I'm a new pilot, and one of the things that I'd like to use my Phantom 4 for is to get what are known as 'crane shots'. These are the wide establishing shots that pan down as they zoom in, ending with a medium close-up of the talent. From there, the editor cuts to another MCU shot of the talent, taken with a conventional camera, and the scene proceeds. It's how they did the opening scene of 'The Sound of Music', with Julie Andrews in the alpine meadow. Of course, for that, they used a helicopter.
To get the shot, I'd have to fly the drone in a straight-line arc that looks pretty much like this:




Manually flying that arc would be very difficult. Here's my question: Can the arc be automated, either in DJI GO or in AutoFlight Autopilot? I'm not having any luck Googling the question, and I suspect it's because I'm so new I don't know the correct search terms yet. So, can anyone point me in the right direction? Thanks in advance.

"Manually flying that arc would be very difficult"
How exactly would it be difficult ? Got to be the easiest flight ever....
Personally I would forget about trying to automate everything and learn how to fly, that way when the inevitable app failure occurs, you will be able to take control and recover safely.
Just my opinion coming from over 2 years flying my V+, never used Ground Station or other apps to automate flying, not that the V+ has anywhere near the features of the Phantom 4.   

I would think you can in Autopilot.  Just set a Focus Point to 5 feet, or whatever you subject's height is, then set a fly-line from A to B (subject) and then set multiple waypoints along the line for your altitude (each one drops) and stop in a hover waypoint.  It will stare at the 5 foot focus point as it approaches.  Plus you can also set the speed between waypoints, i.e. come in faster but slow down on approaching.  There are straight, curve, and Belzier curves in AP but I don't know if they work on the vertical axis as most I've seen are looking down, so multiple waypoints it might be to create the arc.

Litchi would also work and would be easier to configure for this task than autopilot

There is a reasonably simple way of doing this, start with the drone near your talent then fly away from them and gain alititude this will be very easy to do. You then reverse the footage in post. If your talent is walking then you will need them to do it backwards but its easier to do this than try and perform a smooth crane in shot. Watch out for anything in your shot that would give it away, e.g cars in the background or birds flying by as they will all be backwards.

gmccurdy@att.ne Posted at 2016-10-15 12:36
I would think you can in Autopilot.  Just set a Focus Point to 5 feet, or whatever you subject's hei ...

Thanks! I'll work on that approach.

Richard in Bois Posted at 2016-10-15 13:02
Litchi would also work and would be easier to configure for this task than autopilot

Thanks! Didn't know about Litchi--I'll check it out
Edit 2016-10-17: Thanks again for the tip on Litchi. I'd been struggling with Autoflight, and I'm going to shelve it in favor of Litchi.

For the benefit of anyone else reading this thread, Udemy.com has a pretty good course from Laurence Seberini, 'Phantom Film School'. There is a free version does a basic tutorial on Litchi and shows how to set up a flyby shot, and three paid courses that go into how to set up most commonly-used aerial shots. It didn't cover my crane shot specifically, but the free course covers enough that I was able to figure out how to set it up with waypoints in about five minures. (BTW, I am not affiliated with Udemy or Seberini in any way, and I don't get anything for plugging his course.)