How do you label your drone shots?

[Michael Tyas]

I’m self-trained in drone videography. While I feel confident that my shots are professional, I’m lacking the language to label/keyword them in my editor for easy retrieval, or to communicate with a team member effectively. Some are easy to translate from standard videography, such as a wide, pan, tilt, or follow the action. Others, I’ve adapted from the dolly terminology, such as a side to side while facing forward type of shot (dolly, essentially, but is there something better?). I’ve also borrowed Point of Interest from the DJI controller, which circles around the subject. I can’t help but feel like I’m missing out on easy keywording and retrieval because there’s so many types of shots I have but also only have cumbersome and literal terms for them. Here are some attempts at labelling and what they describe.

• flying forward fast while rising in altitude (takeoff?)

• staring straight down (bird’s eye?)

• Rising or descending without panning or tilting. (rising reveal?)

• Flying forward while looking backwards (rear view mirror?)

Care to share your list of terms? Which are industry standards, and which ones have you come up with yourself?

[Chris Sebes]

What do helicopter pilots and aerial camera ops call them?
With some of these terms you could possibly apply old-school terminology, like…

Dolly (in or out) – moving the camera towards or away from a point
Truck (left or right) – side-to-side movement of the camera
Ped (up or down) – move the camera only straight up or down

But some of the other terms will come along. Why not start coining them?

Straight down from above – God’s eye
Rising while moving forward – I like your idea of “Take-off”

Chris Sebes
Senior Video Editor
http://www.MediaMixStudios.com

[Greg Janza]

I’ve worked with a variety of drone footage and I have no need for any clip labeling. With drone footage the easiest way to manage it is to simply throw all of the drone clips into a timeline and then scrub through it and mark the good shots. It’s quicker than looking through shot notes of any kind.

I Hate Television. I Hate It As Much As Peanuts. But I Can’t Stop Eating Peanuts.
– Orson Welles

[Bob Cole]

Good labels would be very helpful, not only in cataloging shots but also in directing the path of the drone. With limited flight time good pre-visualization will be valuable. OTOH… improvisation is probably incredibly cool too!

The drone manufacturers have created programs (Journey, Orbit Me, Point of Interest) for various moves, but video directors will need more, and more specific, terms.

It’s a whole ‘nother ballgame.

Bob C

[Michael Tyas]

I have been working on a project and using the dolly (in, out) truck (left, right) and ped (up, down) as well as follow the action, point of interest, take off and bird’s eye. Search queries for this topic still return unhelpful results. It’s still a language that is developing, I suppose.