How To: Make Your FIRST Travel Video (3 Easy Steps!)

all right what's up guys this is Thomas and in this video I'm going to show you how to make your first ever travel video in three easy steps obviously I'm not traveling right now I'm in the beautiful London so I'm going to take you away to some epic locations let's cut to that and then get started [Music] foreign [Music] step number one is you're going to select your shots around the story the biggest beginner mistake is you shoot everything aimlessly pointlessly you go around you see cool thing you shoot you see cool thing you shoot

you get shaky footage you get bad angles you get too many shots you come back with five terabytes of footage that you're never going to edit and it just sits there whilst you slowly Weep the pain away that you're never going to see the video that you wanted to make in the first place that's not what we want so instead you're going to select your shots around the story think what is the story what is the video you want to make what is the story you want to tell so let's say you're going to Bali

instead of just shooting a load of random shots of barley you're thinking what is the story okay where am I going right now I'm in a hostel and I'm going to go to an epic Beach okay that's the story how I'm getting there and then when I arrive that's probably like the climax right and then the ending might be a beautiful sunset with the beach with the mission accomplished that's your basic story so get shots around that store worry just like charcoal has been Blended that's actually a good point Taste of charcoal we're both gonna

die mate let's try some blue yeah that's a good idea so that's what you'd have in your mind you've got your rough beginning your rough middle and your rough end from there you're going to shoot each part of the story and also importantly the transitions between each part of the story which leads me on to step number two all right step number two is that you're gonna shoot for flow what I mean by this is that you are continuously thinking about where you are now and how you're going to arrive where you're going to arrive

I mean both literally like obviously you need to be thinking about this if you want to travel but the same way with your video so a typical thing I see from the beginners inside my online courses is that they will create montages which means it'll be like here's a shot of us in the hostel here's a shot of us on the beach and then here's a shot of us with a drink and I cut them together and then it's I wonder why I don't have a story and I wonder why I don't have a cool

travel video that engages people so you've really got to think about the flow here how do you get from place to place how are you going to take your viewers with you how are you going to create suspense and excitement about where you're going about where your viewers are going to come with you so if you're doing this visually without any vlogging or talking to camera then what you can do is just make sure you get those transition shots you can even think about some cool transition effects such as whip pans or maybe covering the

camera and revealing somewhere else you can only do these things with a little bit of forethought when I was in Bali a couple of years ago we had to do this exact thing we had to go from a hostel really early to get to a beach to actually catch it for Sunrise and I could have very easily got a shot of me waking up in the hostel and then the shot of us on the beach but then I wouldn't have had a video instead the whole story in the whole climactic moment was the effort to

get to the beach which actually turned out to be a nightmare me and George were driving around these motorcycles in the dark not knowing where we are going having no idea how to get there asking locals people who are up at 4am in the dark with their chickens on their Farm asking them where we needed to go in a completely different language and when we actually got there oh man it was such a climactic incredible moment because we felt like we'd achieved so much and been through all these Adventure to get there [Music] so really

thinking about the flow of the video is what's going to capture your viewers attention and make sure they stick with you whether that's doing visual transitions showing those Journeys or whether that's telling the story in a more Vlog Style all right finally step number three is to let your tracks your songs dictate the structure of your video this is a mistake I always see people just slap on a track and then that's it they don't add it to the track so this step kind of comes in layers the typical advice you hear which is great

advice is to cut to the beat of the music it's a Surefire way to make your more amateur looking video seem more professional however a step further than this is to let your track dictate the structure of your video so a song a piece of music has a beginning has a middle has an end it has climactic moments it has more downbeat chill moments so ideally you're going to want to search for a track that will reflect the rough story that you have in your video this is assuming that your video is shorter by the

way this is assuming that you're working on maybe a three or four minute video it's a whole nother topic if you're making a 20 minute 30 minute Vlog that's for another video but if we're talking about okay we want to make a nice short Punchy three or four minute video then how are we gonna pick a track well if your video has a chill morning where you're chilling out getting a coffee and then in the middle you know something crazy happens or you go on this adventure and it's more kind of Epic and at the

end it's chill again you want to find a track that represents that you want to find a track that has a chill beginning builds up to a climactic moment and then has a chill end when you have that track you then want to go to edit your video to each section you have to be quite ruthless here so let's say you your morning shots you have like five minutes of footage or like 10 minutes and the chill section of that track is like 45 seconds you're gonna have to cram those 10 minutes into 45 seconds

and make some ruthless decisions taking out a lot of material to get the Bare Bones the best stuff that just tells the story that just this looks great to get into those 45 seconds this by the way is how professionals make videos do not think that when I go out and make a travel video every single shot is great and I just have unlimited options of shots no it's usually I'll get you know 20 minutes of footage for one scene and then I'll use 30 seconds of it or one minute of it so it's rather

than everything I shoot is amazing it's picking the amazing bits from the footage and only putting them in the video so once you do that to the chill section and then you use your transition footage to transition as the music transitions to the more exciting more adventurous section and then the music might get more emotive more emotional as you close off the video maybe give some nice philosophical thoughts on your experience or maybe let the visuals do the talking of the sunset or the sunrise whatever it is your video is going to end along with

the track and that is really how you make an emotive video to a song that just works perfectly together it's getting pretty chilly here in the park now if you would like to get a list of gear that I use for all of my videos a list of gear if you're a beginner what gear to use if you are intermediate which gear to use if you're a professional which gear to use then just download the gear list which is in the description of this video by getting that gear list you'll also get a bunch of

tips and tricks they're going to be sent to you in the newsletter as well as exclusive opportunities to join my online programs alright guys until next time see you in the next video keep filming bye-bye