I have a DJI Mavic Pro and a Phantom4 Pro+ with the remote control with the big screen. Although the Mavic is tiny and convenient when hiking or travelling on flights, I almost always use the Phantom4 Pro + instead because I don\u2019t like using my phone. Chances are, it\u2019s low on battery and I\u2019ll need to use it for other things like maps etc when hiking, so I like to keep a separate fully charged remote. The screen is also really lovely to view while flying. And I find the quality of the Phantom4 Pro is a bit better. I almost always fly using ND filters, which needn\u2019t be DJI – almost any brand will do. These are like sunglasses for your lens and allow you to film in strong harsh sunshine but still keep your settings as they should be for filming, i.e. the shutter speed should be double your frame rate.<\/p>\n
Drone laws are hard these days. I\u2019ve droned in the snow, rain, on mountain tops, in cities, in hotel rooms and off boats, in cars and from the back of Vespas. Most countries will say you cannot drone in cities. Legally, if I remember my training correctly, you\u2019re not supposed to drone less than 30metres from a human being. I\u2019ve often emailed the aviation department of countries or the tourism department to apply for permission to drone in advance. This almost never works. Either they don\u2019t reply or they expect you to fill out some laborious document and pay filming rights and list where your content will be aired, assuming you\u2019re making money from the footage as a production company, which rarely am. Sometimes you read about drones being taken away from people at airports, other times they are totally cool with it and don\u2019t even question me when I carry it in my carry-on bag. You must not fly with drone batteries in the checked luggage, that is for certain. You will probably be stopped if you are flying in a major city (Rome included) and I\u2019ve heard of people having their drones taken away when flying near monuments or churches. This is justified as I have seen a lot of people who don\u2019t know how to fly a drone safely, going so close to these historic domes and structures and risking causing irreparable damage. If you really want to drone a beautiful city, get up at 4am. Sunset is not going to work. Police are out, tourists are out. At least at dawn you don\u2019t risk hurting anyone or invading anyone\u2019s privacy because there are so few (if any) people out on the street. If a policeman stops you, be polite, agree to delete the footage and promise you won\u2019t do it again. Sometimes they are kind and relaxed, other times they\u2019ve just had a bunch of other tourists damaging ancient monuments or selling footage without a permit or any communication to the local council so they\u2019re understandably strict.<\/p>\n
If you\u2019re just flying and creating content for personal use, I believe it\u2019s okay to film on beaches or out in the countryside where you don\u2019t risk damaging buildings, hurting anyone or invading the privacy of people in their homes. If you\u2019re working on a project that you intend to sell, it gets much trickier and I\u2019ve heard of creators being fined after the content is out in the world. So far, I\u2019ve been lucky but any time a police officer has politely ask me to stop flying, I obeyed without question.<\/p>\n
In Iran, I made sure I didn\u2019t even have my drone in my suitcase in case the car was searched. The airport I arrived in had huge posters saying drones are illegal. The poor couple who were arrested in Iran in 2019 were reportedly droning near a military zone and you just can\u2019t mess around in countries that are already suspicious about espionage or have poor relations with your country.<\/p>\n
I have used Canon cameras but then I swapped to Panasonic Lumix GH4 cameras, only because I like that you can shoot in 96fps, which is super slow motion. I still liked the Canon L series lenses with the red ring so I use a Metabones adaptor so I can use my GH4 camera body with a Canon lens. Keep in mind, I bought two GH4 cameras about six or seven years ago and haven\u2019t updated my cameras since so I\u2019m sure there\u2019s a lot more on the market now. I have just found that they work so well that I haven\u2019t looked into upgrading. What I have upgraded are my lenses. I think you should buy a basic zoom lens – I have a 12-35mm and a 24-105mm if you want to vlog or just do simple interviews. If you want to capture detail with a beautiful depth of field and use a lens that allows a lot more light into any context, you probably want a fixed lens. This means that you can\u2019t zoom in and out to frame your subject, you will need to move the whole camera and it will be very difficult to shoot yourself or others with video. A 50mm lens is often what photographers and filmmakers recommend for capturing details and beauty. I love my 50mm lens. I use it everywhere. I don\u2019t mind the extra work required to run around like a mad person trying to get things in focus, or re-shooting things because the subject in an interview has slipped out of focus. I just prefer the beautiful creamy soft quality of the footage. Often I will get the message \u2018lens attachment failed\u2019 when my adaptor can\u2019t handle that I\u2019m shooting with a Lumix body and a Canon lens. But for me, it\u2019s still worth it. Sony make wonderful cameras and many professionals prefer this brand. I like what Sony can achieve in low light. The GH4 isn\u2019t as good in dark settings. But the settings for Sony are not as intuitive as Canon or Panasonic so if you\u2019re a beginner, you might find Sony a bit overwhelming or frustrating.
