10 Tips For Successful Travel Videos

Travel videos are more and more watched and brought back in your backpacks. More alive than photos, more meaningful than an image, and more spontaneous than a travelogue, videos allow you to “feel” a destination and convey the atmosphere of your trip. Here are 10 tips for a successful travel video!

1. Take inspiration from the videos you love

We’re not talking about “copying” but about being inspired, huh? But on closer inspection, the prettiest travel videos all look the same, and the more you watch, the more inspiration you will get for your travel plans!

Between the rays of the sun filtered between two buildings, transport speeding off, or feet walking in the sand, it may seem like a boat to you, but that’s what we want to see in your videos! So please write down the shots you like and remember to film them once there!

2. Pitch your scenario as little as possible

And precisely, after having found a little inspiration, pitch your idea a minimum before forgetting it. Well, yes, when you go on a trip for more than a month to the end of the world, the little ideas you had in Paris are very far away in the back of your brain, so write everything down on a piece of paper and stick it on your camera. !

3. Choose good material

Some will tell you that a GoPro or an iPhone is enough to make a travel video. The 7 Plus, maybe, but everything else is nothing! Nothing is more disappointing for you and the reader than seeing a pixelated, blurry, cluttered image. Take a video of a sunset with your iPhone, then with a Canon 5D.

You will immediately understand what I mean. Afterward, it’s a different budget, but going for a hybrid, an expert compact, or an amateur SLR is a minimum for getting started in video. Don’t forget to accessorize everything: microphone (nothing worse than bad sound, as you can see here), feet (to make nice static shots), tripod (to walk around in selfie mode), and batteries/ Spare SD cards are the minimum essential to have.

4. Stabilize and lengthen your shots as much as possible

Patience is the key to successful plans. It took us a while to understand it, and we still can’t put it into practice (we’re electric batteries, if you hadn’t noticed), but it’s better to have a long shot with nothing but a shot runs with stuff. With a long shot, you can enjoy increasing the speed (seeing the sky move), focusing during editing, or playing with the light.

Stability is also essential because the image is still a little jerky, even if we can refine it during editing. Use your tripod or tripod as soon as possible, find an excellent shot, put down your camera, press play, and let it run for at least one minute. In the end, believe us, you’ll be so glad you made this plan.

5. Humanize your experiences as much as possible

Filming landscapes, animals, or wide street shots is often easier than closing up a stranger’s face. And yet, the human adds the little touch of life that will change everything in your video. Whether it’s you from afar surveying the top of a hill or zooming in on the wrinkles of an old Englishman, your viewers will need to be able to identify with your video and imagine your trip, encounters, and feelings. So yes, asking someone if we can film it is always annoying, but you’ll be so happy afterward!

6. Log and classify everything

You have filmed everything you wanted; now is the time to classify everything just before going up. The trip may no longer be fresh in your head; some nice plans may have escaped you. In short, you must rush everything. It’s long, but you have to do it! Take a small notebook where you will write down:

The name of the video

His style (sunset/street/feet/food/nature)

Its color cast

The seconds of the passages that interest you the most

I had 600 video rushes after 1 month in NYC, and this technique helped me even if new data (and techniques) arrived at the end. For example, it may be helpful to note if it is fixed shots if you are walking simultaneously, doing a 180°, etc.

7. Download “aspirational” music

You can have the most beautiful shots in the world; if you put Patrick Sébastien’s music behind it, it will quickly break the atmosphere of the trip (as in life) (well, we love you, Patrick <3). Music is ESSENTIAL in a travel video, especially if you don’t speak on it.

You must settle for royalty-free music if you aim for a cordial agreement with Facebook & YouTube. Canva offers you a detailed article on downloading royalty-free music by presenting you with several software.

We also unearthed some great playlists for you to discover here in our saved playlists! Funk & hip-hop work very well for videos in city-trip mode, while tropical house or electro will get you high for “nature” atmosphere videos!

8. Tell a story in the edit

You rush through everything, remember your thoughts, sort your shots by color, and find your music. All you have to do is tell a story that includes all of them and use some video editors to turn those stories into a perfect video. It’s excellent to string beautiful shots together, but you have to feel what you’re trying to express.

You can choose from a “day” version (we wake up, we take the train, we walk, we eat, we walk again, then sunset, evening, and finally the end), a road trip version (we follow your adventure with unique landscapes) or the rhythm of the city (traffic, parks, streets, rooftops, etc.). The more you think about your story, the faster and more relevant your edits will be!

9. Back up everything (and back up again)

Who has yet to see their life go by once their entire editing has been erased, OR their computer has crashed? To avoid this anxiety, double back up all of your content: one backup on your computer and another on your external hard drive.

Need more space on the computer? Buying from the Cloud can be a good option for adventurers: there is no need to carry around an external hard drive and (almost) no risk of it crashing. Long live the global internet!

10. Share your video to the world

Travel videos are constantly being shared on social networks! You can publish it on your Facebook profile (you can even do it privately to share it only with your travel buddies) or on YouTube!

And there, you can share your adventure trip with as many people as possible while offering excellent quality. You should look at the SEO tips on YouTube: this article will significantly help you improve your SEO (positioning on YouTube) and, therefore, better put yourself forward!