How to Make Instagram Reels Like a PRO!

- This video is everything you need to know about Instagram Reels, Instagram's answer to TikTok's shorter form videos. We're gonna cover exactly how to make Instagram Reels including how to use and upload your videos as reels, simple tips and tricks to increase your views, and my top video editing apps and tools for iPhone and Android, all designed to help you get better results. Now, while we're going through this video, why not grab your smartphone, jump over to my Instagram and hit follow.

Once you're done, come back and give your Instagram handle a plug down in the comments below, and share it with the rest of the "Primal Video" community. I'll be down there as well. Now, comparing Reels to Instagram Stories which are limited to 15 seconds, and disappear after 24 hours, reels are vertical videos as well but they can be up to 60 seconds in length and they don't disappear.

Giving you that benefit of having a piece of content you're creating that can stick around, and bring you impact and value for a long time after you create it. Now, reels really do need to be created in that portrait format as well. And for best results when you're posting them, I'm gonna share some tips a little later on so that important stuff doesn't get cropped off.

Now compared to TikTok, the two of them are very similar. TikTok right now does support up to three-minute videos, and this is something that maybe Reels will be increased to that at some point as well. But for right now, your maximum video length with reels is 60 seconds.

But apart from that, the two are very similar. They both got a lot of effects, and filters, and music, and stuff that you can use to create short, sharp, engaging videos. And that's really the real benefit of the Reel draw card with this type of content.

Short, sharp, engaging, bingeable content that people can consume quickly. Now, in terms of creating reels, you've really got two main options . You can do the entire process just within the Instagram app.

So I'm gonna show you that first, but option number two is to use more professional third-party apps which will give you more advanced controls and customizability, and really let you get more creative with your editing, allowing you to create more professional reels. So I'll cover those ones off second. So to create reels in the app itself, there's a few ways you can access it.

You can swipe across from the left, and you can see that we're now in Instagram camera. Down the bottom, you've got the option there for reels, and pressing that is going to allow you to make reels from here. If we back out of this now hitting the X at the top, the other way that you can get to this is by hitting the little plus button up the top, and then down the very bottom, you can select Reels.

I'm on camera again. Or if we go back one more time, the third place is if you select the dedicated reels button down the bottom middle of the screen, then you've got the camera button in the top right hand corner if you press that. It's gonna take you to the same place.

Now, in here, the first thing you wanna set is your video length. So we can see that here on the side, and we've got the option of 15 seconds, 30 seconds, or 60 seconds. Now, even if you select 60 seconds, start recording your video, and you're not maxing it out, it's under 60 seconds, then, it'll crop that down for you.

So you're better off selecting 60 seconds here instead of, say, 30 seconds, and then running out of time to finish your video if it goes over. Now if you wanna add in music and match your recording to the music, then you can press on the music here. You can select a lot of popular music tracks in here, you can search for them up the top there as well, and you can then select the section of the music track that you want to include.

I'm gonna press the trash can in the top left to cancel out of this. There's also a speed button in the app here. So we see where it says 1x.

If we press on that, we can choose the different recording speeds. So we could record a video and have it play back in slow motion, or we can even use this to get a little bit tricky and we can record our movements in slow motion, and have them play back in real time. So that's how you can see some of those reels that seem to be perfectly timed to music or perfectly timed dance moves , this is how they're doing it.

Down below that, you've got all your filters and effects that you can add on. Damn, actually looks pretty good. No, it doesn't, it looks terrible.

Get off, get off! And there's also a touch up mode down below that. Now, this is really just like a beauty mode.

It's gonna smooth out your skin, make you look amazing. You can press and hold on it though, and you can adjust the amount that you wanna have. Looks nothing like me.

So we can turn that one off. There's also a countdown timer you can turn on so that your videos will start recording after a certain amount of time. And the last button down the bottom is for aligning your camera to your previous shot.

So if I press this now, it's gonna overlay where I took a quick screenshot or a quick little clip, and I can line myself up there, so when I press Record to start recording again, I've lined up pretty close. So, again, a creative tool to help you line up your shots, and make them seem more seamless. Now, the most important thing here though is the Record button down the bottom.

Now this will work two ways. You can either just tap on it and it's going to start recording until you tap it again and it's going to stop, or you can press and hold on that button down the bottom, and when you let go, it's going to create that clip. So if I press and hold on it now, then this is recording, and I can see they've got the countdown timer at the top, telling us how long, about 60 seconds we have left.

The moment that I release, then that clip is paused. And we can see on the progress bar at the top that that's how much we've recorded. Now I can do the same again.

I can press and hold and you can see that our countdown timer is happening again at the top. This is recording a second clip to add on after the first one. Now we have the ability here to hit Preview and to play them both back together or we can come over here and we can edit these down.

So if I press on this little button here, then we can see our two clips down the bottom. And I can either press the trash can to delete them or I can press the scissors to trim them down. Maybe I wanna trim something off the end, I can just grab this end back, or likewise from the start.

So we can easily trim down our clips here. I'm gonna hit cancel on that at the top, and I'm just gonna hit Done on this one here now. And when you're done recording your videos here, if you press the Preview now, obviously that's going to play it back.

Then here you've got all the same features and effects and things that you have when you're posting a regular Instagram Story. To add in text, to draw, add in stickers and GIFs, effects, voiceover, music, and the last button there is to download and save a backup version of your clip. Now that's a good idea if you're looking to repurpose what you've just shot to another platform without any of these texts and effects and things on.

Now if we go next on this one here, then this is where we can post and share this out as a reel. We have the ability to add in a caption, add text here, we can tap on our cover image there, and we can go through and we can pick out the perfect frame that we wanna use as our cover image for this reel. Or we also have the ability, and a lot of people miss this, right down the bottom, we can upload an image from our camera roll.

