Top Tips for Making Award-Winning Drone Videos

rferfewdwerDo you want to make a career in drone film making? Are into drone filming just for fun? If you answer yes to both questions it is better to keep improving your skills. When you capture a video and show it to your friends and family, you are rarely going to hear an honest comment. And, unless you don’t get some honest feedback you won’t be able to improve your skills.

So, how would you get honest an honest feedback about your drone videos?

One of the best things can be participating in various drone cinematography contests and awards. If you are new to the field, you’ll surely not feel confident in getting into competition. So, here we are sharing some tips that can help you taking an award-winning video. When you know some pro-tips, you’ll surely get the confidence to show your work to the whole world.

The Reveal Shot – This is one of the favorite cinematography techniques of many famous cinematographers. The trick is very simple; start capturing from a point where your subject is entirely out of the shot and then slowly move to reveal your subject. The reveal shot brings the element of surprise to your video footage.

The Tilt Reveal – This is a shot that always brings a magical effect to the footage. But, you’ll need to handle your camera gimbals movement simultaneously with the drone movement. Tilt the camera down when you start capturing the video. Slowly move the camera gimbal up while moving your drone in the forward or backward direction. If you start at a distance from your subject you can choose to come forward and go backward if you start with a lesser distance from your subject.

The Fly Over – Movies, TV series, commercial Ads, you can see this technique being used almost everywhere. But, the repetitive uses have not robbed of the charm of this technique. You can use the fly over technique to bring a magical effect in your video. The trick that works here is simple; you need to start from a distance from your subject and move slowly towards it. The one thing you must keep in mind is that your subject should always be in the prime focus. Capture your subject till the drone comes just above it and then smoothly fly over it.

The Pedestal Shot – Use this shot to bring the wow effect in your video when you are capturing monuments, statues or the views above the clouds. This is easy to the master technique as you have to control only the drone movement. You do not need to play with the camera angles or the focal distance while taking the pedestal shot.

The Never-ending Crane – This is one of the simplest but effective techniques of drone filming. This is a good shot if you are capturing a landscape. Go put your drone on the ground and focus the camera towards the wider landscape and start flying your drone in the upward direction. Keep it slow and go as high as you are comfortable. And, please don’t go beyond the height prescribed by the local regulation.

The Lateral Shot – Remember traveling on the train? Didn’t you love that magical scene when all the trees, electrical poles, houses etc. seemed running in the opposite direction of the train? You can produce the same effect and catch your viewers’ attention with this simple technique. Don’t send your drone too high while taking this shot. Keep it at an optimum height and start moving sideways in a straight line. Make sure you use this technique when you have a long and un-obstacle area for moving sideways.

The Bird’s Eye – It is a very interesting technique to capture a wider area. Start with your drone at a certain height in the air. Tilt the camera downwards and move your drone to any direction in a uniform motion. You can bring some uniqueness by using a mixture of movements. Let’s say sideways and backward together.

Practice these techniques to get confident about your skills and start participating in competitions. You can check AirVuz Drone Video Award Finalists and their videos to see what winning entries look like. And, then get ready to challenge them in the next contests.

If you practice well you can obviously take some amazing award-winning shots. But, don’t enter a competition to win by hook or crook; focus on learning new techniques and improving your skills. Participate in competitions to get unbiased feedback from the viewers so that you know the level of your expertise.

Published by Kidal Delonix (1196 Posts)

Kidal Delonix is a contributor to Mr. Hoffman's blog. The views and opinions are entirely his/her own and may not reflect Mr Hoffman's views.

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