With flying a drone and recording video comes a whole list of things that are specific to drone footage. Hopefully you have a stable gimbal and are performing shots that are well thought out so that your usable takes aren’t only in the range of 3-4 seconds.
Best editing software?
I’d say go with Adobe Creative Suite. The combo of Premiere Pro/After Effects is just too powerful, and there are some key features to both that can make your footage stand out above the rest. Some of these effects include:
Premiere Pro/After Effects:
PP-Warp Stabilizer: If you have a little too much movement, warp stabilize does a great job of fixing that.
PP-Film Convert: Film convert can take your footage and do just that into a whole slew of film styles that make the footage more gradeable/correctable.
PP- Magic Bullet Looks: An all-in-one color grading/correcting suite of tools and looks
PP/AE- Knoll Light Factory: Want to make those flares really come to life? There are tons of light flares perfectly suited for adjustment layers on footage.
PP/AE- Twixtor: Sure, 60 fps can be slowed, but to capture truly captivating slow mo’s, use Twixtor’s frame interpolation so you can slow footage way way down and preserve a smooth look.
AE- Cineware: Want to work inside AE with 3D animations? Cineware now allows you to do that, such as put in cool 3d animations into 2d footage once it’s been motion-tracked.
So you’ve got all these cool tools, what should you do with them?
It all depends on the client, but if you’re making your own reel, I suggest you really do some research into what is big out there right now. That way, you’ll not only showcase your ability to fly, but also showcase the ability to stay on top of what are the desired effects my top clients right now. Some good ones right now are:
– Motion-Tracked footage: This means you track a 3D camera through your footage so you can stick 3D text inside of it. This can come out looking cheesy, so it’s advised you check out Greyscale Gorilla or digitaltutors.com for some information.
– Time Remapping: If you don’t know how to do this, it’s actually quite easy. But, this will allow you to ramp up or ramp down footage speeds. You can even set it to match the music inside After Effects.
– Sun Flares/Planet Earth: We’re tired of the same landscape pan-down, pan-up shots. Set up your shot so you can get a compelling look straight down a forest of trees, or an obscured shot of the sun such that you get beautiful lens flaring. Do that, then take it into AE/PP and color grade it such that you create a unique view. Matte the footage, or isolate a single color slightly more than the rest, making sure not to oversaturate the footage. We want to see if you can do more than just show us saturated landscapes from the air.
Good luck flying, and better luck editing!
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