So if we press on this, we can go through and pick an image that we wanna use. Let's pick this picture of Russell. We can then have that as our cover image or thumbnail image for our reel.

So if we go Done now, then that's applied. Now you also have the option here to also share your reel onto your Instagram feed. We can turn that on or off here.

And if you are gonna do that, then that's gonna go out as a square image. So you have the option here to crop your profile image down. So you can see it's given us a display here.

This was our entire image. We can just pick the section that we want or we can even scale it up if we want to make it a more compelling Instagram image that's going to go on our feed. We can also tag people in our reel, we can come down here under Advanced settings, and also add a paid partnership label if you're gonna be doing branded content.

And then from here, you can either share it out or you can save it as a draft. Now one thing to be aware of, if you are gonna be posting your reels onto your feed is how they're actually displayed. So when you're viewing them in the Reels section, you can see that they are full screen, but if you go back and view them on your profile, you can see that we're getting a four by five aspect ratio here.

So it's cropping off the top and the bottom. So you wanna keep this in mind, because if someone is previewing this way without actually tapping into view at full screen, they might be missing off what you've got on the top and the bottom. So any text that you're adding, you wanna make sure it's within that area.

So that's option number one, just using the Instagram app. Now to kick things up a notch and get more creativity, more control, and higher quality out of the videos you're creating, and this is where you can use some third-party or aftermarket apps for both filming and editing your reels. Now, we've done full breakdowns on the best filming apps, the best editing apps on both Android and iOS, and I'll link those down in the description below.

But in terms of the best all-rounders for creating Instagram Reels, for filming, you really can't go past Filmic Pro. You could think of this like your built-in camera app but on steroids. This is going to allow you to create your vertical videos with so much more control and higher quality than you'll get out of the built-in camera app and the Instagram camera app as well.

You better do things like lock down your shutter speed, lock down your ISO, rack focus to change the focus while you're recording, adjust volume levels, change up the picture profiles of your recording to really dial in the look and feel of the video you're creating. Essentially unlocking DSLR-like settings on your phone. Now probably the biggest thing you won't have in Filmic Pro that you did have in the Instagram app was the ability to pause your recording, and just to quickly go back and remove things on the fly.

With this workflow though instead, you'll be recording either a lot of separate clips or one really big clip, and doing your editing down afterwards in your editing app. Now in terms of the best editing apps to use then to edit down your footage that you've just shot in Filmic Pro, if you're looking for the most professional app on iOS, that really goes hands down to Lumafusion, but it is going to be over complicated for a lot of people. It's really a very professional app.

On Android, probably the closest thing to it right now would be Kinemaster, or Kinemaster, but in terms of the best all-rounder for someone who is an absolute beginner right through to someone who is more advanced, I would suggest checking out VN Video Editor or Capcut. Both of those are really easy to use. They're both free and they both packed in a ton of features.

Now I have full video editing walkthroughs on this channel for both Capcut and VN Video Editor, and they'll be in the description below as well. But this is what you'll see when you open up VN Video Editor. You just wanna hit down the bottom, on the plus, to create a new project, and then select new project.

You then wanna select your video clips that you want to edit down and press the next button down the bottom. And then we can go through and we can edit this together. We can pick up and we can move clips around.

We can tap on a clip and we can adjust again the start time or the end time just by dragging those yellow handles around. If we're playing through, we wanna cut a clip in half, we can press the scissors down the bottom to split a clip in two. We could even add another cut, and we could delete that middle section entirely by pressing the trash can.

So you can easily go through, trim down your footage, remove all the stuff that you don't want, really sharpen up and create your refined video in here with so much more control, and so much more features than you have in the Instagram app. You've got the ability to speed up and to slow down your clips, to add in filters and effects, to change how your video looks, and even apply transitions and effects to take your videos to the next level. Now if you're editing your videos down this way, there's two great resources which will help you take your videos to the next level.

The first one is Placeit. This is an amazing online service that will let you easily create video animations, video intros, animated text and graphics that you can easily then drag and drop into your videos. And the second one is Storyblocks.

This is another amazing online service that gives you access to so much B-roll or stock footage, so that you don't need to go and shoot everything yourself. There is a massive library of video clips that you can download and use in your videos to help make them more engaging. So these are two services that I highly recommend, and they're gonna help you make your videos look even better.

So once you've edited down your video, just do a quick check before you save it out to make sure that there is no end screen, or watermark, or branding saved on it with some of these free apps. So we can see we've got one here. We just wanna hit delete on that to make sure that's gone.

We then wanna save it out. So we come up the top here to export and then come down the bottom to export. That's gonna go ahead and save our video out for us.

So we can then jump back over to Instagram, open up our Reels section as if we're going to create an Instagram Reel. But instead of hitting Record, down the bottom left, we can select a video from our phone, and select the video that we just edited down. Then we can come up the top and press Add.

We actually still have the ability then to add in music and effects and things if you haven't done it already. We can then preview that, and again, adding any text, stickers, captions, anything else that you wanna add to that. Hit next and you're posting it just the same as you're posting a regular reel.

So this is a great way, as I said, to help you to get really creative with both your filming and your editing without the need to just be locked in to what Instagram is giving you for your reels. And you can still mix it up and integrate a lot of those reels' features into your videos as well. So those are your options for creating amazing looking Instagram Reels.

Now if you're interested in leveling up your filming on your smartphone, then check out the two videos that are linked on screen. A complete step-by-step process for creating amazing looking videos using your iPhone and Android device. You can then save out and use in your reels as well.

I'll see you in the next one.