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7 Drone Videography Tips to Consider For Weddings
Planning on starting a drone wedding videography company, or videotaping your own wedding with a drone, but not quite sure how to give your aerial cinematography that extra prominence and spark? Look no further! Here we will discuss a few drone videography tips as they relate to wedding videography. So if you want to know how to capture your perfect wedding or increase your earning potential by adding a drone to your wedding video arsenal, check out some of these drone videography tips for more information.
- Figure Out if the Venue You’re Planning to Film at Even Allows Drones
If you’re planning on filming a wedding with a camera drone, it is crucial to find out if the wedding’s venue will allow drones to fly at all in the first place. Otherwise, you’ll be arriving on wedding day, drone in hand, to a very upset bride and groom, who now will lose the memories of their most important day! Do not underestimate the importance of this vital step in the process.If the wedding is being held at a conventional wedding venue, taking this precaution should be as easy as calling ahead and setting things up with the venue directly. However, keep in mind that policies do sometimes change. If you are working a venue for one specific wedding only, then be sure to keep checking in with that venue over time, to make sure things are still on the up and up. As a professional wedding videographer, it is best to have a relationship with all your local traditional wedding venues, wherein you can keep an updated list of which venues do and do not allow drones to fly within their grounds.
If this is a destination wedding of sorts, or if someone has asked you to film their initial engagement, you are better off not relying on chance that no one will catch you flying your drone in the area. Call any local government agencies, such as state, city, or township offices, to check for local guidelines and regulations for your location. Ask if you will need any additional permits or licensing to be able to fly a drone and film with it in a area.
- Aerial Angles Matter Most
Video camera drones are incredible at picking up straight down aerial imagery such as shorelines, vineyards, and hillsides. However, where people are involved, your shots should not always just be directly from the clouds down. Consider shooting video from many different angles for the best possible wedding videos. These will be much more cinematic, exciting, and enveloping for the viewer, and for your happy couple.
Take, for instance, a beachside wedding. You might have your couple walking along the shore, hand in hand, with drone overhead. But even better would be to have your drone facing out toward the ocean, catching the beautiful picturesque sunset as a backdrop. Taking these major details into consideration before you begin your shoot will save you lots of time and aggravation in the heat of the moment, so be aware of which angles you plan to use ahead of time.
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- Drones Are Not Invisible
Your drone will not be invisible either. Consider that two people are trying to experience one of the best days of their lives. They have worked long and hard to make every detail perfect. Do not be the one who unravels it all with a loud drone flying through the crowd during a silent moment, or, even worse, ruining the wedding cake by crashing your UAV directly into the top of it.
However unlikely they may seem, these scenarios can and will happen if things are not properly prepared and planned out ahead of time. Take these types of things into consideration ahead of time, so that you can plan against them, and use precaution as a tool to put yourself as the leader in your local market of drone wielding wedding videographers.
Plan to use your drone for no more than, say, ten minutes at a time, and stick to that rule. Taking such precautions can help you stay focused, restrained, and creative during the times when you are flying your camera drone. With these things being at the forefront of your mind, mistakes are much less likely to happen. This also helps to keep guests focused on the most important focal points in the room, the bride and groom.
Source: Pexels
- When Possible, Stick to Big Places and Open Spaces
When considering the environments in which you are willing to operate, think about your ability to control your camera drone. Safety should be everyone’s number one priority, but in the rare case that it is not the bride and groom’s, make sure it is yours. After all, it’s your drone that will be flying above the wedding guests, in and around the venue, around expensive wedding decorations, and often around hot food and children. For these reasons, it’s best to have a policy of only working in wide open spaces where you have plenty of room to maneuver your camera drone in and out.
Adopting a policy like this one also allows for some of the most beautiful eye catching wedding videography and photography there is out there. Take a look at this popular video of a wedding, taken by a drone in a very wide open area, to get an idea of what this could mean for you and your videography.
5. Destination Wedding Videos Should Include the Destination
Destination weddings are just that: a destination. If you want some wedding drone videography tips specific to destination weddings, start with this one. Be sure to collect B roll of the area, the surroundings, and the local tourist sites if you can.
Of course, that doesn’t mean flying your camera drone in places it’s not supposed to go. But plenty of destination weddings happen in rural or remote areas, where flying a camera drone and taking extra video shots will be perfectly acceptable, and hopefully even easy to do! VIP Weddings is a Portuguese wedding video studio which is a great source for this prerequisite.
Check out their website for more ideas!
Source: Pexels
- Make Sure You Have the Skills to Fly
Before you sign up for a wedding job, be sure that you are skillful enough to fly in the specific location the event is taking place. If you need help with your drone flying skills, RC Hobby Review is a known industry source for flying tips, tricks, and learning materials. Check them out for more information on flying with proper technique, before you ever book your first wedding videography session.
Otherwise, you could end up with an expensive and broken camera drone, some unhappy wedding guests, or worst of all, an unhappy bride. Knowing how to fly your drone is first and foremost if you plan to become or continue working as a drone wedding photographer/videographer.
- Utilize Your Wedding Guests
One of the best assets when it comes to using camera drones for wedding photography and videography is that, with your camera drone ability to hover far above the ground, you can use everyone in the wedding as a prop for pictures and videos. Gone are the days of bulky looking wedding pictures with everyone squeezing in and a photographer hunched over yelling and waving behind the camera. Now you can capture the essence of the night with true to life shots or poses in shapes and writing.
Embrace having so many people dressed so eloquently in one place at one time, and all under your supervision. Lining everyone up to make the shape of a heart, a ring, or to spell out the initials of the bride and groom are just three quick examples of what you can do with everyone involved.
Check out The Knot for more wedding drone videography tips.
Vicky is a jewelry collector and event organizer since 2010. She loves everything about fashion and catering weddings and any other events. Vicky is also a photography enthusiast and she keeps a photo memorabilia of each event she organized. During her free time, she browses the web for new designs of jewelry and to capture new event ideas and concepts.