“DRONE” The Aerial Drone POV Method (Draw 2 Lines On a Photo, Let AI Fly the Shot)

Why "make a cinematic drone shot" never works

Type "cinematic drone shot" into any AI video tool and you get a coin flip. Sometimes it swoops the right way. Most times the camera drifts somewhere random, the subject slides out of frame, and you're re-rolling the same prompt ten times hoping to get lucky.

The problem isn't the AI. It's that you're describing the shot in words when the shot is a path in space. Words are terrible at "fly up and to the left, curve around the building, then look back down at the car." A drawing nails it in two seconds.

The two-line system

This whole method comes down to two colored lines drawn directly on your starting image. That's the entire trick.

The magic part: these lines are instructions, not scene elements. Omni Flash reads them, erases them, and reveals the clean image underneath before a single frame renders. Your final video has zero lines in it.

What you need

Three things, and you probably already have the first one:

• A base image. Any real photo or AI-generated frame you want the drone to fly through.
• Google Flow.Google's AI filmmaking tool at labs.google/flow. Omni Flash runs inside it (requires a Google AI Pro plan).
• Omni Flash. The Gemini model inside Flow that actually reads your drawn path and camera guides.

Draw the flight path

Open your base image in anything that lets you draw on it. Preview, Canva, or your phone's markup tool all work.

1. Start with your base image. This is your first frame.
2. Trace the drone's route as a single red line. Capture the curves, the direction it travels, and where it ends.
3. Add white arrows along that route pointing at where the lens should look, keeping your subject in frame.

Keep the lines bold and obvious. You're not making art, you're giving directions.

Generate in Flow

1. Open Google Flow (labs.google/flow) and select the Omni Flash model.
2. Upload your annotated image.
3. Paste the exact prompt below.
4. Hit run.

The exact prompt (copy it word for word)

Paste this exactly, alongside your annotated image, into Omni Flash. It tells the model to treat the red and white lines as instructions, remove them, and fly the route you drew.

Use the attached image as the starting frame. The red line represents the drone flight waypoints and trajectory only, while the white arrows represent the camera viewing direction only. These are production guides, not scene elements, and must never appear in the final animation. Remove all guides before the animation begins and reveal the clean underlying image.

Create a single continuous aerial drone POV that flies along the exact path defined by the red waypoint line, matching its route, curves, movement direction, and endpoint as closely as possible. Throughout the entire flight, orient the camera according to the white directional arrows, ensuring the drone follows the red path while the camera continuously looks where the white arrows indicate, naturally keeping the subject framed at all times.

The drone trajectory and camera orientation are the highest-priority instructions and must be followed exactly, even when the movement path and viewing direction differ. Use smooth, cinematic drone motion with realistic inertia, gentle banking, and natural acceleration and deceleration, with no cuts, teleports, or sudden camera swings.

Preserve the original scene exactly as shown without modifying the environment, lighting, subject, composition, or any objects. The only change should be the realistic drone movement following the red waypoint path while the camera continuously follows the white viewing directions.

Produce clean, photorealistic footage with no visible guides, annotations, arrows, lines, overlays, graphics, text, or watermarks in any frame.

The start-frame + end-frame fix

Sometimes the drawn-path method fights you. The camera won't commit to the move, the path gets loose, or the AI keeps the lines in the shot. When that happens, switch to the two-frame method and you take full control.

Instead of one annotated image, give the model two:

1. A starting frame showing exactly where the shot begins (the first thing the viewer sees).
2. An ending frame showing exactly where the shot ends (the final resting position).

Then describe the path between them in plain words. Something like:

Because the AI now has a fixed start AND a fixed finish, it stops guessing. It just has to connect two known points, which it does far more reliably than interpreting a freehand line. Use the drawn-path method for speed and creative curves. Use the two-frame method when you need it locked down and predictable.

Two lines. One flight.

That's the whole method. Red is where the drone flies. White is where the camera looks. Both lines vanish before the first frame renders, leaving only clean, realistic motion. And if the freehand version ever fights you, the start-frame plus end-frame trick locks it down.

Draw the path, aim the lens, hit run. Your drone shot is ready.

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