ok so ive been flying for about 8 months now and i can handle the sticks pretty well at this point, no crashes since like month two. but my videos are just... bad. not technically bad i guess, the footage is sharp and exposure is fine. but when i sit down to edit i realize i have like 40 clips of basically the same thing and nothing actually cuts together well.

i watched a bunch of youtube tutorials on cinematic drone shots, the whole thing about reveals and orbits and hypers and whatever, but when im actually out there i just fly around and hope something looks good. i dont have any kind of shot list or plan and i think thats my problem but i dont even know where to start with that.

do you guys actually plan this stuff out ahead of time? like do you scout on google earth or just show up and feel it out? any advice would be genuinely helpful because right now my hard drive is full of footage that i never end up using

yeah this was me for probably the first year honestly. the thing that helped most was forcing myself to think in terms of a beginning middle and end before i even take off. sounds obvious but like, decide what the hero shot is first ? the one clip you definitely want ? and then plan everything else around it. if im shooting a beach for example i know i want a low fast forward push over the water at golden hour, so i build everything else around getting to that shot with the light right.

google earth pro is genuinely underrated for scouting, you can check sun angles with the time slider which is huge. also i started keeping a notes app open and just jotting down 4 or 5 shot ideas the night before. doesnt have to be a full storyboard or anything. even just writing 'low reverse pull from the dock, orbit around the lighthouse, top down spiral descent' gives you something to work from instead of just flying around vibing.

the editing thing gets way easier once you have intentional variety in your clips ? different altitudes, different speeds, different angles. your brain starts to think about the edit while youre flying which is kind of a weird skill but it does develop

honestly same boat as you a few months ago. one thing that kinda clicked for me was watching the edit first ? like find a video you want your footage to feel like and just watch how they sequence shots. wide establishing, then medium, then close or detail, then back out. once i started thinking about it that way i at least knew i needed to get those different types instead of just doing orbits the whole time lol