If you are just starting out in drone videography and you want to test your skills, you need to remember a number of things: plan ahead your shot list, shoot in high definition, fly slowly to take more cinematic shots, and shoot more than you need for video fillers.

Avoid making rookie mistakes by following all these things. Remember that in videography and photography, one small move can lead to the failure of the project.

Plan ahead your shot list

Before going to the location of the shoot, make sure you have listed down all the shots you want to take. This way, you won’t miss anything and you will get everything you need. Visit the location and look around the area. What are the things you want to take videos of?

Which angles should you use? Where is the sun positioned? What directions can you fly to? Imagine how you want your video to look like and then list down the different shots you will be needing to complete the output.

Shoot in high definition

It’s a pain to edit 4K videos especially if your software and computer aren’t that fast. It’s worth the effort, though, trust us. Even though most videographers export edited videos in 1080p, the reason why we suggest shooting in 4K is that it gives more room to adjust and tweak the videos.

With 4K, you can zoom in quite a lot without losing any of the original quality. If there’s something on the edges that ruin the shot, you can crop the video without losing the quality.

Fly slowly to take more cinematic shots

One of the things that videographers do wrong is to fly too fast. They will lose many of the shots they need to take and they would need to edit the video to go slower during post-production.

The time it takes to edit the videos can be cut down by simply going slow when flying over a subject. You can get that slow-motion feeling without actually slowing down the video using an editing software.

Shoot more than you need

Regardless if you are using a drone, a DLSR or any other type of camera, you need to remember to shoot more than you need.

What you want as a videographer is plenty of raw footage to choose from when you begin to edit the videos. These shots can be used as fillers or as backgrounds during transitions to new frames.