The curiosity and love of discovery of new places invigorate the human mind. The majority of travelers believe that the experience of visiting a new location outweighs all of the difficulties. They frequently become emotional at the end of the trip from all the wonderful experiences. It makes sense that the traveler would want to share their experience via travel videos during such times.
Furthermore, most people are unable to travel as much as they would like to due to the demands of modern life. Travel videos provide comfort to those who want to learn about and virtually explore new places. It is your responsibility as a content creator to make sure that your audience has a flawless viewing experience, so be prepared to work extra hard. We’ll talk about some helpful hints for creating more engaging travel videos in this article.
Decide on Your Theme Clearly
You will have hundreds of stories that you associate with a vacation. Post the trip, you will want to share these stories with your audience. Refrain from trying to capture everything you enjoyed about the trip in a single video that sums it up. This will make the video unnecessarily long and may cause your viewers to lose interest in the story.
Ideally, you should pick one topic and commit to it for the videos. For example, you can create a video to talk about your experience with the lemurs of Madagascar instead of one where you describe your 15-day trip to East Africa.
Recognize What Your Audience Expects
While your travel video should tell your story, you cannot afford to ignore your viewer experience. For example, a younger audience will prefer videos of you partying in Bangkok while a more mature demographic would want to learn about the local cuisine, heritage, and culture.
For professional video making, try to create a viewer persona to understand the expectations of your target audience. That way, you can plan the theme, tone, and music of your travel videos.
Be Genuine in Your Videos
A look at some of the most popular travel video channels will reveal that all of them are authentic in their travel stories. As a traveler or Digital Nomad, you need to accept the uncertainty of this field. For example, you may not spot a tiger in Sundarbans despite choosing to go there at the best time of the year.
Heavy rains may prevent you from completing the trek you had always dreamt of. While creating your videos, try to be real and talk about these experiences as well. Pretending to have completed the trek or having spotted a tiger will lead to no good. Your viewers will see through your lies and question your integrity.
Make a narrative storyboard
The travel video clips are precious to you because of the memories that they carry. As a content creator, you need to realize that your viewers will not have the same emotions as the clips. To ensure that they enjoy the video, you need to plan a story.
Create a storyboard so that your video has a defined beginning, middle, and conclusion. While filming, try to capture ample B-roll footage to help in the story design. A well-designed story helps to keep the viewer engrossed in the content and reduces drop-offs.
Adjust the Fixed Camera Parameters
Irrespective of the filming device that you use, we suggest that you spend some time on the tool to understand the best settings. Then, set that as the default setting for the trip.
When you make alterations to the camera setting during the trip it causes you to compromise with the overall image and video capture quality. Even with the best editing tools, this is something that cannot be fixed in the post-production stage.
Adjust the Color Correction of the Clips
It might not be possible to film in steady lighting while you’re traveling. We advise you to color-correct the clips in these circumstances in order to correct the lighting imbalance.
The majority of online video editor tools let you color-correct and change the white balance of the clips. Before you cut, combine, or duplicate the clips, make sure you give this step proper attention.
Plan Your Transitions
Typically, your travel videos will not be longer than 5 seconds. While the use of transitions is acceptable, you need to plan your footage. Haphazard footage joined into 5-second clips will create a nightmare of jump cuts and give a headache to the viewer.
Ideally, your video planning should aim at the beginning and end of the videos with a visual cue. The slow spinning of the frame, high-fiving to the camera, slow panning of the camera and use of video templates are some effective ways of creating your signature transitions.
Select the Audio Recording Equipment
There may be situations where you need to film your travel videos in a noisy environment. In such situations mute the audio while editing and add a piece of appropriate background music.
However, if you are talking to the camera, make sure that you invest in a portable mic. It is impossible to do away with the noise that is captured when you speak without a mic. These unwanted elements will give an unprofessional look to your videos and may tempt viewers to drop them off.
Select the Platforms to Post the Video
Knowing where you intend to post the video will help you plan the content accordingly. For example, if you want to post your travel videos on Instagram, try to restrict them to a 1-minute duration.
Since most people have their phones on silent while browsing through social media, adding subtitles to your travel videos will give better context to the viewer. However, when you post the video on YouTube, you can afford longer content.
Like every travel story, the journey of making a travel video is unique. You need to identify your strengths and use them to your advantage while telling the story. As you venture into the world of travel videos and share your stories with the world, here’s wishing you a fun-filled journey ahead.