ok so ive been flying for about 8 months now and i watch all these youtube videos of people getting these buttery smooth cinematic shots and then i go out and my footage just looks... flat? like its technically fine, no jitter, exposure is decent, but it just doesnt have that feel to it

im shooting on a mini 3 pro, d-log m, and ive tried slowing down my movements a ton which helped a little but still not getting there. someone mentioned something about the 180 degree shutter rule to me once and i kind of get the concept but im not sure im applying it right ? like if im shooting 4k 30fps i should have my shutter at 1/60 right? been using ND filters too but honestly still feels off

is it a flying thing or an editing thing or both lol. genuinely cant tell where the problem is

yeah the 180 rule thing is right, 1/60 for 30fps ? so that part sounds fine. honestly though i think the bigger thing people dont talk about enough is just how slow you actually need to fly to get that cinematic feel. like embarrassingly slow. most beginners think they're going slow but they're still moving twice as fast as they should be for that dreamy look

the other thing that made a huge difference for me was color grading. d-log m gives you the flat image but if you just slap a LUT on it and call it a day it usually still looks off unless the LUT is matched to your specific camera profile. i spent way too long wondering why my footage looked weird before i realized i was using a generic LUT that wasnt calibrated for mini 3 specifically. there are some free ones floating around that are made for it and they're way better starting points

also ? and this sounds dumb but ? are you doing any speed ramping in the edit? even just subtle slow motion on certain moments changes the whole vibe of a clip

same boat as you a few months ago, what helped me was just focusing on one shot type at a time instead of trying to do everything. like i spent two weeks just doing reveal shots and nothing else until they felt natural. the slow pull-back-while-rising thing took me forever to get smooth but once i got it i started to understand how much of it is muscle memory on the sticks