Learning to Actually Plan My Shots Before I Fly

I spent last weekend doing a proper planned shoot for the first time. Same Mini 4 Pro I've been flying since October, same location I've been to probably fifteen times. But this time I actually sat down the night before and thought about what I wanted to walk away with. Big difference. Huge, actually.

The "Storyboard" Thing (Sort Of)

I'm not an animator or a filmmaker so when people say storyboard I get a little intimidated. But what I actually did was just open my notes app and write down a list of shots. Like literally: wide reveal of the reservoir from the east side, slow push-in toward the dam, low orbit around the pine cluster near the parking lot, that kind of thing. Maybe twelve shots total. Nothing fancy, just a rough sequence I could visualize.

I also looked at Google Earth the night before and figured out where the sun was going to be during my shoot window. I used an app called PhotoPills for this — I've seen photographers mention it a ton and finally downloaded it. The AR feature where you can hold your phone up and see where the sun will rise or set is genuinely useful. I knew I wanted backlit shots of the treeline and without checking I probably would have shown up on the wrong side and gotten flat front lighting like I did last time.

Honestly the planning part took maybe forty minutes total and it changed the whole shoot. When I landed I had eleven of my twelve planned shots. The one I missed was a low pass under some overhanging branches that I chickened out of, which is fine, that's a confidence thing I'll work on separately.

Smooth Movement Actually Requires Slower Everything

One thing I've been fighting since I started is jerky movement. I watch videos from people like Potato Jet or some of the other creators on YouTube and their footage just glides. Mine looked like I was flying through turbulence even on calm days.

I finally figured out a big part of my problem. I had my expo settings barely touched and my sensitivity was basically at defaults. Once I bumped my expo up on the sticks — I'm running about 0.35 expo on both pitch/roll and yaw now — the inputs felt a lot more gradual. Small stick movements don't immediately translate into big lurchy movements. This sounds like obvious beginner stuff but nobody told me and I didn't think to dig into it until someone in the comments here pointed me toward it.

The other thing that helped was just slowing way down physically. I used to think you needed speed to make aerial footage look cinematic. No. A six-second slow orbit that covers maybe thirty degrees of arc looks way better than me whipping around a subject in three seconds. I set a max speed in the DJI Fly app settings and kept myself capped. Felt painfully slow in the air but on the screen it looked smooth for the first time.

Shooting for the Edit, Not Just Shooting

This is the part that I think was missing most from my first attempt. I went out and just grabbed stuff and hoped editing would save it. Spoiler: it didn't. Editing can't fix bad raw footage, it can only arrange it.

This time I made sure I had a beginning shot, some middle detail shots, and something that could work as an ending. For me that ending was a slow backward reveal from the dam until the whole reservoir came into frame with the hills behind it. I shot it three times to make sure I had a clean take.

I also started recording a few seconds before and after each move. So if I'm doing a push-in, I let the drone sit still for three seconds, do the push, then let it sit still again. That gives me handles in the edit so I'm not scrambling to find a clean cut point. This is such a small thing but it makes the editing process so much less frustrating.

My Edit Workflow Right Now

I'm using DaVinci Resolve for editing, free version. Took me a few weeks to get comfortable with it but I'm glad I pushed through because the color tools are genuinely great even at no cost. My basic flow right now is: import the D-Log M footage, create a new timeline at 4K 30fps, apply a LUT to get a starting point (I bought a small pack from a creator whose work I liked for like twelve dollars), then do my cuts, then go back and do per-clip color adjustments if something looks off.

I'm not doing anything fancy with audio right now. Just finding royalty-free music on Artlist — I have the basic subscription — and cutting to beats loosely. I'd like to get better at music sync but one thing at a time.

The video I made from this shoot is about two and a half minutes long. It's the first thing I've made that I actually feel okay sharing. I put it up on my personal Instagram and got some genuinely nice feedback from people I know, which felt good after weeks of thinking I was terrible at this.

What I'm Working On Next

A few things I want to get better at before winter really locks me out of flying:

The Dronie shot — where you start close to a subject and fly backward while ascending. I've tried this twice and both times the movement felt uneven because I was riding two sticks at once without much coordination. I think this is just practice reps.

Better horizon leveling. I noticed in a couple of my shots the horizon had a slight tilt that I didn't catch in the air. Going to be more deliberate about checking this before I start a move.

Shooting in lower light. I know this is risky on the Mini 4 Pro because the sensor isn't huge but I want to experiment with golden hour and maybe some dusk shots. That's kind of why I named this blog what I named it, so I feel like I have to eventually make it relevant.

If anyone has tips on multi-stick coordination for complex moves I'd genuinely love to hear them in the comments. I've watched tutorials but I think I just need someone to explain the mental approach to it because the physical part isn't clicking yet. Thanks for reading and hopefully the next one I post will have actual footage attached.