Drone video
Drone videography is the craft of moving a camera through the air slowly enough that a viewer can read what is in the frame, and it is mostly a flying skill rather than a camera one. The footage that fails does so for the same three reasons every time: it moves too fast, it lasts too long, and it changes direction in the middle. A single clip of 8 seconds, flown in one straight line at walking pace, will survive an edit that 10 minutes of wandering will not.
Why most drone footage cannot be used
Most drone footage cannot be used because it was flown as a flight and not as a shot. The aircraft takes off, climbs, turns to look at something, drifts while the pilot decides, turns again, and comes back, and every decision shows in the recording. An editor, even one who is you on a wet Sunday, needs clips with a beginning and an end and one intention in between.
- Speed, because at 40 kilometres per hour near the ground the frame smears and the eye has nothing to fix on.
- Length, because a clip running 2 minutes holds perhaps 6 seconds anybody will watch.
- Mixed inputs, because moving forward while rotating while climbing draws a curve nobody can follow.
- Height, because at 100 metres nothing in the frame changes size and movement stops reading as movement.
- Wind, which the aircraft corrects with small tilts that appear as a slow rocking.
The fix is to decide the move before take off, fly one move per clip, and land with fewer, shorter, better clips than you expected.
The six moves that carry an edit
Six camera moves do nearly all the work in aerial footage, and each is worth practising until it can be flown without thinking about the sticks.
- Fly forward, low and level, past a fixed object such as a wall, a hedge or a boat.
- Fly backwards away from a subject, which reveals the surroundings and is the strongest opening shot there is.
- Rise vertically with the camera pointed straight down, so the pattern on the ground opens out.
- Orbit a subject at a constant radius, which needs roll and yaw together and is the hardest of the six to fly by hand.
- Fly sideways along a line, a coast, a row of trees or a terrace, keeping the line at the same place in the frame.
- Tilt the camera up from the ground to the horizon while holding position, which is the only one of the six flown from a hover.
Caution
The reveal, flown backwards, is flown blind. Most machines have no rear sensors, so nothing is watching the branch, cable or lamp post behind the aircraft. Fly the line forwards first with your eyes on it, then fly it in reverse to record.
Speed, length and how to get both right
Fly slower than feels right and stop sooner than feels finished. A working figure is walking pace, roughly 5 kilometres per hour, within 20 metres of an object, rising to a jog for wide shots where nothing passes close. Most machines have a cine or tripod mode that halves the stick response and softens the stops, and most footage should be shot in it.
On length, record 8 to 12 seconds per clip, starting 2 seconds before the move and stopping 2 seconds after. Those handles let an edit cut on the move rather than on the shudder at the start of it. Twelve good clips is a finished piece.
The settings that decide whether it looks like video or like a security camera
Four settings do most of the work, and they interact, so set them together on the ground.
| Setting | Sensible starting point | What it fixes |
|---|---|---|
| Frame rate | 25 or 30 frames per second for normal speed, 50 or 60 for slow motion | Whether the footage can be slowed down later |
| Shutter speed | Twice the frame rate, so 1/50 at 25 frames per second | Natural motion blur instead of a stuttery, over sharp picture |
| Neutral density filter | A darker filter in bright sun, none under cloud | Lets the slow shutter above stay possible outdoors |
| Resolution | 4K, meaning 3840 by 2160 pixels, where the machine offers it | Room to crop and stabilise without losing detail |
The shutter rule is the one people skip and the one that most changes the look. Video shot at 1/1000 of a second in bright sun is technically sharper and looks wrong, because each frame is frozen and the eye expects a little blur between them. That is what the filters are for.
What a video machine costs, and what best means here
Prices run from the under fifty pound band, where the camera is unstabilised and the footage is a souvenir, through a middle band of roughly two hundred to five hundred pounds where a stabilised camera, position hold and a usable flight time arrive together, and on into higher bands that buy sensor size, range and low light performance. Listings quoted in other currencies and other markets, including the Indian ones that turn up in searches, describe different models on different release cycles and say nothing about United Kingdom prices.
Best for video resolves into 4 requirements rather than a model name: a mechanically stabilised camera, a mode that slows the stick response, the ability to fit a filter, and a flight time long enough that you are not landing mid sequence. Beyond those, the difference between a good clip and a poor one is the flying. Long range drones buy distance rather than picture quality, and the practical limit on that distance is the requirement to keep the aircraft in sight, which the Civil Aviation Authority publishes with the rest of the United Kingdom requirements. Those requirements change, so read the current version on the CAA's own pages before planning a shot that goes a long way out.
Shooting so that the edit is possible
Shoot with the edit in mind and the edit takes an evening rather than a weekend. Get 1 wide establishing shot of the location, 3 or 4 moves on the subject, and 1 close detail. Repeat each move twice, since the second attempt is almost always smoother. Keep the camera settings identical across the flight so the clips grade together. Drone photography and video are usually flown on the same outing, and the discipline is the same in both: decide the frame on the ground, fly to it, and stop. Gimbals do the fine correction, but nothing corrects a move flown too fast.