Two issues:  1.  In the selfie mode, the drone recognizes me, responds to the hand gestures, including the wave.  It retreats, as expected, about 10 feet or so and begins following me for about 30 feet, then stops in mid-air.  It hovers, but doesn't respond to the 'Y' command to land.  After about 10 minutes it soars to about 100 feet, locates the take-off spot and descends to about 24 inches above it, but it won't land until the battery depletes.  Second:  No video is recorded.  Do I have to activate the camera?

You either have to set the drone recording video before putting it in Gesture mode, or activate recording by doing the one-arm-at-45-degrees gesture.

No idea why its flying around the place, sounds like it was doing an emergency return to home, was the battery getting low?

I have read that you need to be wearing contrasting colors for it to see the gestures.  It worked for me wearing a brown coat when there was snow on the ground, but now the snow is gone and it won't see me against the brown grass.  Maybe you were too camouflaged?