You might have come across really amazing travel videos and wondered what all went behind creating them. Making a travel video isn’t an easy job; you have to develop a concept for your video and then spend time creating it. You need to know the steps of creating a travel video before jumping into the process. Luckily for you, we have created a step-by-step guide on how to make a travel video.
Table of Contents
Pick Your Location
The first step in our guide is to pick a location for your travel video shoot. Pick a place that is underrated and not traveled by many so that you can come with new stories and ideas to catch people’s attention. Your travel location will help you build a concept for your travel video. Make sure that you develop a travel plan so that you can structure and organize your travel video.
Prepare Your Travel Gear
Before starting your trip, you need to make sure that your camera gear is arranged to fit in your backpack. Make sure that you carry a tripod, lens cleaning solution, and battery packs along with your camera. Go through your camera settings before the trip so that you do not have to waste time fiddling with the settings and miss getting good shots. Experiment with your camera settings and figure out what works best for you.
Make Sure That Your Camera Gear Is Safe And Secure
Always carry an external hard drive to transfer your footage and photos while traveling. Make sure you back up this data in another drive when you are back home. When you are shooting, make sure your gear is secure to prevent theft or accidental breakage. After you have finished shooting for the day, transfer the new footage to your external hard drive for backup purposes.
Plan Your Travel Day
Before you head out, make a travel plan for the day. Include the places you will be visiting so that you can organize your camera gear accordingly. For example, if you are going hiking, you won’t need your laptop, and if you are going underwater, you will need camera gear suitable for underwater shoots.
Shoot Your Videos
One piece of advice to always follow while filming a travel video is to shoot as much as possible. You never know when one clip or scene might be useful. Also, plan your video and write down the clips necessary to have in your travel video. It can be footage of the local people, a clip of a must-visit local restaurant, or a sight of the famous attractions. Keep your camera by your side at all times so that you don’t miss out on anything. Here are a few types of shots to include in your travel video;
- Close-ups – There is nothing more powerful than focusing on your main subject. If you are shooting an interview, make sure that the camera is focused on the person you are interviewing. If you are using a drone, get the best out of it by capturing interesting and impressive footage.
- Timelapses – Clicking a series of photos at regular intervals and combining them is called a timelapse. Use this to add some visual impact to your videos.
- Hyper lapses – Hyper lapses are the same as timelapse but include movement. These work best for opening and closing videos.
Selecting Music for your Travel Video
The type of music you choose is very important since it dictates and influences your audience. It tells your audience what they should feel while viewing your travel video. Look for music that inspires your audiences and keeps them engaged throughout your travel video. Your background music should also be based on your concept ideas. If you are shooting an adventure trip video, then the music should be upbeat and fun, or if you are shooting a video for a romantic travel vacation, then the music should be slow and orchestral. Your music should fit your trip’s theme.
Now that you have chosen your music, it is time for you to modify the length of the music and edit it to fit your video. Longer travel audio will tire the audience, and shorter travel audio will leave them unsatisfied. A 3-4 minute long audio is perfect for a travel video.
Review Your Travel Footages
Once you have chosen your travel music, you can import your footage into the video editor. This will help you organize it according to the date it was filmed and the various locations, so you know where to find footage based on date and location.
Begin Editing
Now comes the time to think about editing your video. There are plenty of tools available in the market, you can use any good video editor to edit the videos. Find the most interesting footage for your travel video, and select it to match it with your audio. Experiment using multiple footages with audio clips and use the one that suits your concept the best. This is a long process and shouldn’t be rushed. Expect to take a minimum of two days for this step.
Include Missing Footage
When you are editing, you may realize that your video is missing some footage to form a connection. Use stock videos to enhance or create a transition effect.
Transitioning
Before you finalize your travel video, you must watch the entire video multiple times to ensure that it is not missing anything. You can add more transitions in this process to smoothen any artificial transitional effects.
Add Sound Effects
Now is the time to include artificial sound effects to create a mesmerizing travel video experience. Sometimes it might be that your built-in microphone in your travel camera may not be enough to pick up the required sound effects or have unwanted sounds of traffic, wind, or loud city noises interrupting the overall audio. It is suggested that you mute your footage and add additional artificial sound effects for more clarity. This will best reflect the imagery in your video.
Correct the Color in Your Videos
Once you set up your video sound effects, it is time to edit and move to color correction. Play with brightness, exposure, saturation individually to know what works best for your video. Prerender the video and watch the entire film, look for deficiencies and keep fixing them until you are satisfied with your video.
Exporting
After all your hard work, you need to make sure that you do not export your video with the wrong settings. Make sure that you export your video at the highest quality possible. This is to make sure that all the platforms will compress your video once you are done uploading. The values for exporting also depend on the tool you are using to edit your video and the platform you will upload to. Research the optimum values of each platform and try to stick to them.
The bottom line is, making the perfect travel video is a long process and shouldn’t be rushed. Follow the above steps to create a good travel video that engages your viewers and keeps them interested. Practice these steps, and you will definitely get better at the art of video making.