Backyard Animal Kingdom S1E5 DJI Mavic Air Weekend Compilation at the Lakehouse.
Channel: Maximum Performance Productions Legacy
Date: 18/07/2019

Backyard Animal Kingdom S1E5 features a two-minute compilation from a few hours of footage shot with my new DJI Mavic Air drone.  This episode begins with what appears to be a person (me) running from a helicopter.  While shooting in ActiveTrack flight mode, I promptly led the drone very close to one of the giant pine trees in the backyard.  With some added sound effects and video transition effects using the wizardry of my Premiere Pro editing software, what came very close to disaster actually resulted in usable footage.

As the beat drops, follow the DJI Mavic Air as I attempt to maneuver through the trees and burst out over the lake for an epic shot.  As you can see, I was unsuccessful at first but after several attempts and more close calls I finally landed it, but that footage is for another day!  I attempted this scene in Cinematic mode which slows the drone’s reaction time for smoother turns and stops instead of stopping on-a-dime.  This is important to notice in the next scene as I pull back from the lake and attempt to stop at a pre-planned point forgetting I’m in Cinematic mode and the drone slams into the ground.  I have to say that I’m super impressed with the durability of the DJI Mavic Air.  I purposely turned the drone’s Vision Systems off in order to complete the close maneuvers through the trees, and after several near misses, tangles with branches, and one crash there are some green stains on the blades and tough polycarbonate body, which gives it character but no damage.

In the next scene, I make several sweeping passes at the twelve geese that reside at the lake to capture some epic B-roll footage which I was denied due to yawing the camera (or turning the drone) in the wrong direction after the pass, but it’s still extremely cool footage.  Next, I pull away to a Dronie QuickShot of my girlfriend chilling on her stand-up-paddleboard in the middle of Love Lake.  This is another pre-programmed mode on the Mavic Air which only requires the operator to set parameters such as altitude and distance for an epic cinematic shot.  I programmed the height to 109’ AGL to get as much of the lake as possible while keeping the drone within line of sight.  It actually took about 1.5 minutes for the drone to complete the QuickShot maneuver and return to its start point.  I sped the footage up in post-production, which cut it down to 20 seconds.

Episode 5 of Backyard Animal Kingdom concludes with two shots of the setting sun taken about an hour apart followed by another QuickShot—this time using Asteroid mode.  The subject of this shot was the moon.  I wish there was more ambient light on the ground, but I live in the woods.  I let the Mavic Air work its magic hoping it would pick up the setting sun in the opposite sky—nailed it!

All post-production is done using Adobe Creative Cloud Apps to include Adobe Lightroom, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Premiere Pro, and Adobe Audition.   My equipment bag consists of a Microsoft Surface Pro along with Adobe Creative Cloud and a couple of GoPros, my Sony A77ii DSLR, a Samsung Galaxy S8+, and the DJI Mavic Air Drone.

For more epic content, follow me on Instagram @mayormike3068

Check out my photography and videography at www.shopfineartphotography.com

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