so ive been flying for about 8 months now and my footage is technically fine i guess, no crashes, exposure looks okay, but when i watch it back it just looks... flat? like its clearly drone footage but it doesnt have that cinematic feel that i see on youtube. im shooting in d-log on my mini 4 pro and i know i need to color grade but even after that it still feels off somehow.

i think part of it might be my movement? like i just kind of fly forward or do a slow pan and call it a shot but watching other peoples stuff i feel like theres something more deliberate happening. not sure if its the editing or the actual flying or both. anyone been through this phase and figured out what clicked for them

oh man yes i went through exactly this and honestly the thing that changed everything for me was slowing down my movements way more than felt natural. like when youre flying you think youre going slow but on screen it still looks rushed. i started setting a physical speed limit in the app and it felt almost comically slow in the field but the footage looked so much better.

also the other big thing ? and i know everyone says this ? is the ND filters. not for exposure necessarily but because they let you keep your shutter speed at double your framerate which gives you that natural motion blur. without it everything looks too sharp and almost video gamey. took me forever to understand why that actually mattered but once i started using them consistently the difference was pretty obvious.

for the flat look in post, are you using a proper lut for your d-log footage or just trying to color grade from scratch? if youre doing it manually without a lut as a starting point it can be really tough to get right.

same boat as you a few months ago tbh. what helped me was just studying shots i liked and trying to reverse engineer them ? like pause the video and think about where the drone must have started, what direction it moved, was it gaining altitude at the same time. a lot of the really nice looking shots are compound moves, like a slow pull back while also rising gently and rotating slightly. sounds complicated but once you practice it becomes more natural.

editing wise i also stopped cutting so fast. i used to think more cuts = more dynamic but actually holding a shot longer often makes it feel more cinematic if the movement is good enough to carry it