so ive been flying for about a year now mostly just messing around and getting comfortable with the sticks but lately ive been trying to actually make my footage look good instead of just random clips of stuff. i watched a bunch of youtube videos about cinematic drone shots and everyone talks about the reveal shot and the orbit and whatever but nobody really explains how they actually plan it out before they get to the spot

like do you use google earth to scout? do you just show up and figure it out? im going to this old barn next weekend and i want to actually come home with something usable for once instead of 20 minutes of mediocre hover footage. any tips from people who actually do this kind of thing would be really appreciated

Google Earth is honestly my first stop for any new location, you can get a decent sense of the surroundings, where the sun will be roughly, any obstacles you might not see from ground level. I also use an app called PhotoPills sometimes for the sun position stuff if I really care about golden hour timing.

But honestly for something like a barn, half of it is just walking around on foot first before you even pull the drone out. Figure out the best angle from the ground and then extrapolate upward. The reveals and pullbacks tend to work best when you start low and close and there's something interesting in the foreground ? a fence, some overgrown grass, whatever. With a barn you've got a lot to work with. Just dont rush into the air the second you arrive, that's where most people lose their best shots.

yeah same boat as you honestly, i just started trying to be more intentional about it. one thing that helped me was writing down like 3 or 4 shots i definitely wanted before i left the house. even if i didnt get all of them it kept me from just hovering around aimlessly burning through battery. for a barn i'd probably do a slow orbit at medium height, maybe a top-down looking straight down if the roof looks interesting, and then some kind of low approach shot through whatever is in front of it. keep it simple at first