FREE REFERENCE
Every move below is drawn as a stick diagram rather than described in prose, because “yaw left while rolling right” is much harder to read than a picture of two sticks. All of it is Mode 2 — DJI’s default, and what your controller is set to unless you changed it yourself.
None of this is aircraft-specific. Stick technique does not change between a Mini and a Mavic, which is why the best instructional video on the subject predates most current drones. Where a move genuinely needs particular hardware — a rolling gimbal, waypoints, subject tracking — it says so.
Learn the first eight, then stop
Moves 1–8 cover most of what you will ever shoot. Every good drone video is three or four well-executed moves cut together — not twenty flown roughly. Add the one-stick moves for variety, and come back for the combinations when the basics feel boring.
One thing this page does not cover: the controller settings that make any of these look smooth in the first place. Stick sensitivity out of the box is tuned for responsive flying, which is the opposite of what cinematography wants. That is covered in the beginner walkthrough, along with ten of these moves in more depth.
Eight moves that cover most of what you will ever shoot. Learn these before anything else — a video made of four of these, executed cleanly, beats one made of twelve done badly.
Fly forward while slowly tilting the gimbal up from the ground to the horizon.
Mode 2: right stick forward.
Right stick forward, tilt gimbal up
The classic opener. It works because it withholds information — the viewer sees ground, then a horizon, then the subject, in that order. Start with the gimbal pointed far enough down that the frame is genuinely uninformative.
Camera at -90°, descending slowly toward the subject.
Mode 2: left stick down (descend).
Gimbal straight down, left stick down
Reads as a map becoming a place. Descend far slower than feels right — at speed the ground rushes and the shot reads as a drop rather than a move.
Circle the subject, yawing in one direction while rolling the other to hold it centred.
Mode 2: left stick right (yaw right), right stick left (slide left).
Yaw one way, roll the opposite way
The hardest of the foundation moves and worth the practice, because it is the one that most obviously separates flown footage from automated footage. Both inputs must stay proportional — if the subject drifts off centre, you are rolling too fast for your yaw.
Fly backward and upward at the same time. The pull-back reveal.
Mode 2: left stick up (climb), right stick back.
Right stick back, left stick up
Every drone ships an automated version. Flying it by hand lets you choose the ratio of climb to retreat, which is the entire character of the shot — more climb reads as scale, more retreat reads as isolation.
Fly forward through a gap or along a path at speed.
Mode 2: right stick forward.
Right stick forward, committed
High energy, and the one move on this list with a real accident rate. Fly the line once at altitude, then once slowly, before you fly it fast. Obstacle avoidance will not save you in a gap narrower than its sensing envelope, and it is switched off entirely in Sport.
Pure vertical ascent, camera level or slightly down. No horizontal movement at all.
Mode 2: left stick up (climb).
Left stick up, nothing else
Named for the studio camera move. Its power is the absence of any other axis — the frame changes only in what it contains, never in how it is pointed.
Pure lateral movement, like a dolly on tracks.
Mode 2: right stick right (slide right).
Right stick left or right
The cheapest way to create parallax: near objects sweep past, far ones barely move, and the shot reads as three-dimensional. Fly it with something in the near foreground or you lose the whole effect.
Ascend while tilting the gimbal downward. The subject shrinks as the world opens out.
Mode 2: left stick up (climb).
Left stick up, tilt gimbal down
The standard closing shot, and it is standard because it works: it answers "where was all this?" at the exact moment the viewer starts wondering.
Single-axis moves and the overhead family. One-stick moves are the easiest to fly smoothly, which is exactly why they cut so well. Top-down is where drones show you something no other camera can.
Simple backward flight away from the subject.
Mode 2: right stick back.
Right stick back
Underrated. Adds distance and context with one input, which means it is almost impossible to fly badly — a useful property when the light is going and you have one battery left.
Vertical ascent with the camera level, revealing landscape as you clear obstacles.
Mode 2: left stick up (climb).
Left stick up, camera level
Differs from the Pedestal only in intent: here the reveal is what comes over the treeline, so start low enough that something is genuinely hidden.
Forward flight close to the ground, roughly 2 to 5 metres.
Mode 2: right stick forward.
Right stick forward, low altitude
Speed is relative to the nearest object, which is why 8 m/s at 3 m reads faster than 18 m/s at 100 m. Textured ground — grass, water, gravel — sells it. Flat tarmac does not.
Pure rotation on the spot, sweeping the camera across the landscape.
Mode 2: left stick right (yaw right).
Left stick left or right
The one move where slower is always better. Yaw fast enough and the rolling shutter will skew every vertical in the frame.
Camera straight down, flying forward over a road, river, path or subject.
Mode 2: right stick forward.
Gimbal straight down, right stick forward
Turns a linear feature into a graphic one. Line the feature up with the frame before you start moving — correcting a drifting line mid-take never looks intentional.
