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On our recent jaunt to the Oregon coast to shoot a video on creating a drone hyperlapse, we also brought along the DJI Ronin-S and a Panasonic GH5, and the Ronin-S has quickly become our favorite new handheld gimbal. Combined with a small DSLR or mirrorless camera, it’s lightweight, portable and easy to operate, so even beginners can use it to capture pro-style gimbal shots.
Today, we’d like to share five easy camera movements that you can use with the Ronin-S to create cool and visually meaningful in-camera transitions to combine your video scenes together into a masterful final cut.
The strafe block involves using a foreground object to cover up or blur the end of one frame and transition to reveal the next scene or clip. For this transition to work, you will need to start in one location and end in another. A stark contrast between scenes can create an interesting juxtaposition, or use two similar scenes for a quick, natural cut. Check out the example below.
With this transition, you’ll push in on a subject to completely cover your frame, and then pull out to reveal a new subject (or the same subject) in a new scene. These can look cool as transitions between quick clips, creating a sense of montage as you cut from one subject to another while maintaining a sense of continuity.
Our editors aptly refer to this next in-camera transition as “the Skyfall,” as it involves starting on a subject and then tilting the camera up at the sky to create a sort of rising or uplifting sensation before tilting back down to reveal a new subject and/or location. (It’s also a killer spy movie, we know).
This transition is most effective when your subject is up close in the foreground, but with a zoom lens, you can focus on faraway subjects as well. Changing up your depth of field between scene transitions can build a sense of scale from one scene to the next, and can help structure your final cut.
To accomplish this shot, first set your Ronin-S to flashlight