BORED - A DJI Mini 2 Drone Cinematic Reel

I don't think there's really anything you need to change. I think you've found your style and it works in a really beautiful way. Watching your videos is like being in a very profound dream in which I am witnessing the many moments and emotions lived by another. They have a very first-person perspective at times. Then you transition to drone clips which are like you've escaped this deep emotion and are now floating across a vast landscape only to land at the next moment.

Some of your camera movements and colour grading are really nice too, the general composition and understanding of subject are pretty strong. Everything's sharp or you've taken good advantage of depth of field.

I mentioned that it is evident you have your style and it's rather established already (I also don't think you should make significant changes to that). But I'll mention a few things you could consider if you want to explore and try something different:

You use a lot of moments where you feature people and there's almost elements of narrative, you could possibly increase that and utilise different perspectives to promote those moments of life and character. Say you have someone looking up at the sky and you've composed a shot where you're behind them. Show another perspective in which we see their face; thus their reaction and emotions to the subject they're looking at.

The same can be applied with movement and people: follow their movements and give the audience more of a feeling that they're there too, following in that direction. How you compose those shots is really up to you.

In terms of context, you can also show more of the process of preparation leading up to a pay-off. So, say you have people hiking, you can show a few quick clips of them getting gear ready, and then even display a clip of them in that environment as if to portray their acknowledgement of the challenge ahead; the same idea for ending that type of scene. That can just be a clip of them overlooking a canyon for example. You've done a lot of this aready, I think you could have a bit of fun testing things and bridging these ideas together.

I would go as far as saying completely avoid music with lyrics. Or at least cut the lyrics out and edit the footage alongside the end result of the music. Throw things into a timeline and just start making guesses and see what flows and doesn't. It'll be particularly easy for you to begin that process if you do have a lot of clips which establish narrative and context since it'll give you a general structure to begin building.

Lyrics can be a bit distracting to an audience. Your footage could say one thing, but the lyrics are saying something else. You want to feel like a psychopath in full control of the situation, capable of manipulating your audience's emotions. Bending them as your video progresses. I think you did this really well in the Lithuania video. In your Italy video (which was genuinely beautiful) some of that emotion was sadly lost.

With music there can also be the issue of the songs being too slow or too repetitive. You want something you can edit to, something that paces itself well and allows for you to pace the footage as a result; back to that idea of narrative and emotion: context, challenge, pay-off and reaction. Again, you can always edit music to fit what you want to pursue.

When it comes to building narrative and context and emotion, you can also take advantage of sound to promote the idea of immersion. A lot of people will pull sounds from the Internet from many sources that offer them for either a monthly fee or for free. That isn't always bad. But get yourself on-location sound recordings. Nothing will sound as good as the real thing. Even if the quality isn't that great, you can always edit it and even hide some of that alongside music. Record everything for the most impactful moments: a car door opening. Keys. Footsteps in snow. The laughter of a child as they run off into the snow. You don't want to rely on sound effects, however.

Nothing to change here. I think you already have found your way and know what to do. Don't consider any of this to be criticism, because it isn't. I just love talking about this stuff with people and sharing ideas that push us beyond.

Do you own a gimbal? If not, those are worth having around for getting stable footage during moments of movement, removing that handheld jitter that can make drone footage to handheld camera footage look a bit off.

Again, I don't think there's really anything wrong with your videos. I think you have a style and it fits really well. It's also evident that over the years you've improved and been more creative. You could probably reach out to people and businesses using these videos if you wanted to get into the independent and professional area.

You could also consider transitions. Say you have one clip that goes from left to right, follow it with another clip that shows movement from left to right. The same with an inward movement: you push in with the camera, but the next clip shows inward movement. Like a car enters the frame, for example.

Editing works hand-in-hand with cinematography, so in terms of how you edit things, that's really up to you whether you go full YouTuber travel filmmaker or just do your own thing. :)

Me too, I’ve got tons of unused footage so maybe I should try this too. You’ve given me some good ideas after seeing how you played with your clips.

Yeah do it! It'd be really cool to see people go beyond with the footage they have and see what creations they came up with in an edit. I said to another in a different comment that Hive definitely needs more people on the filmmaking side of things. There's so much potential for it on here.

I need to be in the right mood for editing though

I don't have power issues but I definitely feel that. Even as I was editing (it has been a while) I found I was losing interest fast. It really didn't take me long to create that though. Maybe 15 minutes of editing in Adobe Premiere Pro. Though I think I felt a bit limited as I realised many of the clips I did have were very similar to each other.

Honestly I didn't even really bother colour grading. I just slightlty tweaked the colours and used an Adjustment Layer to give it a more faded look. Slapped on a 15% top & bottom Crop in that Adjustment Layer and that's pretty much the full extent. Minus the fade in and fade out.