Adrian and Alexandra here! We are a couple from Romania in love with nature and mountains.
Alexandra has been making annual videos for quite some time now, but at the beginning of 2019 we bought our very own DJI Mavic Air, so this is our first annual video made almost entirely with drone footage. Now we are working together on our video projects, as Adrian is piloting the drone and Alexandra is the creative behind the story of our videos. We were very excited to hear about the contest, because we were going to make this annual video anyway, and having a deadline really helped us get it done in a timely manner
2019 was a great year and we wanted to remember it the best we could. We had two longer vacations, one in Iceland and one in Greece, and also a lot of weekend hiking trips in our beautiful mountains here in Romania, where most of our footage is from.
We had our drone with us in ALL of our trips, but we do not have footage from all of them, because a few times we could not fly the drone at all, due to bad weather conditions (storms, rain, high winds, etc). However, we did manage to get some nice shots from all 4 seasons, which you can see in the video.
Most of the footage was captured with our DJI Mavic Air (ALL except the static shots in the beginning and the end, and the one at 1:06, which were shot with a Sony Alpha A6500 + 16-50 mm / Sigma 30 mm 1.4).
Alexandra picked a very touching song to go with the video, and we would be so very happy if people who saw our video also paid attention to the lyrics, because the message is so moving and powerful.
Anyway, we really hope you like it, we put a lot of work and energy into making this video and we are very excited about being able to finally share it with the world.
As for tips and tricks, we don’t have a lot to share, because we are not very experienced (this is just the first drone year), but so far we have learned the following:
Shooting:
For its size, Mavic Air is very stable in various conditions, including strong wind up to 40kph
Before shooting, we always do a thorough pre-flight check and make a sure the drone is set to 25fps.
We use ND filters to control the Shutter speed, in order to achieve the most cinematic look possible (valid for Mavic Air, at least). We have mostly used ND8, 16 and 32.
We have our Contrast, Saturation and Sharpness settings set at 0. It’s always best to do all the color-grading in post-processing. Otherwise the quality suffers.
We haven’t tried very sophisticated shooting methods this first year and we mostly focused on manual flying, but we did try to vary our angles as much as possible, playing around with our gimbal position, flying height and flying direction. We especially loved footage captured when flying backwards and large rotations.
Post-processing:
Learning a bit of color-correction, color-grading and color-matching goes a long way. Your flat-looking SOOC footage will come to light with just a little bit of twitching the basic Exposure, White Balance, Contrast, Saturation, Highlights, Shadows, etc settings. You can find loads of YouTube videos out there teaching you how to do that depending on the software you use, and it’s not difficult at all, so don’t be put off by that. Just play with the sliders until you get the results you like
Don’t overuse the Shadows slider, it will lead to HDR-looking shots, which are unnatural
Make sure you get the right white balance for your shots. Find a white/grey area in your footage and use the Dropper to correct it
If shooting was done at 24/25/30 fps, we have found that it’s best to avoid changing the speed of a clip in post-processing (unless you do some converting – which we did not look into). Slowing down a clip or speeding it up will only lead to the clip looking jumpy/shuttering/choppy/jerky or just unnatural to the eye.
If you slow it down (to 50% for instance) it means that the clip will no longer have 25 fps, but only half, so you will notice the clip jump from one frame to another unnaturally. Speeding up doesn’t lead to disasters if you use round numbers (that is, if you double or triple the speed – i.e. to 200 or 300%), but if you speed up by irregular numbers (let’s say to 120%) you will definitely see some shuttering, because some frames will be dropped in the process).
Our conclusion was that, in the future, we will try to get the right speed when shooting, so that we are not forced to alter the speed in post-processing. However, this time we could not avoid this entirely, because we needed to change the speed sometimes, in order to fit the music. So, our solution was to not do any slowing down and to not increase the speed by irregular numbers. Also, when speeding up clips, we used the Optical Flow setting in the Time interpolation drop-down, instead of Free Sampling. We also used Optical Flow at the end, upon exporting. This proved to significantly improve any shuttering effect.
We also avoid cropping or rotating of clips altogether, because that would just lead to quality loss.
For the best results, when you are done with editing a video, try to leave it for a day or two and then come back to it. You will see it with fresh eyes, and you will be able to notice things you hadn’t noticed the first time. That is the best time to spot any issues with white balance, any shuttering or small slips, and do a final correction of it all.
Hope this helps and we wish you all an amazing new year!
Adrian & Alexandra
PS. If anyone ever wants to travel to Romania and needs tips or ideas for where to go / hiking trips, don’t hesitate to ask! We are more than happy to help!
kaitokid535 Posted at 2-4 17:08
nice video! may I know what brand of ND filter did you use? I'm planning to buy one also for my MA soon.
Hello!
I tried to follow the classic 180 degree shutter speed rule, in my case 25fps with 1/50. First I bought Polar Pro Cinema Series ND4/8/16. Very good quality but I soon realised is not enough for the bright conditions, so I had to add another two from Neweer, ND32/64. Surprisingly good quality for these too, can't complain. However, ND64 was used just for some rare situations, like snow/glaciers and bright sun. The ND32 is used in more than 50% in my case during the day shootings.
Adrian Ro Posted at 2-4 23:07
Hello!
I tried to follow the classic 180 degree shutter speed rule, in my case 25fps with 1/50. First I bought Polar Pro Cinema Series ND4/8/16. Very good quality but I soon realised is not enough for the bright conditions, so I had to add another two from Neweer, ND32/64. Surprisingly good quality for these too, can't complain. However, ND64 was used just for some rare situations, like snow/glaciers and bright sun. The ND32 is used in more than 50% in my case during the day shootings.
nice. now I know which ND filters to buy based on usage. thanks!
Paride Musci Posted at 2-14 06:20
Really well made video, I really enjoyed the landscapes and some scenes are truly spectacular. You have just obtained a subscription to your channel
Hello there! Thank you so much! We really love your videos too, all those mountains make us want to hop on a plane and come to Switzerland again and again!
We also subscribed to your channel! Keep them coming!
Thank you so much! Well, it's our first year flying a drone, but most footage is not from the first couple of months, when we were rookies And we still have a lot to learn!
Adrian Ro Posted at 2-15 03:17
Oh, we're sure these are not more beautiful than the amazing landscape of New Zealand. We haven't been there yet, but sure hope to make it one day!
Thanks a lot for your sharing, your video is awesome
I just subscribed to your channel, so I can be following up your work, here is mine, I welcome you to check it out, I hope you like it too:
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