Circling a subject with the camera pointed straight down.
Mode 2: left stick right (yaw right), right stick left (slide left).
Gimbal straight down, yaw one way, roll the other
Produces the rotating-clock effect. Radius matters more than speed: tight enough and the subject pivots in place, wide enough and the whole landscape turns around it.
Camera straight down while ascending. The subject shrinks into the landscape.
Mode 2: left stick up (climb).
Gimbal straight down, left stick up
The strongest transition on this list, because it ends on an abstract frame that will cut to almost anything.
Fly forward with the camera down, chasing your own shadow or a subject's.
Mode 2: right stick forward.
Gimbal straight down, right stick forward, follow the shadow
Only works within roughly two hours of sunrise or sunset — at midday the shadow is directly beneath the aircraft and there is nothing to chase. Check where the sun is before you plan on this one.
Two or three axes at once. These are where footage starts looking deliberate rather than flown. Fly each one at altitude over open ground before you fly it near anything.
Ascend, fly forward and tilt up together. A Hollywood crane shot.
Mode 2: left stick up (climb), right stick forward.
Left stick up, right stick forward, tilt gimbal up
Three axes at once and worth every bit of the practice. The gimbal tilt has to be slow enough to still be moving when the climb ends — if it finishes early the shot dies before the move does.
Fly backward while tilting the camera up from the subject to the horizon.
Mode 2: right stick back.
Right stick back, tilt gimbal up
The Reveal run in reverse, and it does the opposite job: instead of hiding then showing, it starts intimate and pulls the world in around the subject.
Spiral upward around a subject — an orbit with ascent added.
Mode 2: left stick up (climb) and right (yaw right), right stick left (slide left).
Yaw and climb together, roll the opposite way
The manual version of the QuickShot. Flying it by hand lets you change the rate of climb mid-orbit, which the automated version cannot do, and that variation is the whole reason to bother.
Slide laterally while yawing to keep a foreground object centred.
Mode 2: left stick left (yaw left), right stick right (slide right).
Roll one way, yaw the opposite way
The most technically satisfying move here. The foreground stays locked while the background swings behind it, and the result looks like a camera move nobody can quite place.
Retreat, climb and tilt down together until the subject is a dot in the landscape.
Mode 2: left stick up (climb), right stick back.
Right stick back, left stick up, tilt gimbal down
An ending, not a shot. Needs a lot of clear air behind and above — check both before you commit, because you will be flying backward with the camera pointed at the ground.
Descend rapidly toward a subject while the gimbal tilts to hold it in frame.
Mode 2: left stick down (descend).
Left stick down, gimbal tracking the subject
High energy and the least forgiving move on the list. Descent has its own hazard — a fast vertical descent can settle into its own downwash and stop responding to throttle. Add forward motion and start your recovery high.
Lock the camera on the subject with Spotlight, then orbit freely while it tracks.
Mode 2: left stick right (yaw right), right stick left (slide left).
Spotlight engaged, then fly a normal orbit
Removes the hardest part of the Orbit — holding the subject centred — and leaves you free to vary radius and height mid-shot. If you only learn one assisted mode, learn this one.
Set two waypoints and fly between them for a perfectly straight, repeatable path.
No stick input — this move is set up in the app.
Two waypoints on a line
The only move here that is identical every time you fly it, which makes it the one that matters commercially. Shoot a property at dawn and at dusk on the same route and the two clips cut together seamlessly.
Rotate the horizon during a shot — Dutch angle, barrel roll, or a transition into vertical.
No stick input — this move is set up in the app.
Roll the gimbal while flying any other move
Depends entirely on your aircraft. The Mavic 4 Pro rolls a full 360°; the Mini 5 Pro rolls 225° mechanically and 180° to 45° under control, which is more than enough for a Dutch angle or a rotate-to-vertical. Most other drones cannot do this at all and fake vertical by cropping the sensor instead.
Rise and fall rhythmically while moving forward, for a wave-like flow.
Mode 2: left stick up (climb), right stick forward.
Oscillate throttle up and down while flying forward
Easy to overdo. One full cycle across a five-second shot is a move; three cycles is seasickness.
Fly a curved path past a subject, arcing around it rather than orbiting it.
Mode 2: left stick right (yaw right), right stick right (slide right).
Roll and yaw together to fly a curved arc
An orbit you never complete. Because it starts and ends somewhere else, it moves the story forward in a way a closed circle does not.
This page is free and always will be. The printable guides are what you take with you: every setting, filter, checklist and failure mode for your specific aircraft, sourced to DJI’s own manual, with a card listing what DJI has not published rather than guessing at it. Each one ships as US Letter, as A5 for a kneeboard clip, and as a phone edition with tappable links.
See the guides