Stewart & Alina Carroll – Drone Cinematography Masterclass 2.0

Differentiate yourself by flying like a filmmaker!

Whether you want to make money with your drone or just take your hobby to the next level, you NEED to know this stuff to differentiate yourself from the pack. Buying a drone is one thing…awesome, you have taken the first step and are a drone owner, welcome to the club! But you need to be so much more if you want to stand out. FIRSTLY, you need a degree of pilot skill and in the first section of this masterclass we teach everything you need in this respect. We take you from drone owner to drone pilot. SECONDLY however, and more importantly, you need to SEE the world like a filmmaker. In our experience, 99% of drone owners don’t make it past the drone pilot stage. With this 8 hour masterclass, we will take you from drone pilot to drone cinematographer. We teach you to THINK like a filmmaker. By the end of this course, you will have the experience and guidance you need to stand on your own two feet as a cinematographer. Every drone shoot is different so a “painting by numbers” approach to filmmaking just doesn’t cut it. Sure, at the end of the course we give you a shot list to practise as that is undoubtedly a great learning tool. However, it needs to be combined with an understanding of filmmaking principles if you really want to be noticed in the crowd.

One of our favourite parts of the course – learning from great Hollywood aerial cinematography

We teach you how to tell a story by creating SUSPENSE in your work. You’ll learn how to layer your compositions to add DEPTH and interest to your imagery, drawing your audience’s eye through the frame. We show you how to add MOTION to a shot to enhance the story you are trying to tell rather than just adding it because you can. We teach you everything you need to know about LIGHT and how that influences what it is you are trying to achieve on the day. Furthermore, we analyse COMPOSITION and how we can use basic principles to enhance the story you are telling with your work.

Whether you are filming for your own self-initiated projects, as a freelance drone operator, as part of a production company, directing another drone operator, or for any other reason, you NEED to know this stuff if you want to rise to the top of an ever expanding group of drone pilots.

Is this the right course for me?

Originally launched in April 2018, the first incarnation of our Masterclass was a tremendous success both in terms of sales and feedback. Early in 2019 however, we set about rebuilding the Masterclass from the ground up and it is this we present to you today – Masterclass 2.0. The entire course was re-scripted and re-filmed, and building on the original, we launched Masterclass 2.0 mid-2019. This is an EPIC piece of work, filmed with the highest production value and structured with such diligence and precision that every minute of the content adds value to your journey as aerial filmmakers.

Furthermore, the course has been structured to make regular updates possible if required. 90% of this course concerns timeless concepts that are not drone or technology specific. However, if in a few years it is necessary to update this course, we will do so accordingly.

The course is suitable for beginners through to expert, licensed drone operators alike. To meet the needs of students of all abilities, this is a truly fast-paced, intensive education. Novices will undoubtedly need to rewatch sections of this course or pause and come back to the course as their skills develop.

Do I need an expensive drone to benefit from this course?

Absolutely not! We’ll let you into a secret…we are not that interested in drones! It’s true! For us, the drone is a means of getting a perspective in the sky that was previously not available to us. As a consequence, we are not burdened with gear obsession – we are most certainly NOT gear freaks! Some of the best shots we have ever captured were done years ago on our Phantom 2 + GoPro 4 combo and many of them feature in this masterclass. If you have any drone that gives you a decent quality picture from a camera, preferably stabilized on a gimbal, then this course is for you.

The masterclass is a visual spectacle featuring huge amounts of our stunning drone footage from around the world

You see, with our background as filmmakers long before drones appeared, there is ALWAYS a ‘better’ camera out there. We shoot most of our commercial and wedding work on cameras that cost around $1,500. Oh, but if only we had the latest camera with amazing low light capability that costs $5,000! Absolutely not! Sure, our cameras are not the best in low light, so what did we do? Well we bought three, $100 lights and learnt everything we could about lighting. We learnt to shape an image with light, create separation between the subject and the background, tell a story and so on. By NOT buying the $5,000 camera we elevated our film production skills to a whole new level and on the back of this we built one of the most successful wedding film businesses in the UK, White Balloon Films.

