Mastering the Perfect Drone Shot with Automated Flight Paths
Capturing a smooth, well-framed, and precisely timed drone shot has always been a challenge for the DigEd drone pilots. Even with something as simple as generic aerial b-roll, pilots must juggle flight regulations, physical obstacles, and camera settings—resulting in about 70% of the footage being less than ideal for projects.
Now, imagine filming a scripted scene with actors, movement, close obstacles, strict safety regulations, precise camera movements, and all the other variables that can affect drone footage. It’s a tough challenge. Retaking a scene repeatedly isn’t an option, and battery life is limited.
The Solution: Automated Flight Paths
At a recent shoot, our pilots experimented with automated flight paths for scripted scenes—and the results were promising, especially for a first attempt!
To set up an automated flight path, the pilot first manually flies the scene, recording GPS waypoints that dictate where the drone should be at specific times. At each waypoint, camera movements are also programmed to ensure perfect framing. Once the flight path is set, a test run is conducted to fine-tune GPS positions, speed, and timing to capture exactly what’s needed.
The best part? All of this setup happens before actors step on set, reducing safety risks and avoiding unnecessary retakes while we dial in flight settings.
3, 2, 1… ACTION!
With everything in place, our actor was cued to begin, and we triggered the automated flight. The drone performed exactly as planned. Of course, the pilot remained in control, ready to intervene if needed.
Here is a short video loop of some of the interesting movements we were able to capture with this method.
Additional Benefits
Beyond achieving a perfectly timed shot, we discovered several other advantages to flying this way, such as:
- Enhanced focus on cinematography: With flight controls automated, the pilot could focus more on composition, essentially taking on a Director of Photography role.
- Safer flights: we felt the entire flight was a safer experience as there were fewer unknown variables. We knew the drone wouldn’t meet obstacles, or fly to close to the actor, as those variables were predefined.
What’s Next?
With a successful proof of concept, we would like to take this further by adopting this technique on future drone operations. Another future goal is building the GPS flight data into a .KMZ file while in the office, removing some of that setup time while on-location. Either way, this was a successful experiment, that will certainly become useful going forward.
I’ll stop droning-on now.. Watch this space!