ok so ive been flying for about 8 months now and my footage is... fine i guess. like technically its not shaky or anything, ND filters are on, i shoot in d-log, 4k 60fps. but when i watch it back it just looks like drone footage, not like the stuff i see on youtube where it feels almost like a movie.

i think maybe its a combination of things, my movements are too fast? or maybe im not planning the shots before i take off? honestly not sure. i watched a couple tutorials but they all seem to skip over the part where they explain how they actually think about a shot before flying it. like what are you even looking for when you scout a location. any advice from people who have actually figured this out would be great because im starting to feel like im missing something obvious

the biggest thing that changed my footage was slowing everything way down. like i thought i was flying slow but i wasnt. try cutting your stick sensitivity in half and then go slower than that. cinematic movement is almost uncomfortably slow when youre flying it, but on playback it looks really intentional and smooth.

also the shot planning thing you mentioned is real. i started spending like 10-15 minutes just walking around a location before i even turn on the drone, just looking at lines and light and thinking about where i want the camera to end and where i want it to start. the reveal shots that look so good are usually pretty simple mechanically, its just that someone thought about them first. like a slow push forward that ends with a mountain coming into frame, thats not complicated to fly, but you have to know its there to fly it.

one more thing and then im done rambling ? your color grade matters a lot more than people say. d-log is flat on purpose but if you just slap a lut on it without doing any correction first its gonna look weird. spend time on the grade.

I had the exact same problem honestly and what helped me was watching my own footage back and just asking myself when i got bored. like literally noting the timestamp when my eyes started wandering and then going back to see what the camera was doing. usually it was during a move that was either too fast, too short, or just going nowhere visually. most of my shots were only 4 or 5 seconds which is nowhere near long enough to feel cinematic.