\nI use a Zhiyun 3-axis gimbal for most of my moving shots. If you can\u2019t afford this, try shooting in slow motion and putting your camera strap around your neck for support and doing little panning movements (only very little!!) just handheld by holding the camera strap out tight while you glide. If you\u2019re shooting in normal speed this isn\u2019t going to work and using some kind of stabilizing setting in your edit later is going to look messy and just warp your footage to the point where it isn\u2019t achieving that calm, sensual glide you originally intended to achieve.<\/p>\n
What should you edit on? It is a question that many people ask me and is still a work in progress for me to answer. For years the answer has been Premiere Pro. But I recently added an iMac and FinalCut to my editing suite so that I can always have both a HP laptop and a more powerful Apple desktop and two options for editing software. The truth is, both brands of software have their pros and cons and both have annoying bugs that you spend hours reading forums to resolve.<\/p>\n
FinalCut famously has a magnetic timeline where all your clips snap onto each other, which I actually love. But with Adobe, you can use the whole Creative Cloud (for a slightly higher fee) and I often clean up my audio with Adobe Audition, convert files with Adobe Media Encoder and do special effects using Adobe After Effects. Probably if you\u2019re a beginner or just making simple YouTube videos, you won\u2019t need all those extras.<\/p>\n
I learnt to edit using FinalCutPro X. I even tried the classic Avid software but this was not intuitive at all and nowadays so many films are made using the more modern software. Adobe has a monthly subscription, while FinalCut is a one-off price. I like Premiere because it gives me so many different tracks in my audio and I first switched over because I was making TV shows and needed comprehensive editing channels\/tracks to clearly distinguish my dialogue from my soundtrack and my ambient sounds. I love how it works and they\u2019re always updating and adding new features. I found it was crashing A LOT but this was because I only had 16GB of RAM, when apparently you need a minimum of 32GB of RAM to run Premiere.<\/p>\n
I always used MacBook Pro laptops but they kept dying on me. As in, they would literally not turn on after about 8-12 months of use. That said, many many editors use Macs and have no trouble. But they also have a limit in terms of how much RAM you can add to your laptop, which I don\u2019t like. My series of MacBook Pro\u2019s dying could be because I travel so often and would take my laptop home to work at my parents\u2019 place on the beach in the tropical humid climate of Byron Bay, where all electrical goods tend to die in the sea air.<\/p>\n
Anyway, I wanted something robust and reliable \u2013 even though it pained me to say goodbye to the beautiful clean design of Macs. So a few years ago, I invested in a HP 15-inch Zbook. It\u2019s supposedly the laptop NASA uses on the space station. At first I was really disappointed. Customer service kind of sucked. I asked for help deciding on the best option for editing and was misinformed as they\u2019re not really set up to help creatives at all. They\u2019re more about those corporate clients. It\u2019s also super heavy and a pain when I\u2019m travelling. I had to invest thousands more to up the RAM and add another TB of space to my main drive. The speakers are not great for watching films but when I\u2019m editing I have headphones on so it\u2019s not so bad. It is working well, it survives some rough treatment, has great battery life and it\u2019s always hard to say if your software is crashing because of the computer or just how you\u2019ve chosen to upgrade it \u2013 graphics cards, memory, RAM etc.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m currently editing on the iMac and it is wonderful. Irrespective of which brand you go for, the difference of editing with a giant screen instead of a laptop is incredible if you care about colour grading. That said, I far prefer colour grading in Premiere. FinalCut obviously gives you all the standard options to do RBG curves and fine tune details and apply effects, but I just feel more comfortable with Adobe. It feels more grownup, more professional. Sometimes FinalCut seems like it\u2019s got all the gimmicks in an effect like an Instagram filter for those who can\u2019t be bothered to learn how to colour grade.<\/p>\n
FinalCut supposedly gives you the option to skip the export and just upload from your timeline directly to your YouTube account – which would be amazing for me, except that recently it hasn\u2019t worked so I\u2019ve just had to export and upload like I do in Premiere.<\/p>\n
So I shall continue using both and I would say that it\u2019s good to understand both if you intend on working with teams or applying for jobs in the industry as many agency briefs specify a preference, especially if they have you working with other editors.<\/p>\n
Happy editing!<\/p>\n
If you\u2019re just starting out, go for a Rode shotgun mic that attaches to the top of your camera. Super simple, good sound for vlogging or interviews. Easy to set up. Using the internal microphone of any camera is a bad idea. It\u2019s just not going to give you good content, even for vlogging when it can\u2019t shield you against the wind and inside a room it will give you that amatuer echo.<\/p>\n
If you want to use lapel mics, which attach to interviewees individually, which REALLY increases the quality and professionalism of your content, I wouldn\u2019t go for Rode\u2019s filmmaker package. They sent it to me for free and it was okay but nothing compared with the new mics I am crazy about. The SENNHEISER AVX-ME2 SET. This microphone is so damn expensive but it\u2019s worth it if filmmaking is your profession and you\u2019re making money from your content. I was so disappointed to find that only ONE mic comes in the pack for that price and I was forced to buy two in order to mic myself and my interviewee but again, the sound quality is just remarkable. It\u2019s very easy to set up – even if you\u2019re like me without a background in audio.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
DRONES I have a DJI Mavic Pro and a Phantom4 Pro+ with the remote control with the big screen. Although the Mavic is tiny and convenient when hiking or travelling on flights, I almost always use the Phantom4 Pro + instead because I don\u2019t like using my phone. Chances are, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":6329,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[9,11],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kylieflavell.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/681"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kylieflavell.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kylieflavell.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kylieflavell.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kylieflavell.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=681"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.kylieflavell.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/681\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6763,"href":"https:\/\/www.kylieflavell.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/681\/revisions\/6763"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kylieflavell.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6329"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kylieflavell.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=681"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kylieflavell.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=681"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kylieflavell.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=681"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}