Want to shoot amazing cinematic videos with your drone or quadcopter? I’ll show you 10 camera angles to achieve cinematic aerial shots, with DJI Phantom 4 and some footage examples on Youtube.
10 Camera Tricks: Scanning Bird’s eyes Low Altitude The Hump Obstacles Fly Across Tracking Against Crane Point of Interest
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☞ Camera Trick 1: scanning It’s a quite usual move for drone videos. With camera facing forward, you can fly the drone vertically to shoot a skyscraper or a tower, or you can fly the drone horizontally forward and backward to shot wide skyline and coastline. But just keep an eye on the altitude limit of your drone, don’t go above it or you’ll loose connection.
☞ Camera Trick 2: Bird’s eyes Lift up shot is a drone move that you aim the camera straight down, and fly up high, so you get a very nice lifting shot, showing all around the surrounding area. It’s good to reveal the landscape of a city, like this. Another creative use is to show the formation. For example, if a ground of people forming the shape of a logo, the best way to demonstrate is through lift up shot.
☞ Camera Trick 3: Low altitude If you keep you drone flying low and closer to the ground, the video looks very dynamic. But it’s better to apply this move on very opening ground which is clean and not messy.
☞ Camera Trick 4: The hump If you there’re some buildings in your flight route, you can try maintain a medium altitude and make the drone climb up a little bit when it’s about to fly over the roof. You’ll get an amazing beautiful shot.
☞ Camera Trick 5: Obstacles This is an interesting shot that you begin with the camera facing an obstacle like a wall, a tree, and fly move drone to get a sudden view of the actual object you try to show. This way you create suspense and a turning point that makes the viewers more engaged in your video.
☞ Camera Trick 6: fly across Flying a drone across a narrow space, like beneath a bridge, between two peaks or into a canyon may takes some skills, but you’ll get a really awesome shot out of it.
☞ Camera Trick 7: Active Tracking If you want to show the speed and direction of a moving object, you need to try tracking shot. This is widely used on shooting a moving car or ship. Some drones are able to automatically track a target you set and shoot videos. Just check if this auto tracking feature is included before you make the purchase.
☞ Camera Trick 8: Against shot Against shot is usually used to record a driving car. The drone flies towards a car against its direction, this will create an intense and shows the speed of the car. However, the difficulty is to keep the drone as close as possible to the car and avoid crashing into it.
☞ Camera Trick 9: crane shot When the drone flies up high and slowly move backwards with the camera facing front, you get a view that gradually becomes wider. This is usually used as the ending shot of a video with a fade out effect. There’s another upgraded version which is spinning the drone while flying up. This is usually used on the climax of a video creating a fantastic visual effect.
☞ Camera Trick 10: point of interest
You can actually make the drone circle around a point of interest you set, like a building or a tower. This special shot is usually used to show the relationship or contrast between an object and the surroundings.
These are my 10 camera tricks of drone that hopefully help you shoot an amazing aerial video. Just keep in mind and try it out!
Oh one more thing, regarding the last tip, point of interest, not all drones have that feature. So before you make the purchase of a drone, you can check if there’s this point of interest mode. Here’s a clip about how to set point of interest on a DJI drone: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGJTUIvU1eE&t=150s
