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A travel video is an effective way to share your experiences with your friends and relatives. We create a lot of video footages while we are traveling. But many of us usually don’t know how to make a great travel video. Making a great travel video is a creative work and there are a lot of ways for that when you start shooting your travel video.
Maybe, you don’t want to become a travel video blogger. But at least you would like to organise a little piece of vlogging in your lifestyle. Right? Me too. Today I’ll be deliberating some simple steps to take better travel videos from my own experiences. Let’s get started.
1. Draw up your story
You have to have an idea about what you are going to shoot with your camera in your travel destination. How your theme is going to be, from which angle you’ll take main shots, everything should be pre-planned in your head. Researching helps a lot to make a better travel video. While you’re researching, try to find out locations which are off the beaten path, because that allows you to find some of the well-known tourist attractions. This way, you’ve to decide what you want to capture in your footage. For instance, if you’re visiting places like Darwin, or Fitzroy Island, you can take some shots of people working around the beach or kayaking or the foods.
2. Recording your footage
It’s best to have a tripod in your camera equipment bag. Because you need to hold your each and every shot for at least five to ten seconds. So you have to keep your camera steady. If you don’t have a tripod, rest your hand on something so that it doesn’t move. Take 2 to 3 widescreen ratio shots of your traveling spot. Take as much close up shots as you can, it helps to show details in your video. While shooting from distance, try to zoom in, but don’t push the record button yet, rather make sure that you’re focusing first. You may take interviews with the local people because that helps to break the narration of your trip, and the audiences get interested in this.
3. On-camera introduction
Introduce your story and your location before you start shooting. Talk about what you’re going to tackle in your video. You may feel a bit uncomfortable but it makes the video more interesting. Tell them what they are going to see and how you feel about it. Just talk as like you’re talking to one of your best friends.
4. Remember to smile
Travel video is your plaything. Be relaxed, laugh and keep smiling. Tell a joke in front of the camera to your audience. It’s pretty tough to do, in fact, many can’t do it perfectly yet. But with practices, and less caring about the script, you could be nailing it.
5. Narrate your video
It’s really easy to narrate your travel video in off-camera after reaching your destination. It helps to soundcheck for your camera. You can edit the sound bites on-camera after the narration. For instance, take your map, and then narrate it. But keep in mind that if you want to do the narration on-camera, you’ve to be always prepared. I recommend writing down notes about your travel and make a summary. Practice reading it. Take a very few minutes while narrating. It needs to be short. It’s better if you put a blank videotape in your camera and then record the script with your microphone. Take pause between your sentences because you’ll have to edit your audio later.
6. Keep viewers engaged
Engagement is everything when you’re making a video. No matter what kind of video it is. If you can’t keep them engaged, they won’t stay tuning. Now the question is, how do you keep your viewers engaged. Well, what I do for this, is, I take a variety of shots when I’m out shooting. Shots like close-ups, wide shots, mid-shots of the same object along with pans and tilts. Movement is very necessary. To keep your viewers engaged, pacing also plays some role in it. Instead of taking long shots, I prefer to keep the shots short and sweet in the final edit.
7. Edit your video
Get yourself some free and simple software to edit your video. Many digital cameras and computers have built-in video editing software nowadays. You can also use holiday video editing services or buy some cheap rated tools online. I always add my narration into my timeline first. It helps me in deciding about the shots I need to show in my story. And then I add my best travel shots into the timeline. You can also add sound effects from the locals. It glamorises the video. Collect the best music and add it there. I recommend you to follow the ten seconds rule of the filmmaking production. Cut off the shaky, boring and unwanted parts of the video. A video for less than 5 minutes would be better.
I’ve had a thousand of errors over the years to get where I am right now. So did my friends. It takes patience to become better at it. Keep practicing until you can finally nail it. Learning is everything you should be doing all your life. Success will follow you automatically.
Author: John O. Brooks is a videography related content developer. He has 10 years of traveling experience and since then he’s been writing on this. He loves to travel to interesting places around the globe because traveling is something that makes one humble.
