OK. I think I have landed on a method to discuss cinematography in relation to the Phantom.
Lets take a look at some of the shots the Phantom is ideal for and look at how you can get them.
Establishing shots:
This one is kind of a no-brainer. The Phantom is perfect to give a shot of an exterior of a building or a field or any other location where you will be moving in to the subject of interest in subsequent shots. The trick with establishing shots is they need to be in context with the shots that come after it in the sequence. As an example you wouldn't necessarily do a top down view that looks like a satellite watching if the next shot was going to be a couple having a picnic in the field. Well you wouldn't do that unless you were trying to communicate that they were being watched by the NSA or something.
Make the establishing shot make sense with the shots that follow.
So one rule of thumb to use for establishing shots is they need to be taken such that the audience could see themselves in that position. That doesn't mean that position has to be a place where a person could stand. It just means that the view is plausible and relatable to the audience.
Reveals:
A reveal is a shot where you move the camera so that the view to the audience quickly changes to reveal something important. An example of such a shot would be flying along a walking path with the camera pointed down then suddenly going over the edge of the grand canyon. You have just “revealed” that the path stopped and possibly gave some of your audience with a fear of heights a good scare.
In the opening few seconds of this video you can see an example of what I'm talking about. This one isn't so dramatic since you are seeing what is coming ahead of time.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2X4U1mQzoE
Another type of reveal is called a Pivot Reveal. This one is where you can use your Phantom to circle an object and use the “reverse parallax” in the shot to quickly reveal a background element important to the story.
Here is a short scene that nicely uses a pivot reveal at the end –
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wX2w0O1CnIs
Now to make the pivot reveal relatable to at least one of the pilots here on the forum lets take a look at a specific shot setup. You have a golfer in the t-box getting ready to swing, you are shooting them from a profile position, as they start to move the camera is moving behind them but keeping them centered up in the frame, the background of the shot is moving horizontally and as the golfer strikes the ball the camera comes to a stop directly behind the golfer as they hold their pose for the camera and you are left looking down the fairway as the ball streaks off down range.
Obviously this is a challenging shot since you have to fly around your subject and yaw the craft at the same time AND bring it to a stop at the right point. All while having proper timing with the swing. Not an easy one to pull off and one that would require a NUMBER of takes to even get close. But this is a very high end type of shot and developing these kind of flying skills will be beneficial so I recommend you practice this.
With a reveal you can use any movement direction of the Phantom to create a reveal. As another example you can fly along a fence to conceal the view behind then reveal the background by either flying past the end of the fence horizontally or rising above it. So picture the Phantom following a person in profile as they walk along the fence. From the story you know they are going home. As they walk along the Phantom rises to reveal a neighborhood in total chaos. You have just made a dramatic statement about the story without saying one word of dialog.
Lastly on this one I'll give another scenario. You are hovering outside the window of a house and you see a small fire inside that is getting bigger. You the lift the Phantom to reveal that all the houses in the neighborhood are on fire. So you just showed the audience the specifics of what was going on then you “revealed” the problem was on a much larger scale than what they may have initially thought with the shot.
Reveals are a great way to keep visual interest in your media going. They are powerful story telling tools. The Phantom makes some of these shots possible with very little extra equipment needed.
-To be continued-
