been editing a bunch of footage from the last few months and i keep noticing the same problem in all of it ? everything looks kind of boring even when the location is genuinely cool. like i flew over this incredible coastal area last spring and the raw footage is fine but when i sit down to edit it i just feel like something is missing and i cant put my finger on what

i think its a composition thing? like on the ground i naturally think about rule of thirds and leading lines and all that but when im up in the air i kind of forget all of it and just point the camera at the pretty thing. do you guys have like a mental checklist or something you run through before you start your shots? or is it just something that gets more intuitive over time

also curious if anyone has thoughts on editing ? im using lightroom for the stills and resolve for video and i feel like im overprocessing everything. how do you know when to stop

honestly yeah i do think about it before i fly but it took me a long time to get there. what helped me was actually scouting on google earth before i even show up to a location ? you can get a rough sense of the shapes and shadows and where the interesting lines are going to be. then when im actually flying i have a few compositions already in my head and i just try to find them instead of improvising the whole thing. still leaves room to be spontaneous but at least you have a starting point

for the overprocessing thing in lightroom ? the trick that worked for me was to do all my edits and then drop the opacity of the adjustment back by like 20-30% at the end. also just stepping away for a day and looking at it fresh, you spot the overdone stuff immediately when you havent been staring at it for two hours

the coastal footage problem is usually that everything is horizontal ? water, horizon, beach ? and theres nothing to break it up vertically so your eye doesnt know where to go. try flying lower than you think you should and getting something in the foreground, rocks or a pier or even just the wave patterns up close. changes everything. i also find that slow lateral moves work way better for coastal stuff than just hovering and panning, gives the edit somethign to breathe

re: resolve vs lightroom, i actually do a base grade in resolve for the stills i export from video sequences too, just habit at this point. but yeah knowing when to stop is a real skill and i think you just kind of calibrate over time by watching other peoples work and noticing what you like and what feels overdone to you