Aerial footage
Also known as: drone footage, air to ground
Any video shot from the air, which gives a viewer the scale and the geography that no ground based camera is able to show.
Updated
What it means
Aerial footage is defined by the vantage rather than the equipment. What it contributes is scale: the size of a wave, the length of a line, the relationship between a rider and the terrain.
That is information a mounted camera cannot supply. A Chest mount shows the experience and an aerial shows the situation, and a sequence usually needs both to make sense.
It is also the most regulated kind of filming most people will do, since flying is governed in a way that pointing a camera is not, and the rules bind the shot rather than the camera.
How it works in practice
Planning the shots before taking off is what separates usable aerials from a battery spent hovering. Flight time is short, so each flight should have a purpose decided on the ground.
Mixing heights and speeds within a session gives a cut options. A high static wide and a low fast pass are different tools, and having both beats having three of either.
Keeping within sight is both the law in most places and the practical limit on judgement, which is why Visual line of sight (VLOS) shapes what can be filmed rather than merely how.
What to watch out for
Wind is the limiting factor rather than the camera. An aircraft fighting gusts produces footage that looks stable and is subtly drifting, and Wind resistance decides whether the day is possible at all.
Aerials also date a video when overused. The high slow pass is so widely used that a sequence built on it reads as generic rather than as somebody particular place, however good the location was.
Battery arithmetic catches people out too, since flight time is short and covering a session properly needs several packs rather than the one in the aircraft. A Spare battery routine matters more here than on the ground.
How RawClip handles it
Aerial clips are weighted as establishing and contextual material rather than as action, because that is the job they do inside a sequence. A highlight that has them opens with somewhere recognisable instead of starting mid movement.