Try not to get bogged down with obsessing over the latest and greatest drone. One thing that has become very apparent to us as we have built this course is that the vast majority of aerial cinematography to come out of Hollywood is incredibly simple. There is probably a little bit of motion from the drone and maybe a gimbal tilt or rotation but the beauty of the shot comes from the suspense created by not revealing the subject in the first frame, the creative decision to point the camera towards or away from the sun, the depth created by having layers in the composition between the camera and the subject and so on. We teach you all of this so you too can present yourself as not just a drone owner, but a drone cinematographer.

Screenshots from the masterclass

If drones fly themselves why do I need to pay for a course?

It is true that a drone “flies itself” in the loosest possible sense but does the drone do any of these things for you?

• Analyse the light to pick the best direction of flight or time of day for flying.
• Identify unwanted objects in the shot and position itself accordingly to exclude them from the frame.
• Tell you what the most cinematic composition is for the subject you are trying to film.
• Identify amazing locations for your drone shoots before you even leave the house.
• Build your scene by identifying ways of creating depth in your composition.
• Pick the appropriate camera motion that turns a basic shot into a story-telling masterpiece.
• Employ the story-telling device of creating suspense to engage your audience and wow your clients.

In this masterclass, we give you building blocks and a framework whereby all of the above becomes instinctive and second-nature. Also, if you are engaged in any non-drone film work then you will find our course of great value also as much of what we discuss is not drone-specific, rather an analysis of filmmaking concepts that date back to the early days of cinema.

Tell Me About The Editing Workshop

Armed with the ability to create stunning aerial footage following Parts 1 and 2 of this masterclass, we want you to have the ability to present your work in an engaging and creative way in the form of a drone showreel. In Part 3 we give you all the tools you need to edit your footage like a professional filmmaker. We talk you through three editing concepts that we wish we knew when starting out: (1) key-wording, (2) favouriting, and (3) shortcuts. Embrace these concepts and your journey to becoming a great editor will shorten significantly! Following this, we take you through 5 cool editing techniques that are particularly applicable to drone footage:

• Speeding up footage
• Using speed ramps
• Key-framing
• Reversing footage
• Zooming and repositioning

In order to help you along the way, we have provided you with a download pack of our drone clips. You can then work alongside us as we assemble a 60 second drone showreel made up of these clips. By the end of this workshop, you will be able to apply what you have learnt to your own showreel and show the world what you are capable of!

Isn’t all this info available for free on YouTube?

Nope! We are not aware of anything that resembles our masterclass on YouTube. In fact, the closest you will find is our own YouTube channel, Drone Film Guide. The reason for this is that any drone “expert” we see on the internet is generally speaking a drone fanatic first, filmmaker distant second. The internet is saturated with drone reviews, best picture settings videos, drone comparisons videos and all that good stuff, often presented by individuals who are very good on the technical side of drones but fall short when it comes to what you should actually do with your drone once you’ve got it.

For Alina and I, the opposite is true. We love making films and getting the most out of our drone, but we have far less interest in the technical side of droning beyond, (a) how to get the highest quality cinematic picture, and (b) how to control the drone best for cinematic movement. Beyond that, it’s all about the story and we believe it is this fresh approach to the world of drones that explains the success of our YouTube channel. Everything we say is supported by years of experience not only as drone operators but as filmmakers also and this gives us the credibility and confidence to create a course of value that we believe is worth paying for. In this masterclass we hold nothing back. We have put our heart and soul in to this course and we firmly believe the relatively small investment we ask of you will pay for itself many times over as you continue on your journey as a drone cinematographer. But, if for whatever reason you feel our masterclass was not worth the investment then we offer a 30 day money back guarantee as you can see in the FAQs below.