Constructive criticism for a video

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Constructive Criticism welcomed on pretty much all aspects. I feel that honest opinions from you folks at Phantom Pilots good to hear before a client.

My wife is a photographer in our area and we're branching out to the aerial photography gig (as so many are these days) and wanted a video to showcase that.


I am a Licensed pilot with 333 exception and the business is insured so if we could please keep the comments on the video I'd greatly appreciate it.

Thanks for taking the time in advanced!
 
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Very nice start iammrbt. What are you using for a lens filter and did you process RAW or is this right off the card? Your colors need to be a bit more vivid, and the sky is flat, almost colorless in some scenes. Your cutting (scene to scene) could be a little better timed, and some scenes are a little long. You need to punch it up a bit, remember you've got to hook your prospective customer fast to avoid short attention span rejections.
I like your marketing ideas but feel you are overlooking some potential. In your area there's a lot of money. People like to see what they spend it on especially if it involves them looking elite or macho. How about following a sailboat around or chasing a speedboat? How about a tuna fisherman pulling in a big one? Who wouldn't like a nice video of that during the off months?
Drop your flyer off at some yacht clubs and see where it goes. Best of luck!
 
You're asking for honest critiques so forgive me if I'm a bit brutal.

Your shots are too long. Go spend a night watching the HGTV real estate shows or their ilk. You'll see tons of drone photography. But you won't see a single drone shot longer than 4 seconds. Also, since your wife is a photographer, you might want to consider including some of that work as well to break things up. This would show the potential client how you can blend both aerial photography and terrestrial/tripod based photography or video into a cohesive unit to tell a story.

Tilting the gimbal and making slight heading adjustments are never smooth and make the video look amateur when left in. Make these moves as needed when doing your flight but edit all of them out of your final product.

The music you picked is fine for what your video is, i.e. a call card/portfolio. But playing song to the end and then 1/3 of another song screams amateur hour. When the first song ends, the video should end. Either cut your shots tighter so you can get everything in the length of the first song or use a longer piece of music.
 
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Those are constructive comments, hardly brutal. Some pro's do strongly suggest LONG cuts, but I agree that in a sales pitch you need pow pow pow which means very dynamic shots and quick cuts.
 
Agree with the above
Try an nd filter
Shocking font - do you have a company logo that you could impose bottom left/right
Not great to see the shadow of the quad imo
Music - a bit meh

:)

Btw my vids aren't great..
 
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I second what everyone else said. Biggest punch you can offer your footage especially given the bright sun is an ND filter and looking at the last minute with the beach flyover, you need to turn off auto on and manually set the EV level so you get a consistent lighting through a given shot. I often speed up my footage which works in some scenarios but might look ridiculous if you have a lot of movement in the background, YMMV.
BTW, congrats on getting incorporated, 333 Exemption, pilots license and your wife's approval!
Those are big hurdles to overcome so the rest is just practice practice practice.
 
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I second what everyone else said. Biggest punch you can offer your footage especially given the bright sun is an ND filter and looking at the last minute with the beach flyover, you need to turn off auto on and manually set the EV level so you get a consistent lighting through a given shot. I often speed up my footage which works in some scenarios but might look ridiculous if you have a lot of movement in the background, YMMV.
BTW, congrats on getting incorporated, 333 Exemption, pilots license and your wife's approval!
Those are big hurdles to overcome so the rest is just practice practice practice.
Thanks jcknows0 going to look at picking up those filters. Which one would you say you use the most out of the ND4, ND 8, and PL1?
 
Thanks jcknows0 going to look at picking up those filters. Which one would you say you use the most out of the ND4, ND 8, and PL1?
I definitely use ND4 most but I've only had mine for about 40 days and most of my flights are in early morning and late evening (also working during golden hours doesn't hurt footage). If you shoot in midday you need at least an ND8. I use the PL1 if its especially overcast. Good luck with the new business!
 
We are not your target market, why ask here? Ask the sort of people who are your prospective clients. In the end, it only matters what they think.

In regards to video technicalities, you should look up some P3 video tutorials that are posted on this forum and on youtube. You can decide how far you want to go. But at the very least, I would get ND filters to mitigate some exposure problems, and adjust settings to deal with terrible moire you have in some shots. Then you can start thinking whether you want to invest some time to learn to color grade and edit. Lastly, just because you have a P3 doesn't mean that every shot needs to be done with P3. :) The best videos use a mix. There is no "wow" factor when every shot is flying around random stuff. Why in the world would you be flying a P3 around a swing set?
 
Basically I would have cut out a lot more like the playground and way too much roof. The view from the house is ok but showing people the view from the air, right there... lets them see that there really isn't a view, but that's just me seeing a lot of flat land. The shorter the movie, the better - so don't waste time when it's over by letting it run on and on while boring the viewer. The video ended at 2:42 but you ran it out, so just fade out the music a few seconds before you want it to end and then cut it off. You should keep this to less than 60 seconds, with just a short music intro if any. Voice over and tell us in person what you want us to see. Personally, I don't use music much unless it really is needed, and the generic garbage , well... Like was said above, you just need some time editing and it all comes easy and quickly. Really take the time to learn your editing program and use as much of it as you can. Voice over takes some practice and may take you a couple of hours the first time to learn the right settings to match all of the volumes but get a journal just for your editing and write everything in there for future reference. Like volume level numbers, favorite splices, best format like mpeg, etc. I made a ton of movies a few years ago in .wmv and then YT changed the format on all .wmv's to wide screen, which changed the aspect ratios on everyone's .wmv's to short and really wide people... lol, so always keep the videos that you have loaded up and want for future reference on an external drive for later, so you can change the format to mpeg or whatever and reload.
 
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One video I like to shoot is where I start at ground level in front of the house, then go full stick up and back to "pan out" from the house, showing what's around it. You kind of did that - but it needs to be faster and to a greater height or all you see is roof. I agree with all the suggestions to keep videos as short as possible. Good luck!
 
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Reactions: Reed L
I don't do constructive criticism - I draw blood.

You're a pilot, not an editor? It shows. NEVER use a script font in a video. You have no control on how a viewer's decoder will uncompress the pointy ends of a script font or even a serif font and it could be completely unreadable. The 3:23 video was about 2:23 too long. Few prospective clients are going to watch the whole thing. Move on, there's nothing new to see here. Was there a point to the last minute? Mixing music is bad enough, but abruptly ending the second screams amateur. Use more dissolves than cuts, and sync the subtext to the scene changes better. Unless there's a dramatic point to be made, never fade to black with the subtext still on-screen. Make your transitions logical and consistent. When you select a transition style, have a reason and stick with it.

The music was, at best, meh. I've heard better in elevators.
 

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