Behind The Curtain – Liberty Commercials: Adding Depth To Drone Footage

Getting Drone Footage To Match Your Main Camera

I thought I’d kick off a new batch of behind the curtain based on adding depth to drone footage as part of my adventures grading the Liberty commercials.

Shot by the same DOP each time on the same cameras and lenses it’s a great example of how conditions play a huge factor in filming.

To get things rolling I thought I’d focus on matching drone footage.

Drone footage is cropping up on more and more jobs that I work on.

Normally one or two shots in a sea of Alexa or Red material they jump out as they are generally on cheaper lenses and have less dynamic range.

If you all obsess about the fine details as much as me I’m sure you find this incredibly frustrating!

Techniques I Use

In this Insight I focus on two techniques that I use. They are purely things I have found by trial and error rather than scientific research.

The first is to get the footage into a nice color space that matches the main camera.

This doesn’t get you more dynamic range but makes it easier to work with the footage in a group or timeline level grading workflow

The second thing I look at is using the dehaze control to generate a rough depth matte to drive a lens blur to try and add depth to our image.

As always these are far easier to show in the video so let’s jump to the video below!

Questions, Comments? Use the Comments below!

I always love to hear your thoughts and comments on this Insight. Please drop a comment in the section below.

-Dan