ok so ive been flying for about 8 months now and my footage honestly just looks like... footage. like its fine, its stable, i can tell whats going on but it doesnt have that cinematic feel that i see everywhere on youtube and instagram. i know part of it is the edit but i feel like even before the edit my clips just dont look interesting.

ive been trying to do orbit shots and dronie reveals but they always feel a little rushed or the framing is off by the time i get to the good part. do you guys plan this stuff out ahead of time or is it more of a feel thing? and whats your actual process when you get home with the footage, do you color grade everything or just slap a lut on it and call it done

flying a mini 4 pro if that matters. shooting in d-log m

the biggest thing that changed my footage was just slowing down. like literally slowing down during the shot, not just in post. i used to zip around thinking faster = more dynamic but smooth slow movements with a good subject just hits different. the mini 4 pro in d-log m is actually great for this so youre already ahead of most people.

for orbits i usually set a waypoint or use the focus track feature and then manually adjust altitude and distance as i go. takes practice but once it clicks it clicks. also stop and think about where the sun is before you start the shot, backlit subjects with a little lens flare coming in can turn a mediocre clip into something that feels intentional.

for editing i do a rough cut first, pull out the clips i actually like, then do a primary color grade before touching any lut. a lot of people slap a lut on log footage and wonder why it looks weird. you gotta at least do a basic exposure and white balance correction first so the lut has something decent to work with

same boat as you honestly, been trying to figure this out for months. one thing that helped me was watching the shots i liked frame by frame to reverse engineer what the pilot actually did. a lot of those smooth reveals are like two or three movements combined at once, forward + slowly descending + rotating slightly. its subtle but that layering is what makes it feel cinematic vs just flying toward something