grain
Shooting in dark situations with small cameras will never be a good idea. That said, who cares if your shot is noisy, it could still be really cool. If you aren’t a Hollywood filmmaker, digital image noise is just a fact of life. It will show in your images, but the people who will notice aren’t the type of people you’re trying to impress anyway. :)
3. DYNAMIC RANGE
… Really only an issue for sunrise / sunset. Just expose a little on the dark side so that you can see the sun and clouds and such (don’t leave a big white overexposed sky) and you’ll be just fine.
4. YOU
You are the only other thing that will hold you back. Go practice, fly more, and fly more. Watch videos, research, plan, and fly some more. Keep learning about cinema and professional grade footage from YouTube, or websites like this one and I’m sure in a year, you’ll look back on this week’s footage and say “What was I even thinking”.
Thanks for reading!
If you haven’t already, take a look at our full article about Flying in Calgary, or subscribe to our YouTube Channel to keep up with our happenings, tech and drone-related reviews specific to flying and operating in Canada.
Feel free to tweet any questions to @AskYellowhouse and I’ll get back to you personally!
Happy flying!
Arden Shibley
Co-owner / Lead Pilot
Yellowhouse Aerial Inc.
https://www.yellowhouseaerial.ca