so ive been flying for about 8 months now and my footage still just looks like... drone footage. you know what i mean? like its technically fine, no jello, exposure is okay, but it just doesnt have that cinematic feel that i see from other people posting here and on youtube. im shooting on a mini 3 pro with nd filters, manual settings, 4k 30fps, and i follow the 180 degree shutter rule. i color grade in davinci resolve which i also dont feel like im doing right if im being honest.

i think the issue might be my actual flying? like i dont really plan out my shots, i kind of just find something cool and hover around it hoping something works. is that a me problem or does it get better with experience. also my pulls and pushes are never slow enough even when i think im going slow.

the planning thing is huge and honestly probably the main thing. before i even spin up motors i spend like 10-15 minutes just walking around the location on foot, looking at angles, figuring out where the light is gonna be and what direction im gonna fly. it sounds tedious but the difference it made for me was massive. also for slow movements ? try mapping your stick sensitivity curves down in the assistant software, i dropped mine to like 40% expo and it made crawling shots way more controllable. the hover-and-pan thing you describe is kind of a trap early on because it feels like you're doing something but it rarely translates well to the edit.

on the resolve stuff, are you shooting in d-log or standard? if you're grading standard color profile footage that's probably part of why it feels flat or weird when you push it.

im in basically the same boat as you so take this with a grain of salt but what helped me was just watching the shots i wanted to recreate frame by frame and trying to reverse engineer them. like pause it and ask yourself ok where was the drone, how fast was it moving, what was it moving toward or away from. a lot of times i realized the shots i thought were complex were actually just really slow reveals or orbits but done with way more patience than i had. also second what the guy above said about expo curves, game changer for slow stuff.